Most SAP S/4HANA implementations need a period of stabilization before all users adapt to the new system. While this may vary widely across SAP S/4HANA implementations due to industry, process complexities, and organizational culture, everyone could benefit from information from another company’s implementations and determine how one could leverage lessons learned to reduce their own post-implementation difficulties for faster stabilization. One of the most common reasons why implementations take more time for stabilization is attributed to designs focused on technical aspects without consideration of after go-live data maintenance, people, and processes. Such process- and people-related modifications that could be of value in Production Planning and Execution are summarized below based on implementation by a medium-level engineering industry manufacturing company. These are categorized under Production master data and Production transaction data.

Production Master Data

Production master data considerations included Material Master and Production Version. (a) Material master creation and release with Cost estimate consideration: Normally, medium-level companies do not consider including all SAP modules or functionalities in SAP implementations. Most of the time, a comparison of value with cost considerations plays a role in these decisions. SAP Master Data Management (SAP MDM) is one such functionality that most, if not all, medium-level companies would consider adding to their SAP system much later after initial implementation. Hence, it helps to have some idea of how to leverage existing enhancements SAP provides to gain the functionalities one desires. One such area is to address the common problem observed where new master data created is put to use before its costing run occurred. If the new material created is used for sales, production, or purchasing business processing without carrying out a Cost estimate, the transactions in progress would be without a standard cost, which adversely affects costing and financial reporting. This is an area where system constraint needs to be introduced through a custom change, as this is not provided as a standard feature. This constraint is to make sure only the Costing team sets material to Release status since material can be put to use only if it has material status as Released. Accordingly, using a material master change BADI such as BADI_MATERIAL_CHECK with method Save, it is possible to control the ability to set material status. Any user other than the Costing role will be able to set the value as 02 (design) only, and the ability to set the value as 03 (released for production) will be granted only for the Costing role. Costing team would then set status 03 only after a Costing run, which ensures business process transactions for this material can progress only after a standard cost estimate is complete. The technical field name for Material status is MARA-MSTAE. (b) Production versions with priorities: Another area where a little consideration should help streamline the Production master data is assigning suitable priorities for different Production versions of the same produced material. An earlier adopted practice involved creation of complex alternate sequences and using an enhancement to assign different priorities to different alternate sequences of the same Routing. This is because there is no feature in SAP S/4 HANA to assign priorities for Production versions when the business wants to use different combinations of bill of materials (BOM) or Routings for the same validity periods. An easy way to address this follows: Since the Production Planning and Detailed Scheduling (PPDS), which was part of SAP Advanced Planning and Optimization (SAP APO), is integrated with SAP S/4HANA, SAP functionality to assign priorities for different PPDS Product data structures (which is called Production versions in SAP S/4 HANA) should resolve this. This saves much time for users and relieves master data teams from their efforts to create complex load files for Routing alternate sequences. An example is provided below where Production versions 100A, 100B, and 100C are provided priorities 0, 1, and 2, respectively, where 0 is the highest priority. Tile name to be used is, ‘Maintain Additional PDS Data.’ Priority assignment - image

Figure 1: A sample Priority assignment to different Production Data Structures

Production Transaction Data

(a) Use of right Production order parameters by different non-Production Departments: Production orders are used for many other organizational requirements such as Engineering, research and development (R&D), etc., and the specific needs of these areas are often overlooked. Added to that, the users in these Departments may not be savvy with system use when compared to users in Production execution, who carry out daily Production transactions in SAP S/4HANA. Business processes warrant use of appropriate parameters by Departments to capture costs incurred in the right cost buckets. These could be Profit centers, Settlement receiver, etc. One such example could be that Engineering Department and R&D need to select their own specific allowed Profit centers; or another possibility could be that Settlement receivers in a Production order need to be ORD (Internal Order) and not Cost center (CTR). An enhancement using ‘BAPI_PRODORD_CHANGE BAPI: Change Production Order’ could easily check the compatibility between the Order type, Profit Center, and Settlement receiver type parameters and ensure right values are used by different Departments and introduce this constraint. (b) Warehouse Management (WM)Material staging of components for goods issue to Production order: A Warehouse management strategy often requires very well streamlined stock management where the system assumes put-aways are carried out to bins strictly as per first-come, first-bin process or any other strategy business adopts. Due to various reasons such as delay in stock movements after a as Quality hold or released from block, operator error, etc., stock quantities shown by system bins may possibly vary from the true representation of actual stocks in real time. Hence, this affects an automatic picking strategy, under which the system attempts to pick up from the bins where ideally stocks are expected to be available per preceding transactions. In practice, the warehouse employees have close to actual status information on stocks and their locations, and this should help to pick up right stocks and eliminate potential errors in WM staging with an automatic picking strategy. With this in mind, a custom screen design similar to the one shown below where actual stocks in bins are listed and shown for operator to pick up is very useful. A sample of the simple screen development is shown below. Production order - image

Figure 2: Sample Production order components picking based on actual stock availability Here, one component material for the Production order is picked at a time by selecting the component using selection indicator shown. Similarly, bins from which it is picked up can be selected by user. User may also modify the quantity as needed. After the pick, the system refreshes and users could move on to the next material and proceed to complete picking of all components. The BAPIs to be considered are: BAPI_WHSE_STOCK_GET_LIST: The result of this BAPI is a list of quants where this material has stocks. BAPI_WHSE_STOCK_GET_DETAIL: This BAPI helps to read stock data per quant BAPI_PRODORD_WM_MAT_STAGING BAPI: To execute WM Material Staging for Production Orders once stocks have been picked up.Page Break (c) Restrict the ability to do Goods receipt unless goods issue occurred: SAP S/4 HANA provides flexibility to carry out the goods receipt of a Production order whether goods issue of all components used to produce the components have been carried out or not. However, this may lead to overlooking Production order goods issue requirements leading to incorrect actual cost of Production recorded in the system. This is unacceptable for Finance and Costing. A solution that could be considered is to have a check in the system during goods receipt whether goods issues of non-back flushed components have been completed in the system or not. Only if goods issues have been completed would goods receipt be allowed; otherwise, an error would be shown indicating goods issues are not complete. This check compares Production order component quantity requirements shown in the RESB table and sees if the goods movement documents show whether the same quantities have been issued or not. Now, it is possible that for some components less than planned quantity was sufficient to produce the finished product, and this could be true for materials such as chemicals. SAP S/4HANA provides an option to manually specify if goods issue for a component has been completed (even if less than planned quantity is issued) by flagging the indicator ‘Final Goods Issue’ during the transaction (table field, RSEB-KZEAR). The program could accordingly consider goods issue completed for this specific component. A Production Order Information System report could be used to periodically check components goods issue of orders with Final goods issue indicator flagged, and the user who flagged this could follow up and check that this indicator is used judiciously. This should help to make sure the on-going success of the overall process. Enhancement object that can be used: EXIT_SAPLMIGO_001 The above modifications are summarized in the following table:

Improvement scope	Issue detail and consequences	Modification approach and rule	Results
Master data-Material status	Materials used for transactions before its cost estimate	Finance role only to set Material status as Released	Finance would set status only after Cost estimate; standard cost estimate is always available for transaction data such as Production orders
Master data-Production versions	Leverage PPDS functionality to assign priorities to Production Versions and eliminate complex Routing modifications	Use PPDS provided tile to set different priorities of Production versions (PV) especially when multiple PVs are valid for the same periods	Good time and effort saving on master data maintenance as different Production methods can be used with simple standard Routings
Transaction data-Engineering and R&D Production orders	Ensure Costing needs for specific Profit center and Settlement rules for non-Production Production orders are addressed	Have a check between Order type, Profit center, and Settlement receiver before Production order is saved	Non-Production Production order costs are correctly allocated to cost buckets
Transaction data-Warehouse stock selections for goods issue to order	Stock availability for picking to be user friendly and ability to validate actual stock and pick from available bins	Provide available stock bins list in screen below per Production order component to be picked one at a time dynamically for easy pick	Easy visibility and ability to pick actual stock from bins appropriately. Picking error messages eliminated.
Transaction data-Ensuring completeness of components Goods issue before product Goods receipt for orders	Often, operators do not carry out all goods issues for Production orders, causing incorrect cost variance calculations	Restrict ability to do Goods receipt of a Production order unless Goods issue is completed, or Final goods issue indicator is manually flagged	Streamlined process ensuring Goods issues are always carried out as per actual consumption resulting in correct values for cost variance calculations

Table 1: Production Order Modifications There could be other incremental changes possible that can be unique to specific customer implementations. A periodic review of business process design, data analysis, and a collaborative approach for improvements could hasten the path to better stabilization of the SAP S/4HANA system. The above case examples should trigger thinking towards such initiatives by similar companies attempting stabilization post-SAP S/4 HANA implementations.

Attain Faster Stabilization with SAP S/4HANA Production Execution Implementation

Effective People, Process Design Essential for SAP S/4HANA

Reading time: 8 mins

Janev Veettil, Manager, SAP S/4HANA Supply Chain, KPMG

Manager, SAP S/4 HANA Supply Chain, KPMG

One of the most common reasons why SAP S/4HANA implementations take more time for stabilization is attributed to designs focused on technical aspects without consideration of after go-live data maintenance, people, and processes.

Such process- and people-related modifications that could be of value in Production Planning and Execution are summarized in this article by KPMG’s Janev Veettil based on implementation by a medium-level engineering industry manufacturing company.