Complex
manufacturing companies must constantly evolve to improve efficiency and
provide products that consumers want in a highly competitive market. To
accomplish this, manufacturers must manage and leverage variable product
data from inception through sales and service. A particular challenge
for complex manufacturing companies is the large number of variations
among products, which are detailed in customer orders and passed through
the entire supply chain. To meet this challenge, the manufacturer has to
offer new variants of its products. Often, new variants are created by modifying existing product
designs during order processing. A competitive advantage is created by
reacting quickly to customers’ requirements. To help these companies
manage and leverage this data and respond to sales and service needs,
SAP provides integrated
variant configuration capabilities.
HOW SAP SOFTWARE CAN HELP
SAP variant configuration improves information
exchange between sales, engineering, and production. Variant
configuration helps the customer or salesperson to put together
specifications for the product and ensure that the product can be
produced from these specifications. It also ensures that production
costs do not overstep the mark.
SAP variant configuration eliminates the need to
create a separate material for each variation of a product within your
company. One configurable material can be utilized to cover all
variants. In support of the configurable part, a super bill of materials
(BOM) and a super routing are created for the material. This contains
all the components and operations for producing all variants of the
product. Utilizing this approach, sales order processing is simplified
and finished product and component SKU’s can be minimized.
To establish the features of a configurable
material, characteristics are defined to identify the product
attributes. Rules and dependencies are associated with the product
master, BOM, and routing to enable your organization to use these
characteristics when configuring a material. These rules and
dependencies can prevent combinations of options that are not allowed.
Dependencies can also guide selection of the right BOM components and
operations to produce a variant. Variant configuration allows the
calculation of a price for a variant product based on the characteristic
values selected. Variant conditions are defined to calculate surcharges
and discounts for a variant.
For variants that are required frequently, an
organization can create material variants, which can be produced without
a sales order and kept in stock. When you receive a sales order, SAP can
check whether the variant required is in stock, so that you can deliver
immediately.
SAP provides the integrated variant configuration
function to describe product attributes and assign them to the product
master.
Variant configuration in SAP can help in multiple
ways:
•
Select one or more product alternatives, even
though they are represented by only one
•
configurable material
•
Define the interaction of the BOM and routing for
a product
•
Simplify sales order entry
•
Reduce Stock Keeping Units (SKU’s)
•
Streamline information from requirements planning
For complex manufacturing environments, SAP
variant configuration provides the master data maintenance tools to
realize improved business practices while simplifying sales and
manufacturing processes.
WHY DICKINSON + ASSOCIATES
To get the most value from variant configuration,
you need understanding of customer requirements, engineering procedures
and SAP’s configurable materials, production data and rules definition.
With our variant configuration experience, Dickinson + Associates can
create a model that is robust yet easy to maintain. Our consultants
deliver their expertise in creating and maintaining programming code so
your engineers can focus on developing successful products. Take
advantage of using the full potential of your SAP investment with
Variant Configuration solutions from Dickinson + Associates.
Representative companies our consultants have served:
GE
Osmonics
Phonack
Stanley
Black & Decker, Inc.
Tennant Company
