SAP PLM Recipe Development – Tool Review: “Specification Mass Change”

This blog belongs to a series of blogs regrouped on the SCN page “SAP PLM Recipe Development for Beginners”.

With SAP PLM Recipe Development the following mass change tools are available:

• Recipe Multiple Formula Editor (link to SCN blog)
• Recipe Mass Change Tool (link to SCN blog)
• Specification Mass Change
• EHS Expert Mass Change

Today, we take a closer look at what the Specification Mass Change really can do. 

Specification Mass Change

We search and identify specifications we want to mass change in the Advanced Search. We highlight them and click “Additional Functions – Mass Change”.

Specification Mass Change – Header Data

We are now able to highlight the specifications we would like to change, and we click on “Change Values”.

I quickly find out, that I only am able to the change the Authorization Group and the Note Field. This makes sense for certain mass change scenarios.

What might have expected but are missing is:

• Mass Change Material Assignment (not supported in SAP standard)
• Mass Change Inheritance Relationships (not supported in SAP standard)

Specification Mass Change – Identifier

If we now select the mass change function “Specification – Identifier”, we can again highlight the specifications we want to change. When we click on “Change Values” we mass change the identifiers of the selected specifications.

We might find out that this functionality is only applicable in very few and very special use cases. An example would be the case, where we use the Specification Identifer for simplified status management (link to SCN blog: SAP PLM Recipe Development – How to do integrated Status and Change Management?).

Mass Changing the main identifier of several specifications with this function does not really make so much sense – in the end, all specifications in the system would only have exactly the same identifier.

Specification Mass Change – Specification Status

Let’s now try the “specification status – mass change function”. If we highlight the specification in this screen and click “Change Values” we can now select the following field:

• Status

Although this is great functionality as status mass changes are extremely important for any SAP PLM system, we might also be somehow disappointed.

Well, first we need to know that this status mass change only refers to the EHS specification status. The following desired functions are not available in the SAP standard system:

• Mass change for EHS specification status including changes of Rating and Validity Area
• Mass change for EHS specification status including changes of assigned ECN (Engineering Change Numbers)
• Mass changes for new RD Specification Header Status

Total Review Rating: * (1 star)

Total Review Summary:  basic mass change functionality for specification is available – main change scenarios (extensive mass status management, mass changes in property trees, …) are not supported in the standard system.

Further Links and Notes:

• SAP Note 1944825