SHELF LIFE MAINTENANCE AT PLANT LEVEL
Business Situation : Out of 10 plant locations producing a material only 1 plant location has bad Manufacturing conditions / storage conditions / sterility conditions as compared to the others. As a result the batches of material produced at this plant have a shorter shelf life than the batches produced at other locations. The Total Shelf Life field has been maintained in the material master keeping in mind the manufacturing conditions of the majority of the plants. As a result, the users at this particular plant have to manually keep changing the Batch Shelf Life Expiration Dates on every single batch produced.
Shelf Life required on Material / Batches at specific plant
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Shelf life Maintained in Material Master
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Business Requirement : The business needs an automated way to maintain the shelf life expiration dates on batches produced at this one plant in such a way that it takes into account the shorter shelf lives for the materials produced at this plant.
Proposed Solution :
Option 1 : Remove entry from the Total Shelf Life field in Material Master.
Advantage – This will prevent Shelf Life Expiration Dates from being calculated automatically at Goods Receipt from production. Users can then maintain whatever shelf life expiration date they want.
Disadvantage – This will create a lot more work for users at all 10 plant locations because they will have to add up the shelf life to the production date at every Goods Receipt.
User Acceptance – Not acceptable.
Option 2 : Create a Control Table with Material #, Plant, Local Shelf life & Y/N fields. Users / Central Data Team will maintain the table with relevant information provided by the Plant users. The plant users will be submit the request to maintain the table to central data team. The proposed solution is to create a batch job (a custom / enhanced program) which will run everyday at 00.00 Hours & check for the confirmed process orders (101 Material movement). The batch job will check all goods Movement (101) made against a process orders and check the process order confirmation status, system will check the control table and if the material is maintained in the control table system will replace the shelf life date value for that batch with the value maintained in the control table.
Material Master Shelf Life – MARA Table Entries
123456 : 30 Days
145698 : 40 Days
Material | Plant | Local Shelf Life | D/W/Y | Y/N |
123456 | 0101 | 23 | D | Y |
145698 | 0101 | 28 | D | N |
D/W/Y – Days / Week / Year If this is seasonal change, then users can select the option Y/N, “Y” means need to change the shelf life for the batches & “N” means don’t need make any changes with the batch shelf life value. This will save the users time of submitting the request every time for changes to Central Data maintenance team with all the information all over again.
Before Batch Job Run :
Material | Plant | Batch # | Mfr Date | SLED |
123456 | 0101 | 0000025879 | 06/01/2010 | 07/01/2010 |
123456 | 0101 | 0000025880 | 06/02/2010 | 07/02/2010 |
145698 | 0101 | 0000031333 | 06/02/2010 | 07/12/2010 |
145698 | 0101 | 0000031334 | 06/03/2010 | 07/13/2010 |
After Batch Job Run :
Material | Plant | Batch # | Mfr Date | SLED |
123456 | 0101 | 0000025879 | 06/01/2010 | 06/24/2010 |
123456 | 0101 | 0000025880 | 06/02/2010 | 06/25/2010 |
145698 | 0101 | 0000031333 | 06/02/2010 | 07/12/2010 |
145698 | 0101 | 0000031334 | 06/03/2010 | 07/13/2010 |
Advantage – System will do the Shelf Life Expiration of the batches automatically in background, eliminate the chances of errors / mistake. Eliminates manual calculation work,
Disadvantage – Control Table need to be maintained.
User Acceptance – Accepted.