Material Master
The Material Master
- A material is anything that can be used in trade (i.e. sold), produced or consumed in a manufacturing process. Some systems may refer to this as an item, part number, part, etc. SAP's term is material. - The material master is the basic building block of all supply chain management activity. A material may be described in SAP using many different parameters.. - The SAP Material Master object contains over 900 parameters (fields) that may be used to describe a material. - Material Masters are always defined with respect to a Material AND A Plant.
Procurement Types
•In-house (internal) production (E) •External procurement (F) •No procurement (_) •Both procurement types (X)
Plant: Definition
A plant is a place where valuated goods and services are: - Manufactured - Stored - Consumed - Distributed A plant can be used to define a: - Manufacturing facility - Central storage facility (Distribution center) - Corporate headquarters - Sales office
Storage Location: Definition
An organizational unit where various inventories of materials may be kept in a plant. A storage location will typically but not always store: - Raw materials - Component materials - Maintenance and repair (MRO) materials Storage locations may also be referred to as a warehouse.
Organizational Levels of Material Master
Client - Material Number, Description, Units of measure, technical data Plant - MRP data, Work Scheduling, Purchasing data Storage Location - Stock Quantities
Industry Sectors and Material Types
Material master records are grouped according to industry sector and material type. The industry sector determines which industry-specific data appears in the material master record. The material type determines which departments can enter data and whether quantities and/or values are updated in inventory management.
Industry Sector
determines, which branch of industry the material is assigned to. Also: Which screens appear and in which order Which industry-specific data appears
Material Type
groups together materials that have attributes in common. Also Controls: Which departments (views) are able to maintain material data Whether and how quantities and values are updated in the system Whether the material is procured internally or externally Which G/L accounts (for example, material stock account) are updated
Transaction data
this type of data is the result from executing a transaction or data base entry. Transaction data will contain certain master data and organizational data elements. For example, customer A, ordered quantity B of material C for delivery of a specific date. This data will be entered in a sales order entry transaction. There are many types of transaction data.
Master data
this type of data that is relatively static or unchanged over a period of time. Example, a customer name, address, telephone, fax, contact name, etc. There are many master data objects in SAP.
Organizational data
this type of data was described in a previous lesson and is usually defined as part of the configuration process. An example is a plant=1000, storage location=001.
