In some industry sectors (for example, diary/meat, pharmaceutical, chemical, steel, or paper industry sectors), the composition or attributes of products vary to some degree. Therefore, you cannot use a fixed conversion factor to convert quantities of these products into various units of measure. Instead, each batch has to be given an individual conversion factor.

The weights can vary from piece to piece, either due to biological variations or because of weight loss during storage. This variability should not be lost by using fixed conversion factors, because this would mean that many business processes would be based on incorrect values.

In SAP such process can be mapped by two ways

· Batch-Specific Units of Measure

· Catch Weight Management – IS-CWM Functionality

This document will give you some light on these SAP functionalities.

      1. Catch Weight with Batch-Specific Units of Measure

Customization Requirement

Create ‘No Dimensions’ Unit of Measurement

Create two no dimensions units LBI and CS/LB. LBI will represent as ‘Batch Specific Unit of measurement’ which will assigned to its original unit of measurement i.e. LB (Pounds). CS/LB is a no dimension unit which will be used to define fraction between cases (CS) and Pounds (LB).

Click on Unit of measurement to create units LBI and CS/LB. Please refer the screen below.

Maintain the details of LBI and CS/LB as per the above screen.

Activate Batch Specific Unit of Measurement

The batch-specific material unit of measure is an alternative unit of measure of a material, for which base unit of measure can be defined on a batch-specific basis.

While the conversion ratio for other alternative units is predefined in the material, for batch-specific material units of measure, we define:

• The planned conversion in the material
• The actual conversion ratio to the base unit of measure for the batch.

Batch-specific material units of measure are used when the conversion ratio for the unit of measure to the base unit may vary for different batches of a material.

In this case, Base unit of measure is CS (Case) and valuation unit is LBI (Pounds). Planned conversion ratio between these units is defined in the material master, but actual conversion ratio varies batch to batch which may depend on the environmental factors.

To control these situations in SAP, we need to activate ‘Batch-Specific material units of measure’.

We need to activate batch specific UOM as per the above screen.

Define Batch Specific Unit of measurement

Create a ‘Batch specific UOM’.

We need to execute process step as mentioned above.

Click on New Entries in the screen above to define batch specific UOM.

Define the Batch Specific UOM and linked it with actual UOM. Here LBI is batch specific UOM which is linked to actual weight unit (dimension ‘Mass’) LB.

Define Calculation of Proportion quantity from Base Quantity

Define the ratio of the proportion unit to the base unit. This ratio is needed to convert base units to proportion units of measure.

Click on New Entries in the screen above to define calculation of proportion/product quantity from base quantity.

As per screen above, we have linked batch specific UOM with base unit of measurement.

Define Calculation of Base Quantity from Proportion quantity

Define the quantity calculation with reference to base unit of measurement.

Here we have defined CS and LBI calculation for no dimension unit CS/LB.

Define attributes of system messages

We need to maintain message XU-033 as information message. In standard SAP, this message would set to error message. Please remove message category ‘E’ and set as blank.

In standard SAP, fraction between two units of measurement is set till two decimal points. If fraction value is defined for three or more decimal value, then system will issue this as error message XU-033.

In our case, we need are considering fraction value till five decimal points, so that we can get more accurate values after conversion.  Take the following case:-

Ration (CS/LB) = 0.26 when only two decimal allowed

Ration (CS/LB) = 0.25641 when five decimal allowed

From the calculation above, it’s clear that we would get more accurate result when we go for higher decimal points.

So as per the screen below, we have changed error message category to blank.

Master Data Requirement:

Create following master data for catch weight management,

Create Characteristics CT04

Create three characteristics. One characteristic will store the actual fraction between number of cases and actual catch weight. So we have characteristics ‘CATCHFRACTION’, ‘CATCHWEIGHT’ and ‘NUMCASES’ to create. We need to call CT04 transaction code to create these characteristics in SAP.

Below mentioned screen shots will tell about the properties of these characteristics.

Above screen tells about ‘CATCHFRACTION’ property.

Above screen tells about ‘CATCHWEIGHT’ property.

Above screen tells about ‘NUMCASES’ property.

Maintain Dependency

Dependency will be used to calculate the fraction between number of cases and actual catch weight. Call SAP transaction CU01 to create dependency.

Create Class CL01

Create class for catch weight material. We need to assign all characteristics as mentioned above Important thing to note is that ‘organization area’ in the class must be equal to ‘S’. Call CL01 to create class and assign the characteristics.

Assign Characteristics to Batch Class

Assign characteristics to class CL01

See the screen above for characteristics assignments. We must put ‘Organizational Area’ equal to ‘S’ against the characteristics which will be used for CS/LB conversion.

Maintain Material Master MM02

Assign the catch weight class to material master classification view and update other parameters in the material master. please see the screen below to know about various important data in material master.

Select the additional data information in the material master and click on the ‘proportion/prod unit’ tab to maintain planned conversion factor.

Maintain the planned conversion value into ‘plan value’ as per the screen below.

Valuation category of material must be equal to ‘X’.

Create vendor Info record

Maintain the vendor info record for batch specific UOM.

Price are maintained at batch specific UOM.

Transaction Data:-

Receiving actual CW at the time of MIGO

Create Purchase Order

Use ME21N transaction to create Purchase Order. Here we are using material 69 for which Batch specific UOM is active.

Perform goods receipt (MIGO)

We need to enter actual CW and GR quantity in the classification view as,

Display Stock (MMBE)

Here we can see that, inventory is as per actual CW. System is showing actual CW for the batch GR.

     2. Catch Weight Management – IS-CWM Functionality

IS-CWM is the industrial solution developed by SAP AG The term “Catch Weight materials” or CW materials for short, is used for materials with variable weight.

Catch weight management business scenario has variants across process such as

(a) Procure to Pay

(b) Order to Cash

(c) Manufacturing

(d) Inbound and Outbound Logistic

(e) Inventory Controlling & Accounting

1. IS-CWM enables use of one UOM in Logistics and another UOM suitable for Financials and Controlling for the same material.
2. Relationships between the two UOM’s can be variable and defined in the material master.
3. Goods movement can be recorded in both UOM’s – base unit of measurement as well as parallel unit of measure.
4. The valuation UOM can be either the Base UOM or the parallel UOM – this can be specified in the material master.
5. CWM is based on a new Architecture comprising of

a) LIME – Lean Inventory Management Engine – Enables recording and reporting of Inventory in different UOM.

            b) Inventory Accounting – Enables postings with new valuation UOM in FI and CO.

The fullfilment of purchase orders can be recorded and controlled more accurate for catch-weight materials. While posting goods receipt it is possible to post quantity in two different unit of measure.

For inventory, the logistics unit of measure (UOM e.g. EA ) and parallel unit of measure (e.g. KG)

Good Receipt MIGO

Same way it can be used for production/process order good receipts,  posting of goods receipt is possible to post quantity in two different unit of measure EA and KG.

Stock Overview

You can view the stock in both the unit of measurement i.e; in Base unit of measure and Parallel unit of measure.

Material consumption in PI Sheet with CWM

The goods issues and goods receipts related to process or production orders can be recorded and controlled more accurate for catch-weight materials. All movements are posted in two units of measure (UOM) & parallel unit of measure

Delivery

In the sales order the price is calculated based on sold number of Kilo, number of Each is charged. The actual weight is assumed to be entered into the “Net weight” field in the delivery document.

Reference:

Batch-Specific Units of Measure in Logistics – Batch Management (LO-BM) – SAP Library

Note 863498 – functional restricions in SAP Catch Weight Management

Note 956923 – IDES ECC 6.0 Catch Weight Management Version 2