How new serial number profile works in SAP Business ByDesign?

Many of our customers wants to know and use Serial Numbers throughout all the Logistics Processes that impacts inventory. This blog will explain you how to configure new Serial Number Profile across all the transactions and can track these serial numbers in the SAP Business ByDesign.

Prerequisites:

• To select new serial number profile Mandatory on all Logistics & Production Processes, you must scope Registered Products under Services -> Entitlement Management.

• You can have Number Range Template for automatic assignment of Serial Number, for this go to next Questions tab, for Registered Products mark the checkbox as Yes for question: Do you want to use solution-generated unique numbers for products with mandatory serial number profile for production and logistics? You have scoped now Automatic Generation of Serial Number.            
• System can generate serial numbers based on Number Range template maintained. Now you can create Number Range Template using activity “Serial Number Generation for Registered Products” under Fine-Tune activity.
• Create a Template using Add Row and provide a name for the template and description.
• You can also create serial numbers to be unique across a set of products, you must select the Unique Across Assigned Materials indicator.

Note: This template works only with Serial Number profile: Mandatory on Logistics and production processes for a material.

Unique Access Assigned Materials -> if you mark this option then serial number template can be used for required product and serial number range would be unique for this product.

If not mark the flag, then this template can be used for any product.

Assigning of New Serial Number profile in a material:-

Case 1: Creating New Material: NEW_TEST as an example and assign new serial number profile: Mandatory on all Logistics & Production Processes. As soon as you select new serial number profile, system populates one more field: Serial Number Range Template using which you can create your own number range.

Now whenever system receives this material in stock or ship the stock via inbound or outbound processes, serial numbers gets generated using this template or manually assigned to this material. You can choose option: Generate and Upload to create serial numbers automatically in the system.

Case 2: When you have an existing material with the existing stock with old serial number profile as “Mandatory on Transfer to/from customers”. However, you want to generate the serial numbers against the stock which is possible only with new profile “Mandatory on all Logistics & Production Processes”

Let’s take an example again of product: NEW_TEST.Now in stock overview total quantity exists is 10ea

Now to generate serial number inventory using new serial profile for an existing stock, you have to change the old profile to new profile “Mandatory on all Logistics & Production Processes” with serial number range.

Old Profile:

New Profile:

Here as son as old profile is changed to new profile, system freezes all stock and creates a product count as above stating a message at the bottom of the screen.

Note: Once the system creates a product count task for the product, it must be processed otherwise system won’t allow to process any document against this product.

At this point, you must process the count task. PI Count document would have “system generated” checkbox marked. Go to Physical Inventory work center -> Go to PI Count Document view-> Advanced Filter and search the Count ID marking check box: System Generated for the product.

Here you can find relevant PI Document ID, open it via hyperlink and navigate to the count tasks tab, here open and confirm the system generated count task entering required serial numbers either via upload or manually and approve the PI Count Document respectively.

Note: System generated count task cannot be manually skipped / rejected in count. Either count is accepted / send for recount.

(*A001,A002,A003,A004,A005,A006,A007,A008,A009,A010 are serial number IDs taken as an example to explain the scenario)

Now check the stock overview for product: NEW_TEST, you can see new option “Open Serial Inventory” option for this product as it has now serial numbers assigned to its inventory. Choose open serial inventory and Go, system displays all serial numbers IDs assigned to this product inventory.

This is how new serial number profile can be used for various business processes.

Imp: Veto Checks

There are veto checks in the system when user changes the old serial number profile to new profile for a material for which inventory already exists.

Old to New Profile and vice versa:

When user changes an old to new serial number profile system throws an error message if in case there are any open tasks exists related to Site Logistics Tasks, Production Tasks, Physical Count Tasks. Also, if there is any stock which can’t be counted. (i.e. custodian, tagged stock etc.) it is not allowed to change the profile. All transactional documents must be closed before making any changes to the serial number profile in a material master data.

Note: In production scenario, if the product’s serial number profile is getting changed then system allows the change only when Production Lots is with status Closed.

I hope this blog helps you all to understand the system behavior.

Best Regards,
Kopal Upadhyay
SAP Product Support