Technical Articles
Engineering workbench (CEWB) as an Alternative to CS20
Purpose: The purpose of this blog post is to explain how CEWB (Engineering workbench) can be used as an alternative tool to CS20 in SAP.
What is engineering workbench (CEWB) and its features?
CEWB (Engineering Workbench) is – as its name suggests, a work environment to manage not only multiple BOMs, but also multiple routings in one session, according to selection criteria.
Features:
- Integrated processing to maintain BOMs and routings together
- Complex selection criteria in working area by its attributes
- Simultaneous processing where BOM/routings can be processed by different people at the same time
- Execute complex tasks efficiently
SAP provides predefined work areas and we can create our own work Areas to have simplified views as per one’s requirements.
In customizing, Go to Production – > Basic Data – > Engineering Workbench – > Edit Working Areas
Illustration:
CEWB and CS20 has been widely used by many customers to do mass changes of Item data, delete item , Add material etc. relevant data to be updated.
In this blog post, we will go through the scenario where we replace new component with an existing component in required BOM’s in mass.
Assume, we have a new component ‘RM105’ that is going to be replace with a new component with ‘RM110’.This component RM105 is part of say four header BOMs as shown below will be replaced with a new component.
To replace new components in required BOMs, Execute transaction CEWB and select working area as ‘SAP_ITEM – Focus: BOM Item’ 
1. Select selection range of date and click on additional data
2.Enter the component to be replaced and click on Load BOMs and task list
3. System will display BOMs where component RM105 is used
4. Select the header materials horizontally and component column vertically and click on change icon
5. Enter the Key date and execute
6. Component column will be enabled to do the changes
7. To execute mass changes, Click on Extras —> Mass change.
When clicked on mass change, a pop-up will be displayed to enter the new component
8. New component will be updated for header materials SFG102 and SFG103.
Save the changes
After Save, new components will be updated in BOMs
Conclusion: With CEWB, we can do the BOM changes in mass and can be used as an alternative tool to CS20.
Thank You, I hope you will like this blog post.
Any feedback or improvements in blog post will be highly appreciated so that it will be helpful to community members
Regards,
Amit Sharma
Nice blog Amit.
Thank you Dhaval !
Thanks for your explanations Amit! Is there any way also to add a new item in a defined list of codes with CEWB? Thanks in advance.
Hello Vannalisa,
Yes, you can add/replace BOM components with CEWB.
Regards,
Amit
Hi Amit
Can you show the step for only adding new components in multiple material.
I don't want to replace any cat no. in BOM but want to add new component to multiple BOM in mass
Thanks
Hello Amit
Thanks for the document. We have a process to update BOM with text line for every change that we are making for future reference. I know it is non-standard and we know we can use ECR/ECN for such documentation.
The question that I want to ask is how to 'add' TEXT item 'T' to several material BOMs using CEWB? Meaning, I want to add same description to several BOMs in one shot. Can we accomplish this?
Regards,
Jayanta
Hello Jayanta,
Yes, you can try using CS20.
Please raise a question on the community forum 'MAN production planning'.
Regards,
Amit
Hello Amit,
Very informative and well documented article.
Thanks.
One observation in CEWB. If BOM Category - M is selected along with component in tab 'Additional Selection Criteria - Item', it takes lot of time to give the output for 'Load BOMs and Task Lists. Without BOM category selection, it gives output fast. How to reduce the processing time?
Regards
Ratna
Hi Amit!
This was very helpful. Does CEWB also have the capability of adding new materials to a list of BOMs and also deleting materials?