Boom boom BOM!

SAP Production Planning & Manufacturing (SAP PP) comprehensively covers the business functionality for production planning and controlling the production of goods and services. This module supports, among other things, various types of production planning. There are many possibilities and each of them supports a variety of approaches to planning and production processes, such as long-term and short-term planning, material requirements and production capacity planning, make-to-order and make-to-stock production.

In order to support various business processes in the area of production planning and control, it is necessary to define a whole range of master data within the module. One of the most ‌commonly used data categories is the bill of materials (BOM).

In terms of the structure, the bill of materials is a combination of components and their quantities required to produce basic quantities of a finished or semi-finished product. The bill of materials is often compared to a cooking recipe in terms of its ingredients. Such an analogy makes it easier to visualize its task. It can refer to materials, sub-assemblies or even parts as components and to production structures. Technically, bills of materials are included in numerous database tables, the most important of which reflect the bill heading and its items. A brief list of key tables for bills of materials is presented below.

• STKO – a table storing header data,
• STPO – a table storing item data,
• STAS – a table with selection of items,
• STPN – a table with control data,
• STPU – a table with subitems,
• STZU – a table of permanent bills of materials.

These tables are linked together by key fields that combine them into a logical whole and allow them to present the complete information required for use in the planning and production process.

The main key fields of material structure tables are:

• STLTY – a BOM category,
• STLNR – a BOM number
• STLAL – an alternative.

Here is an example. By reading the bill of materials with the number STLNR = 123XYZ, we send to the database a query to read a set of tables with all data for this particular bill. It should then be remembered that the BOM number does not define it completely when it is read because it may have different categories depending on its purpose.

Regarding the migration of BOM data, the direct transfer of records from the STKO header table to the new system may not be complete in terms of the number of records when we have the same BOM number for several applications. The ideal and very flexible solution is to build several objects depending on the BOM category. Using the dedicated CrystalBridge Transformation Cockpit migration tools, depending on the needs, we have practically unlimited flexibility at our disposal and we can use for data selection any field or combination of fields that we find in STKO, DOST, EQST, KDST, MAST, STST, TPST, PRST tables.

Regarding the BOM item data, the most commonly used solution is “BOM explosion", which assumes the use of all components and ignoring items that are not in the scope of migration (due to the list of materials that are in the scope of migration). The second common choice is selection by plant (WERKS field). It is often a global selection, which means that tables that have such a domain are selected in the same way.

The issue of BOM is very widely developed in SAP and from the point of view of production it is a significant added value for the operating PP module. This text only outlines this vast topic. In our projects, we use the available tools and our many years’ experience to ensure that data migration is carried out properly.

Digital Transformation Center – the All for One Poland department specializing in complex SAP transformation projects – closes the year 2023 with over 130 completed transformation projects. The vast majority of them have been implemented in global corporations.

One of the most interesting and demanding projects was a project for a client from the high tech industry. During the migration to S/4 we performed at their company many complex data transformations adjusting business processes. In finance, an additional “group” valuation was added; in product calculation, valuation was adjusted for tax purposes, the structure of investment projects in SAP was changed and transfer prices calculated in the material ledger were implemented.

We have already completed more than 70 migrations to SAP S/4HANA for international customers. The end of 2023 is a flood of projects of this type in Western Europe and the Middle East. So the next few months will be very intense for us. And this will probably continue to be the case in the next few years as the end date for support for old versions of SAP approaches inexorably. This is one of the main reasons why we are expanding our teams and investing in the development of employee competencies.

We are also preparing for this in other ways, working on tools to standardize and automate project work. Here, examples include our All for One Carve-out Kit product for carveouts, and tools to support production account plan changes in SAP systems.

Krzysztof Siwiec, Digital Transformation Center Director, All for One Poland