How I can keep my SAP system healthy? (Part-1 PP)

SAP system has been developed by taking consideration of all the customers and industries.  It’s not necessary that all the functionalities will be useful for everyone.  However, if I want to keep my system healthy then what are the control points I should have in my system?

In this blog I would like to cover the control points in the production planning area. It will help to minimize warehouse inventory inaccuracies that can cause a number of inefficiencies in physical inventory, dispatch, cost accounting and in planning.

In Material master critical fields such as planned delivery time, GR processing time, in-house production time, planned delivery time (raw materials), procurement type, under and over delivery, backflush, etc have to be configured as mandatory. Otherwise this could lead to unauthorized data maintenance, incorrect MIS and inadequate planning.

Restrict creation of BOM header and components for all material types. This could lead to creation of BOM for incorrect materials also incorrect materials can be used as a component. As bill of material play an important role in cost and quantity calculation. Change number should be mandatory during creation and modification of BOM that would help to track the changes made in BOM.

Change number should be mandatory during creation / modification of routing and recipe.

Modification of BOM input components or component quantities during planned, production and process order creation/change and confirmation should be restricted. This could lead to processing of production/process orders with incorrect material or material quantities and cost.

Also ‘over delivery’, ‘under delivery’ and ‘unlimited over delivery’ should not allow to change in production/process order. The access to change delivery tolerances in a production order may result in confirmation of production in excess of required quantity resulting in higher inventory levels or production of materials lesser than planned quantity leading to material shortages.

Planned order reference should be mandatory in production/process order for regular orders. And there should be different order type for manual creation of production/process order.

Goods receipt should not be possible without issue of input components or confirmation. This could lead to incorrect costing and MIS.

Also exclude material stocks of many non-relevant storage locations from MRP that are meant for ‘Defective materials’ and ‘Scrap materials’ ‘Vendor returns’, ‘Customer returns’, etc. This could lead to improper planning.

Couple of other recommendations are as;

Over delivery tolerances should be checked in Order Confirmation parameter. Final confirmation and Clear Open Reservation’ check box should be automated.

Restrict the COGI if required, if not then restrict the deletion of unprocessed post processing records from COGI.

Backdated order creation should not be allowed. After Technical completion (TECO) of orders restrict the good movements.

It is possible to restrict it with standard configuration, enhancement with BAdi, user exit, transaction/screen variants and authorization objects. All these points and their solutions are discussed many times in this forum.

There is no thumb rule to define it. It depends upon the business scenario and practice: what controls should be there in the system? However, SAP System functionality and use remains to be limited in certain aspects, you are more than welcome to discuss your views and suggestions on it and any specific questions.