Who is the owner of Material Master?

[BijayKumarBarik]

Sometimes I wonder how many implementations you completed, one needs to brush up on designing of material master before getting into a new implementation project, no matter his/her of experience level.

Background:

Every time a transaction run with financial postings, financial account determined based on valuation class in material master, triggered by a movement type with automatic account determination process.

So, here's a simple explanation -Who is the owner of material master in spite of the same material number/code used by business in a module/in all modules.

Concept:
Material Master!!!!!!!!!!!
Very well in default attracted to Material Management module where it is comprises with other modules data too as required by business scenarios ie….Finance  & Controlling , Sales & Distribution, Quality Management, Production Planning and Warehouse Management etc. Based on material properties with different characteristics and how material behave to business on inventory and accounting, the material type determined to use with standard material type or custom material type.

Precisely material master available with user departments like Basic data , Purchasing, Sales, Work scheduling, Accounting, Classification, MRP(For Materials planning and control), Production resources/tools, Costing, Storage, Forecasting, Quality management, Warehouse management, Plant stocks, Storage location stocks  and based on material properties to business these user departments on material type and later material are created.

In our day to day business consulting, materials are created with standard transaction code MM01 or materials are created through uploading tools by business. I refer back with my previous involvement for a large project where material creations have following process
1. Business end user search material list or catalog for his/her daily usage for transaction.
2. If material not available, then he /she fill the material request form
3. Material request form sends to central material creation officer with his/her manager approval.
4. On appropriate check and verification by central material creation officer and if he is happy, then he /she can new material code or upload file with custom transaction code for new material code.
5. Once new material code created in system, central material creation officer convey message to business end user.

Since different departments in a business work with the same material, but each department uses different information on the material, the data in a material master record is subdivided by user department. As we all know, material created by a user and material used by all different department users but, the question is who is the material owner in business – those who created material or those who use material on department wise or MRP controller or Buyer (purchaser).

History of this blog:
In the last few years I happened to meet project managers, procurement business heads & business users of different organizations and tried to find the answer “who is the material owner” in your business. There is no satisfactory answer, so this blog is the result and inspiration for not getting the real answer. The few answers are:
I am SCM lead, so I am the material owner
I am creating material master, so I am the material owner
I am managing material procurement, so I am the material owner
I am managing material inventory, so I am the material owner
I am managing sales of material, so I am the material owner
I am managing payment for material, so I am the material owner

I tried and explained on the how business can deal to work by deciding material owner by using field 
“Lab/Office (MARA-LABOR)” in material master in Basis data-1 view. Individuals are blinking with this concept and difficult to believe by them, unless one is to work and use this field!

Decision process in an organization to find the owner of a material:
Every department in the business has a stake in one or more processes for a material. Groups of individuals for each department usually share in—and "own"—the activities for each department which make up a process. Single individual who is ultimately responsible and accountable for the effective working of the process is known as the process owner but not material owner. The process owner is the immediate supervisor or leader who has control over the assigned process to his/her but entire processes from beginning to end are controlled by material owner.

Is the owner of a raw material different to an owner of a spare part-different to a finished material? Why is it different?
It is the organization question and decision who own the material master. It may be depends material types where a material are stored in a physical location with significant naming conversion or based on a particular process where all materials go through it. To complete a particular process, business may needs all material in one physical place/plant where raw material required for production process, spare part required for maintainace for equipment’s and finished material obtained. Later to complete the process, business needs packaging materials. So material owner decides based on to complete a process or material stored in stored in a physical destination.

What is the benefit of having a data owner?
Master data is an organization's lifeblood, flowing through all vital departments. Bad master data is poison and managing bad master data without ownership creates poisonous environment with clogging operations, confusion on handling, prompting poor decisions and in the worst-case scenario, leading to jail time for business leads/business executives/end users. To avoid poisonous environment, a material master data owner is required for effective management of material master.

What does the data owner do?
Data owner will design and plan the approach with the activities which are necessary to attain the desired organizational objectives where business can have science of managing material flow including procurement, production, marketing, transporting, processing, handling, storing and distributing the materials.

Scope:
With referring to the above information’s, business system can deal to work  by deciding material owner by creating  “Lab/Office(MARA-LABOR)” and assigning to material master in Basis data-1 view. The field Lab/Office in material master is known as Laboratory/design (engineering) office where this Key represents for the design office, laboratory or laboratory worker responsible.

For certain case, the field “Lab/Office “in the material master record is used if the material is a chemical component but also the same field can be used for design and engineering purpose defining ownership of material master.

We have remarkable products like MDM and MDG - why just reduced a conclusion with one single field?

Universally, MDM (SAP Enterprise MDM) or MDG(SAP MDG/ECC or ECC-integrated MDG)  is an integrated data management tool for the maintenance, validation and distribution of master data where SAP MDG best suited for central master data management of SAP standard objects and fields which need to be distributed to SAP ERP, SCM& other systems of the SAP Business Suite and SAP MDM best suited for highly flexible data modeling capabilities allow for creating various data consolidation, harmonization and central data management scenarios within a heterogeneous system landscape.

Master Data Management is a technology/ application packages/tools enabled discipline of actively 'Managing' or ‘Staging” the data rather than 'Maintaining' it in each transactional system across the business organization where no individual carry the ownership of material master data!

Reference:
http://scn.sap.com/thread/3414912
http://scn.sap.com/thread/3449752
http://scn.sap.com/community/erp/logistics-mm/blog/2013/10/31/account-category-reference-acr--grandf...

Conclusion fiction:

Before concluding, the “Lab/Office “field will be used on the Material Master to identify the ownership of the material. The ‘Lab/Office’ field will be used for this purpose only and this is at Client level. If new ‘Lab/Office’ field values will be identified by Business Lead Users and given to the Supply Chain Team. The Supply Chain Team will add the new values to the system and may delete previous entries which are not required by business.

Thanks for your time to read my 3rd Blog. Also I would like to thank all my present project team members for their great encouragement and strong motivation.

Regards,
Biju K