Variant Configuration (Basics) in Steel Industry - SAP Blogs

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Variant Configuration (Basics) In Steel

Industry
November 20, 2014 | 1,930 Views |
Former Member
Mill Products
Manufacturing | industry | Manufacturing | metals | metals industry | mill and mining | sap for mill products | sap for mill products
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1. Introduction:
https://blogs.sap.com/2014/11/20/variant-configuration-basics-in-steel-industry/ 1/15
The market demand for steel products with high added value has been
growing over the years.
A steel Industry has multiple plants and has a number of variants in
products to meet these growing speci c requirements. Managing the
variations in customer demand makes it di cult to plan and use the
resources e ciently.
The need of Variant con guration:
• The system has to depend on the people expertise of metallurgical

knowledge, this creates risk of overheads.
• Steel Products have a complex permutation & combinations of di erent
characteristics & properties which de ne their product mix.
• There are Mill speci c checks to be covered which includes– steel
properties/Grades, allowed thickness, width, length etc.
2. Process Flow
SAP addresses this Business needs through Variant Con guration.
• Various classes are con gured for Hot Rolled, Cold Rolled, Galvanized, Tin
plated etc.
• Characteristics and allowed values are created which de nes steel
physical, chemical, metallurgical and dimensional properties.
e.g- Grade, Thickness, Width, Length,
• Various dependencies like precondition, procedures and constraints are
used to establish allowed values and range based on mill like dimensional
tolerance and steel grades
In the steel industry most of the production happens through MTO route
and below is the process ow diagram for Make-to-Order Production with
Variant Con guration
Reference : https://help.sap.com
3.0 Di erent components of Variant Con guration
In the steel Industry, it need not required to create material for each of the
variant, instead use one con gurable material to cover all the variants.
Super BOM– that contains all the components
Super Routing– Steps in the manufacturing operations for producing all

the variants of the products.
Characteristics– SAP Characteristics are used to describe speci cations

and record values for example Grade, Thickness, Width, Length, Edge,
Finish, and Tolerance, “tensile strength of steel coil”, “carbon content in
steel” etc.
Characteristic “GRADE” has the values ‘304’, ‘316’, and ‘316L’. When you
classify an object, you use this characteristic to specify the Grade of the
object.
Class- Characteristics are grouped together in a class to specify the set of

characteristics that belong to a particular group of Materials. This Class is
further assigned to a set of Materials that have the same set of
characteristics.
To de ne the features of a con gurable material, you use characteristics.

To enable you to use characteristics to con gure a material, you assign the
material to a class of class type 300.
Dependencies- The only limitations are combinations of
features/characteristics that are not feasible for either technical or sales
reasons. For example all types of thickness, chemical, mechanical
properties can’t be combined with all types of grades. In Variant
Con guration, we use dependencies to control this. This prevents
combinations of options that are not allowed. Dependencies also select
exactly the right BOM components and operations to produce a variant.
Each con gurable object/material must have a con guration pro le. The
con guration pro le for a material controls the con guration process in the
sales order.
You can make the price of a variant dependent on the characteristic values
assigned (Pricing). You can use variant conditions to de ne surcharges and
discounts for a variant.
4.0 Steps of Variant con guration for BOM Material

4.1 De ning Material as con gurable
A material HPL-A06-N1 (Hot rolled annealed pickled plate, Sheet 316L,

Finish No1) is created as con gurable material with Gen item category
group 0002 and item category group as TAC. Also the material HPL-A06-
N1 is a BOM material, which as sub items.
Go to MM01 and perform the following in the material master form views:
Basic data 2
• Con gurable Material=X
• (Material Type: KMAT)
MRP
• MRP Group Eg: 25
• MRP Type Eg: PD, Not ND
• MRP Lot Size EX
• Availability Check 2
• Individual/Collective 1
• Strategy Group Eg: 25
Sales: Sales Org 2
• Item Category Group 0002 ( transfer requirement and Pricing at header
level) or 0004 ( transfer requirement and pricing at assembly level)
Classi cation
• Class type 300
• Assign Variant Class(es)
Work Scheduling
• De ne Order change pro le
4.2 Create Characteristics
For material HPL-A06-N1 the following characteristics were being created:
1. Grade- this is the steel grade, for e.g 316L

2. Finish- surface nish of the material
3. Product Standard- product standard as per the de ned
International standard.
4. Thickness
5. Width
6. Length
In the below subsequent steps creation of one of the characteristics i.e

Grade has been explained:
GO to Transaction CT04
Basic Data View
Values View:
Go to the values tab and maintain the characteristics values and

description as per the requirement
• In this view, you can prede ne allowed values for the characteristics.
• If the characteristic is a character format characteristic (Grade), you
can manually de ne the allowed value as 304, 304L, 316, 316L. The
number of characters used to de ne the value should be equal to the
allowed characters de ne in the basic data view of the characteristics.
• For numerical characteristics you can also de ne tolerance ranges

within which the characteristics values should be set or you can de ne
the allowed values to be equal to or greater than or less than a certain
value.
Restriction View
If you want to restrict a Characteristics for use in a particular Class Type,

then you can enter the Class types that you are restricting the
characteristics to, in the Restrictions Tab, For Example if you want to use a
characteristics “Grade” in the Material Class type- 003 and not in the
Batch Class type 023, then enter 003 in the restrictions tab.
If you don’t use the restrictions, you can use the characteristics in any class
type as required.
Assigning Object Dependencies
The dependencies help in making it mandatory to assign value to the
characteristic during con guration or defaulting value to a characteristic or
setting value to a characteristic or hiding / displaying characteristics/
values during con guration.
The dependencies can be assigned to characteristic, characteristic values,

BOM components, routing operations, Con guration pro les based on the
need.
You can assign the following type of object dependencies to a
characteristics or characteristics values:
1. Procedure: It is used to infer a Characteristic value dependent on

particular condition and can be added in Con guration pro les, and in
SUPER BOM/Routing to change Master Data values such as
Component Quantity, labor time.
2. Selection Condition: It is used for selection of

components/operations and can be used to make characteristics as
USER entry required and can be added to only Characteristic level,
BOM components.
3. Pre-Condition: It is used to hide the characteristics. And can be
added to Characteristic and their values only.
4. Constraints: It’s Group of Constraints (Dependency) and can be
added in con guration pro le only. It is used to restrict the
characteristics values.
Example: Pre-conditions for Characteristics Values
If you are producing a Hot Rolled Annealed Pickled (HRAP) Plate then a
“316” Grade can only have USA-Canada AISI-ASTM-ASME 316 “Standard”
Create two characteristics “Grade” and ” Standard” and assign both the
characteristics the material that is being produced, it can be a con gurable
material used in variant con guration or it can be a regular material whose
value assignment needs to be governed (it can be controlling the value
assignment in material class or a batch class or in a variant class) see
below:
Characteristics – Grade – 05 – 316L
Characteristics – Standard-04 – USA-Canada AISI-ASTM-ASME 316L

($SELF.Grade= ’05’)
The object dependencies “Z01” – Precondition (just an example name) can

be created as a precondition with an algorithm $SELF.Grade = ’05’. The
object dependency must be assigned to the value 04 – USA-Canada AISI-
ASTM-ASME 316L of the characteristics “Standard”
5.0 Creation of SAP Class and Class Type
First assign the characteristics to a class and then assign the class to the
object.
Classes are created for a class type, for example, if you want to create a
class assigned with characteristics for de ning the variant features, then
the class type is called “variant – 300.
Create Class as “Steel Class”, CL01 transaction code for Class and class
types are pre-con gured by SAP.
Basic Data View
The Basic Data view contains the following. You should rst enter values for
the Basic data view explained as below:
• Status: You should use the characteristics status to lock it for use or
to release it for use in classes. If you are creating in the process of
creation, you can also choose the status – “in Preparation”
• Class Group: The classi cation of a class or the grouping of the class
helps in reporting or retrieving a certain class.
• Assignment of the class to an organization area like Sales,
purchasing, production, where the characteristics of the class are
going to be used. This is optional
• “Do not check” for identical characteristics values in the
classi cation of an di erent object of the same class
• When identical values are assigned to the classi cation of di erent
object using the same class, the system issues a warning – Check with
warning
• When identical values are assigned to the classi cation of di erent
object using the same class, the system issues a error – Check with
error
• Authorization restriction for maintaining, using the class for

classi cation and searching objects of the class.
• Assignment indicator – de nes whether objects are already assigned
to the class.
Characteristics View
In the characteristics tab, you have to enter the name of the characteristics
which is required to be assigned to the class. Pressing F1 on the
characteristics in the characteristics tab would divert to the characteristics
master data. When you insert characteristics in the characteristics tab, the
details of the characteristics is also gets populated.
6.0 Create Con guration pro le

A con guration pro le HPL-A06-N1 is created for the material HPL-A06-N1
and set status as released.
GO to transaction CU41
The necessary settings are maintained for the con gurable material HPL-
A06-N1 to explore in a sales order.
We have to create the variant conditions for the characteristics maintained

in the class STEELCLASS. Then go to con guration or press F8 as shown
below.
Transaction code: CU50.
Select one of the characteristics and go for its value and press the icon
assign variant condition. Likewise we can maintain the variants for all the
characteristics and its values.
Assigning Classes to Objects

Assign con gurable material with Variant class 300, in order to capture
con guration values with characteristics at the point of creating a sales
order
In the classi cation view of the material master assign the class to
material, which indirectly assigns the characteristics to the objects or the
material master.
7.0 Create the sales order
Now let us create a sales order. As the material is a BOM material it should
explore with the sub-items and also should give us the screen to select the
required material.
The Stainless steel has Nickel composition and its price uctuates very
frequently, so the business requirement here is to keep the material price
to be entered manually.
Select the characteristics to con gure the material in the sales order
Save the sales order
Disclaimer: This document explains variant conﬁguration basics and how

it is being applied in the steel industry, the content of the document has
been captured from the existing sources and presented here to explain
the application of VC. To make the process more elaborative screenshots
have been presented in this document and may vary in case of actual
scenario.
References:
• https://help.sap.com
• http://www.sapsword.com/home/sap-batch-management/sap-
classsi cation-system
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3 Comments
You must be Logged on to comment or reply to a post.
Former Member
November 21, 2014 at 4:45 am
A Nice Document with complete clarity.
Stefan Weisenberger
December 3, 2014 at 8:38 pm
Nice and concise, Rahul.
Not mandatory but helpful is the use of material variants – in all their avours. Either
as a fully con gured variant, with a fully de ned set of attribute values. Or as a
partially con gured variant which defaults 80% of the attributes and the sales rep
only has to complete a few like dimensions and coating.
Complementing this, on the other side, is the batch classi cation (often with the
same attributes) to capture the reality of produced items, like sheets or coils. In most
cases each item has slightly di erent physical & quality descriptions – that’s what we
capture in the batch – but also the real dimensions.
Thanks again. This is a good start and I already recommended this as a read to a
customer.
Former Member
April 27, 2015 at 11:01 am
Thank you Rahul,
Very nice document.
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8/27/2018 Variant Configuration (Basics) In Steel Industry | SAP Blogs

Variant Configuration (Basics) In Steel

The need of Variant con guration:

• The system has to depend on the people expertise of metallurgical

Super BOM– that contains all the components

Super Routing– Steps in the manufacturing operations for producing all

Characteristics– SAP Characteristics are used to describe speci cations

Class- Characteristics are grouped together in a class to specify the set of

To de ne the features of a con gurable material, you use characteristics.

4.0 Steps of Variant con guration for BOM Material

A material HPL-A06-N1 (Hot rolled annealed pickled plate, Sheet 316L,

4.2 Create Characteristics

For material HPL-A06-N1 the following characteristics were being created:

1. Grade- this is the steel grade, for e.g 316L

In the below subsequent steps creation of one of the characteristics i.e

Basic Data View

Go to the values tab and maintain the characteristics values and

• For numerical characteristics you can also de ne tolerance ranges

If you want to restrict a Characteristics for use in a particular Class Type,

The dependencies can be assigned to characteristic, characteristic values,

1. Procedure: It is used to infer a Characteristic value dependent on

2. Selection Condition: It is used for selection of

Example: Pre-conditions for Characteristics Values

Characteristics – Grade – 05 – 316L

Characteristics – Standard-04 – USA-Canada AISI-ASTM-ASME 316L

The object dependencies “Z01” – Precondition (just an example name) can

Basic Data View

• Authorization restriction for maintaining, using the class for

6.0 Create Con guration pro le

We have to create the variant conditions for the characteristics maintained

Assigning Classes to Objects

Save the sales order

Disclaimer: This document explains variant conﬁguration basics and how

November 21, 2014 at 4:45 am

A Nice Document with complete clarity.

December 3, 2014 at 8:38 pm

Nice and concise, Rahul.

April 27, 2015 at 11:01 am

Thank you Rahul,

Very nice document.

Share & Follow

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