Alternative materials in BOM & Production Order

Dear All,

I would like to share knowledge regarding alternative material’s concept and their usage in BOM & Production Order.

Basic knowledge

Normally, Bill of material (BOM) is maintained for HALB & FERT materials.The materials against which BOM is maintained contains components at different levels along with their quantities, basic unit of measure and production storage location. Once the BOM is defined for material then it further comes into use of production order, MRP and so on. BOM is defined as per instruction of engineering department.

Alternative materials

In BOM, such type of components may also use which are alternatives. For example, there are two materials lets say A & B. Alternative materials have normally almost same description. At a time one material can be activate and other inactive OR both alternative materials may be used with different usage probabilities.

How to define Alternative Materials in BOM?

If you need to add alternative materials in BOM, add them like normally other materials. Alternative materials are differentiated with rest of materials through Group Number ID. As you can, given below is the BOM of FERT material which contains alternative materials. Alternative materials can be combination of ROH & HALB, ROH & ROH, HALB & HALB. Please have a look

Hence it shows that, 1-315 and 2-292 materials are alternative together along with their consumption quantities 2 EA and 1 EA respectively . Group number 1 is assigned to both.

NOTE : For the same nature of materials, same group number is used for making them alternative materials.

But how to see their usage probabilities? Lets have a look

DOUBLE CLICK on item column numbers after selecting these materials.

Lets have a look on material 1-315 material

1-315 material is assigned 100 usage probability means this material is active with 100% usage probability. It is the 100% of the BOM quantity of its component which is 2. If i kept usage probability 70, the resultant quantity which will be used is 1.4. I hope its clear to you now !

Lets have a look on 2-292 material

As you can see, 2-292 material has no usage probability. After this analysis we come to know that, when production order will be open for Fert material 500000000302 for 100 quantity, the component 1-315 will be active with 200 quantity in order, and material 2-292 will be having zero quantity( as this component is having priority less than 1st material and zero usage probability).

Lets have a look on production order of 5-302

As defined earlier in BOM, material # 1-315 is active ( at priority 1 with 100% usage probability) and material # 2-292 is inactive( priority 2 with usage probability zero). If your temporary requirement is to use material 2-292 which is inactive in BOM, You can use it in order by assigning usage probability here in production order.

Double click on item numbers after selecting these materials

The resultant screen is

2-292 has 1 consumption quantity in BOM of 5-302 so when production order for 5-302 is opened for 100 quantity, the quantity of 2-292 is 100.

:: if we kept usage probability of 2-292 –> 50%, then there would be 50 EA quantity in production order for 2-292 material !