I have been seeing several questions on how to delete production or process orders with mass processing transactions COHV and COHVPI. This article explains deletion flag and deletion indicator of production orders and shows how to maintain them with mass processing transactions.

Through the article I refer to production orders or to the COHV transaction. However the same approach can be used for process orders and the COHVPI transaction. Deletion flag and deletion indicator work exactly the same in both PP and PP-PI.

Deletion flag and deletion indicator

Deletion flag should be set on regular basis for completed and settled orders even if production orders archiving is not executed. Deletion flag also set in the AUFK-LOEKZ field, so deleted orders can be selected very efficiently.

It speeds up tremendously orders selection in COOIS and in the month end tasks.

Deletion flag in COHV

By default the deletion flag mass processing function is not available in COHV:

COHV without mass delete functions

Both deletion flag and deletion indicator can be set en masse with the PPARCHP1 and PRARCHP1 reports for production and process orders respectively:

Mass delete with PPARCHP1 report

However the selection criteria of both reports are quite limited as compared to COHV or COHVPI. Also the report do not provide any interactive functions e.g. selecting orders from a results list. Therefore having mass deletion in COHV might get very handy.

SAP has actually already implemented mass processing functions both for deletion flag and deletion indicator. They are just not activated in COHV. The (de)activation procedure is described in the note 2877018 – How to deactivate Functions in T-code COHV.

All that needs to be done is adding 260 “Set Deletion Flag” and 270 “Set Deletion Indicator” in the COISL transaction:

Mass deletion activation for COHVPI

After that both functions are ready to use:

COHVPI with mass deletion functions

Under the hood technicalities

Set Deletion Flag and Set Deletion Indicator mass processing functions are implemented by SAP in the COWORK260 and COWORK270 functions groups respectively:

COWORK260 Deletion Flag mass processing implementation

That information may be useful if you encounter problems with those functions. Now, you know where to put break-points and debug.

How to revoke deletion statuses

Production order deletion flag DLFL status can be revoked in CO02 with the menu function: Functions → Restrict Processing → Deletion Flag Undo

Or in case of a process order, in COR2 with the menu function: Process Order → Functions → Deletion Flag → Delete

As per note 1893567 – How to cancel DLT status of production/processor orders deletion indicator DLT can not be revoked in standard.

However, the note 191216 – Resetting Status I0013 ‘Deleted’ delivers the ZZSTATUSDEL report to revoke DLT status.