The ongoing trend to lot size of 1 / individualized products in discrete manufacturing and mill &mining industries as well new industries like consumer products needs more efficient and advanced application support. Therefore the SAP PLM strategy to involve variant configuration as an important capability of SAP S/4HANA. To accommodate this SAP is building a new enhanced variant configuration solution with improvements in efficiency, process flexibility, transparency and performance.

This blog belongs to a series of blogs regrouped on the SCN page “SAP PLM Recipe Development for Beginners”.

PLM stands for Product Lifecycle Management. The lifecycle of a product is usually its design > creation > launch > optimization > obsolescence. These phases somehow have to be managed in the SAP system, for example with corresponding system statuses.

So the question arises: "How can you manage the lifecycle of a product, across all objects, with SAP Recipe Development? What are the system capabilities? What are the options?"

Before we can answer this question, we should first take a look at the most relevant objects that SAP Recipe Development is dealing with. Those are:

• materials
• specifications (possibly also lower level specifications)
• recipes (possibly also lower level recipes)
• BOMs
• optionally ECRs
• labels, print reports, building blocks, … are not considered at the moment

Let’s now take a closer look at those objects one by one. Let’s try to understand how the lifecycle can be managed individually on each of those objects.

Material

In the SAP Material Master is a field “X-plant material status”. This field is often used to manage the lifecycle of the material also in the context of SAP RD.

SAP Material Master - SAP GUI on the left and SAP WEB-UI on the right

Specification

As far as the specification is concerned here we have several possible ways of managing the lifecycle:

• using the identifier
• RD Specification Header Status
• EHS Specification Status

Specification identifier for status indication

If you want to keep it simple and if all you need is an indicator if your specification is “in creation” or “released” you might consider using an additional identifier for this purpose. It is simple but there is no control mechanism whatsoever on the specification and its usage.

EHS Specification Status

If you are working with different ratings, usages, regions, … the EHS Specification Status might be exactly what you need. This status does not only allow to control the behavior of the specification (“editable” when “in process” and “non editable” when “released”) but is also integrated with SAP ECN (Engineering Change Numbers). This allows you to manage the time span when a certain status is valid.

Example:

• On the 01.01.2012 the specification was set to status “released”
• From the 01.01.2012 till 08.08.2012 the specification is on status “released” which prevents users to change any attributes or characteristics in the specification.
• On the 08.08.2012 a user creates a new Engineering Change Number (valid from the 08.08.2012) and applies it to the specification.
• The status of the specification jumps back to “in process” and is editable again. The user changes “attribute 1” in the spec from A to B. Saves and changes the status to “released”.

• The specification now has two change states:
  • Change state before 08.08.2012  - with attribute 1 = value A
  • Change state after 08.08.2012 – with attribute 1 = value B

RD Specification Header Status

If you are mainly concerned that the specification status works seamlessly in conjunction with the recipe, you might be in favor of using the Specification Header Status. This status does not only dispose of status network which is based on the same configuration and integration logic the status of the recipe but also allows to make use of so called “attributes”.

Those attributes do not only allow to manage the behavior of the specification itself (e.g. editable or not editable) but also its usage in other objects (e.g. a specification on status “obsolete” cannot be used as a new input item in a recipe).

Recipe

When you create a recipe you quickly find out that the recipe does not have an own independent number range. Instead, the recipe number is composed of:

• Number of the output specification (FD-O3010)
• Recipe Alternative (000)
• Recipe Version (001)

So, in addition to the recipe status, which allows to manage the behavior of the recipe (editable, non-editable) and also allows to trigger so called recipe consistency checks, the recipe.

Optionally, you can also enable the use of change number for recipes of a specific recipe type in SPRO (ECN for Recipes).

BOM

The Bill of material also has a status and also allows the use of Engineering Change Numbers (ECN). When a Recipe is synchronized via the GSS-tool (GSS Recipe to BOM Synchronization) it is mandatory to use an ECN for this synchronization.

If a new recipe version with a new ECN (and corresponding new validity date) is synchronized to the same BOM (where the predecessor recipe version was earlier already synchronized), the positions in the BOM / Recipe which have been changed during this synchronization are automatically updated in the BOM.

ECR

The Engineering Record (SAP component PLM-WUI-OBJ-ECR) is an additional, optional object which allows to group several other objects in one ECR. The ECR is an umbrella which can contain several specifications, recipes, materials,… which are all related to the same product development project.

Without ECR, the product development project manager would probably list all objects (specifications, recipes, …) in one excel sheet. This excel sheet would be updated by his team members, a status per item would be tracked and they would send the excel file back and forth by email. Finally, after the successful ending of the project, they might try to save the excel file in a non-editable format (e.g. pdf file) and archive it somewhere. That is in short the function of the ECR.

And, yes, the ECR also has its own status field and status network. This status network does not only manage the behavior of certain field and columns in the ECR (e.g. “editable” on status “in work” and “not editable” on status “released”), but also allows to trigger events such as integrated workflows.

Lifecycle integration across all objects

There is no golden path, no right or wrong! What is needed is a thorough evaluation of the pros and cons of each of the above listed options.

Therefore, in every SAP Recipe Development implementation you have to ask yourself:

• How do we manage changes in general from a business perspective?
• Which of the above mentioned options are most suitable for us.
• Shall we use ECN? If yes, for which objects?
• Are we using the inheritance function for EHS specifications? If yes, did we consider the dependencies on status management?
• What is more appropriate for us EHS specification status or RD specification header status?
• Do we have lower level specifications which are listed or inherited to higher level specifications? If yes, what are the implications on status management?
• How do we use Recipe Alternative and Recipe Version in our specific case?
• How does our recipe structure look like? Are we working with higher and lower level recipes? What are the implications on status management if we are changing a lower level recipe in an existing recipe structure?
• Are we using ECR at all? If yes, what other objects are used in the ECR.

After those questions have been clarified, you will be a step closer to an integrated product lifecycle management for your SAP Recipe Development solution. And, you might also want to start thinking about Recipe Development mass change scenarios.

This blog belongs to a series of blogs regrouped on the SCN page “SAP PLM Recipe Development for Beginners”.

Are you considering to use the inheritance function (tab “relationships”) in the context of an SAP Recipe Development (SAP RD) implementation? Then this blog might be interesting for you.

Inheritance in RD

In the context of Recipe Development (especially in the consumer products industry), the inheritance function is often used in quite a different way compared to its classical use cases in the context of EH&S.

In RD, we often use inheritance because we work with the concept of higher-level and lower-level specifications. A typical use case would be the inheritance for managing packaging specifications.

Let’s say we are a Pizza Factory and we have lots of different empty and white pizza cardboards. The exact parameters (length, high, width, …) for each empty pizza box are all maintained the specification database of SAP PLM RD. So each empty box is represented by one packaging specification.

When we deal with the finished product specification, in our case a “Pizza Americano Extra Spicy”, we maintain all kinds of parameters for this specification in the respective property tree. There is a section for ingredients, a section for nutrients and allergens, … and also a section for packaging. Now, as the packaging parameters in this finished product specification are dependent on the empty pizza box we are using, we do not want to maintain all those parameters again manually in the finished product specification (higher level spec). We therefore inherit all relevant packaging characteristics from the packaging specification (lower level spec).

This concept not only allows us to avoid data duplication but also has another advantage. Let’s imagine the supplier of the empty pizza box (lower level spec) is suddenly not able to provide exactly the same cardboard any longer. So let’s say, there is for example a tiny difference in the cardboard length (which has no consequence really for our finished product). But this change in length is significant enough that we have to indicate it on all of our finished product specifications which are using this cardboard.

Without inheritance, we would now need to identify all finished product specifications which are concerned and change the packaging parameters in the respective property tree (mass change scenario).  With inheritance, all we have to do, is to update one characteristic (cardboard length) in one packaging specification. As the characteristic is inherited to several finished product specification (higher level specs), we basically changed the parameters of several finished product specifications with just one click.

How inheritance works

Let’s first get familiar with the function and how it works.

We populated all relevant characteristics on our "lower level spec". As you can see with the highlighted symbols, these characteristics are passed on via inheritance to other specifications.

To create such an inheritance, you need to go to the tab "relationsships", click on "pass on to" and add new target specifications. In our case we are passing exactly the same characteristics on to four different "higher-level" specifications.

If we go to the higher-level specification, we see how the characteristics appear in the property tree. The high-lighted symbol shows that this specification is receiving inherited data.

Technical aspects

To enable inheritance for a specific spec type you need to add this spec type to the “Referencing between Specification Types”.

The inheritance happens when background job runs the following program: SE38 – run report:  RC1R0INH

Make sure that this background job is correctly set up in your system.

And you need set up inheritance templates (SAP GUI CG02)

And you might also want to take a close look at the following EHS environment parameters for fine-tuning.

INH_BACKGROUND_START_CONDITION Inheritance in the background starting from the number

INH_JOB_DELAY Time period to restart of inheritance

INH_RESOLVE_STATUS_CONFLICT Consideration of the status during inheritance

Considerations and limitations

Inheritance Templates & Copy Templates

• In SAP RD for specifications you can also use copy templates. When you click: Specification- You Can Also – Copy to New Specification, you can use copy templates to tell the system which values should be copied and which values should not be copied.
• When you use both, copy templates and inheritance templates – you need to separate those template and make sure that the users do not mix them up.

Inheritance and Status Management

• If your specifications are status managed (either with the classical “EHS specification status” or the new “RD specification header status”) you need to check how inheritance behaves.
• If the higher level specification is already in status released and non-editable, is then the update of the lower-level specification directly reflected in the higher-level specification (although it is already released)?
• The above mentioned environment parameters might help when dealing with this case.

Inheritance and Authorizations

• What if the person dealing with the higher-level specification does not have the same authorizations for changing and editing the inherited values?
• When working with authorizations on a granular level, you need also take into account the various inheritance scenarios. Otherwise it might happen, that characteristics cannot be inherited because of missing user authorizations.

Inheritance and ECN

• If you plan to use inheritance together with ECN and status management for specifications you should know that there are certain limitations. Please take a look at the following SAP notes:
  • 1486752
  • 1802444

This blog belongs to a series of blogs regrouped on the SCN page “SAP PLM Recipe Development for Beginners”.

This blog explains SAP PLM Recipe Development basic functionality. Today’s topic is “Nutrients in Recipe Calculations Results”.

Let’s assume you are lucky and get hold of a good SAP PLM Recipe Development demo system. You finally manage to log on the system and type transaction nwbc in the SAP-GUI and the “SAP PLM Recipe Development” system appears. You even make it a step further and you manage to open a recipe which actually contains some data.

In the recipe you then click on the tab “Calculation Results” on the “Nutrient” tab. Then you see a nice overview that almost looks like the nutrient statement on the bottom of your frozen pizza box. You then wonder: “where does all this data come from?”

Trying to understand where all those nutrient values come from, you click on the Recipe Formula.

You think that the Formula (or Formulation) should give you some idea where those nutrients actually come from. But instead of nutrients of find all kinds of packaging material (plastic foil, boxes, …). Well, the packaging material certainly does not contain all those nutrients. Then you see that there is also an INGREDIENT “finished pizza without pack”. But where are all the other ingredients (flour, salt, yeast, cheese, …)?

You then click on the tab “Calculations Results – Scientific Ingredients” and you finally find an entire list of ingredients and it looks somehow similar to the official ingredients statement on the bottom of your pizza box.

You understand, that this recipe is the highest level recipe in an entire recipe structure, which might look somehow like this:

Finished Pizza in a box with packaging (recipe)

• Packaging material 1
• Packaging material 2
• Finished pizza without packaging (recipe)
  • pizza dough
    • flour
    • yeast
    • seasoning
    • ….
  • pizza sauce (recipe)
    • tomato sauce
    • seasoning
    • ….
  • pizza toping (recipe)
    • cheese
    • onions
    • olives

To see if this is really the case, you click on “You Can Also” – “Display in Object Navigator”.

In the Object Navigator Screen you click on “Structure” and you see that your assumption was correct. There is an entire recipe structure below the recipe you are currently in.

Having understood this is very nice, but we still do not know where the nutrients come from.

Therefore we navigate back to our recipe and now click on one of the aggregated ingredients in the Scientific Ingredients overview.

When we click on the specification of this “mozzarella cheese” ingredient, a new screen opens up.

We are now in the specification database for this ingredient and navigate to the property tree. In the property tree we find the section “Nutrient Composition”. Here we can select a Nutrient Group (e.g. BIG) and we finally see the maintained nutrient values per 100 grams of mozzarella cheese.

You now start to understand how this whole recipe system works. You change some nutrient values in the “mozzarella ingredient”, you save and navigate back to the Recipe Calculation Results. You see how according to your changes in one of the ingredients of the recipe, the entire nutrient overview of the finished product is impacted.

You then might also become interested in the “process loss” and “storage loss” functions. And you try to manipulate other ingredients. You now try the whole procedure again and again … with the “tomato sauce”, the “onions”, and finally even with the “ham” …

I hope this helps a bit and helps to "demystify" SAP PLM Recipe Development.

Have a nice day and “bon appetite”.

This blog belongs to a series of blogs regrouped on the SCN page “SAP PLM Recipe Development for Beginners”.

With SAP PLM Recipe Development the following mass change tools are available:

• Recipe Multiple Formula Editor
• Recipe Mass Change Tool (link to SCN blog)
• Specification Mass Change (link to SCN blog)
• EHS Easy Expert for Mass Change

Today, we take a closer look at what the Recipe Multiple Formula Editor really can do. 

Recipe Multiple Formula Editor

First we use the advanced search to identify several quite similar recipes. We highlight them and click on “Additional Functions” – “Display Multiple Recipes”.

We now see the three recipes in a side-by-side comparison in one screen. The input substances are listed in the column to the left and the following columns contain the quantities of those input items for the respective recipes. If an input item is only present in one of those recipes, the input item is still listed in the left column, but the quantity column of the recipes are empty.  If one the recipes is already released, it is not editable and the column with the quantities is greyed out.

I can now scroll up and down, left and right and change and replace input items and their quantities.

If I now click on Calculation Results on the tab Nutrients, I can compare the nutrient quantities of the three recipes. The same function obviously works for all other calculation results.

Now you can go back to the formula tab, do some changes and save. If you go back again to the nutrient tab, you immediately see the impact of your change on the nutrients in comparison to another recipe which was not changed.

There is also a download data function which allows me to download everything into excel for further processing.

Review Rating: * * * * * (5 stars)

Review Summary: very nice tool – especially for product formulators – user friendly – strong business case

This blog belongs to a series of blogs regrouped on the SCN page “SAP PLM Recipe Development for Beginners”.

With SAP PLM Recipe Development the following mass change tools are available:

• Recipe Multiple Formula Editor (link to SCN blog)
• Recipe Mass Change Tool
• Specification Mass Change (link to SCN blog)
• EHS Expert Mass Change

In today’s blog, we take a closer look at what the Recipe Mass ChangeTool really can do.  The following three functions are available within the Recipe Mass Change Tool:

- recipe Mass Change for general data of recipe (e.g. mass status change)

- recipe Mass Change for recipe formula items (e.g. mass replacement of certain ingredient)

- recipe Mass Copy to new Version (copying several recipes to a new recipe version)

Let's take a look at those functions, one-by-one.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Recipe Mass Change for General Data

First we use the advanced search to identify several quite similar recipes. We highlight them and click on “Additional Functions” – “Mass Change”.

In the following screen we select the mass change function: "Recipe - General Data".

We are now in the mass change screen, where we see a list of the selected recipes. Recipes which are on status “released” cannot be edited and have to be excluded from the mass change (unless we only intend to change the status of the recipes).

With the Refine Selection function, we are able to add and remove recipes from the actual list.

We now take a look at the “General Data” fields that can be changed with this function:

• Recipe Description
• Status ID
• Valid From
• Valid To
• Quantity From
• Quantity To
• UoM
• WBS Element

With the function “Change Values” and we can select a Status ID (e.g. Status “released”) which can then be applied with on click on “Apply To Selected” for all selected recipes.

Function Review Rating: * * * *  (4 stars)

Function Review Summary: – user friendly – strong business case especially for Status Changes (and WBS elements)

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Recipe Mass Change of Formula Items

When we now take a closer look at the mass change screen, we might at first be a bit confused as there are a lot of items appearing. In fact, all input items of the selected recipes appear in the list.

We now really need to take advantage of the “Refine Selection” function. Because we only want to replace one singe substance in all recipes, we select: “Specification” is “<Spec Number>”. Now the list of specifications per recipe is significantly reduced.

We now select all lines and click on “Change Values”, to change all input specification with spec-number “BEV-I3023” to spec-number “S_2218507”.  When we click on “Apply To Selected”, the change actually happens.

Let’s take a quick look at the all fields we could change with this “Formula Item Mass Change”: Specification, Material, Item Description, Quantity, UoM, Component Type.

Function Review Rating: * * * * * (5 stars)

Function Review Summary: – user friendly – strong business case especially for changes of input specifications & materials, quantities and component type.

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Recipe Mass Change – Create New Recipe Version

We start again with searching and identifying recipes in the Advanced Search. We click on Additional Functions – Mass Change.

Now we select the mass change function: “Recipe – Create New Version”.

After we selected all the recipe we want to copy into a new recipe version, we click “Next”.  In the next step we have the chance to review everything again. If we then continue, we finished our mass change – or shall I say “mass copy”. 

The three selected recipes where copied into corresponding three new version (each recipe was copied into a new recipe version).

Function Review Rating: * * * *  (4 stars)

Function Review Summary: – straight forward – simple to use – relevant business case

This blog belongs to a series of blogs regrouped on the SCN page “SAP PLM Recipe Development for Beginners”.

With SAP PLM Recipe Development the following mass change tools are available:

• Recipe Multiple Formula Editor (link to SCN blog)
• Recipe Mass Change Tool (link to SCN blog)
• Specification Mass Change
• EHS Expert Mass Change

Today, we take a closer look at what the Specification Mass Change really can do. 

Specification Mass Change

We search and identify specifications we want to mass change in the Advanced Search. We highlight them and click “Additional Functions – Mass Change”.

Specification Mass Change – Header Data

We are now able to highlight the specifications we would like to change, and we click on “Change Values”.

I quickly find out, that I only am able to the change the Authorization Group and the Note Field. This makes sense for certain mass change scenarios.

What might have expected but are missing is:

• Mass Change Material Assignment (not supported in SAP standard)
• Mass Change Inheritance Relationships (not supported in SAP standard)

Specification Mass Change – Identifier

If we now select the mass change function “Specification – Identifier”, we can again highlight the specifications we want to change. When we click on “Change Values” we mass change the identifiers of the selected specifications.

We might find out that this functionality is only applicable in very few and very special use cases. An example would be the case, where we use the Specification Identifer for simplified status management (link to SCN blog: SAP PLM Recipe Development – How to do integrated Status and Change Management?).

Mass Changing the main identifier of several specifications with this function does not really make so much sense - in the end, all specifications in the system would only have exactly the same identifier.

Specification Mass Change – Specification Status

Let’s now try the “specification status – mass change function”. If we highlight the specification in this screen and click “Change Values” we can now select the following field:

• Status

Although this is great functionality as status mass changes are extremely important for any SAP PLM system, we might also be somehow disappointed.

Well, first we need to know that this status mass change only refers to the EHS specification status. The following desired functions are not available in the SAP standard system:

• Mass change for EHS specification status including changes of Rating and Validity Area
• Mass change for EHS specification status including changes of assigned ECN (Engineering Change Numbers)
• Mass changes for new RD Specification Header Status

Total Review Rating: * (1 star)

Total Review Summary:  basic mass change functionality for specification is available – main change scenarios (extensive mass status management, mass changes in property trees, …) are not supported in the standard system.

Further Links and Notes:

• SAP Note 1944825

This blog belongs to a series of blogs regrouped on the SCN page “SAP PLM Recipe Development for Beginners”.

With SAP PLM Recipe Development the following mass change tools are available:

• Recipe Multiple Formula Editor (link to SCN blog)
• Recipe Mass Change Tool (link to SCN blog)
• Specification Mass Change (link to SCN blog)
• EHS Easy Expert for Mass Change

Let’s now also take a quick look at the EHS Easy Expert.

With the EH&S Easy Expert you can create sets of rules directly in the SAP system. With these sets of rules, you can easily make mass changes to data in specifications that are stored in the EHS specification database.

EHS Expert is basically a calculation engine where you can design and apply certain rule sets which can change certain value in the property tree of your specifications in the EHS specification database.

This is quite common in the area of EHS where you can use the so called “Secondary Data Determination. For the creation of MSDS (Material Data Safety Sheets) a lot of information needs to be maintained in the various chapters of the property three of a specification. With the “Secondary Data Determination” it is possible that some of the data in some of the chapters in the property tree is automatically derived from other data already existing in the property tree. To do this, you need to make use of the so called “rule sets” which do this job for you.

This is great you will say and ask if you can also use these functions for Recipe Development related specification mass changes.

The answer is yes and no.

Yes: If you are experienced with EHS and if you know how to work with the EHS Easy Expert, then you might consider this toll also for Recipe Development related mass changes.  Especially during the data migration phase of an implementation project (technically experience EHS consultants) can leverage this tool for required mass changes in specifications.

No: If you are a business user without much technical knowledge, I would not recommend trying to use this rather technical tool. Recipe Development business users usually only work in the WEB-UI. As you can see from the screenshot above, this tool is however triggered from SAP-GUI transaction CG02.

Please also take a look at those links and check the service marketplace for more information on SAP component “EHS-BD-TLS-EXP”:

SAP Help - EHS Easy Expert Mass Changes

SAP Help – Sample Set of Rules for EH&S Easy Expert

SAP Help – How the EHS Expert Works

SAP Help – Creating Set of Rules with EH&S Easy Expert

SCN document – SAP EHS Management for Beginners

SCN document - Rule Sets / Secondary Data Determination

This blog belongs to a series of blogs regrouped on the SCN page “SAP PLM Recipe Development for Beginners”.

Are you involved in a very exciting sales opportunity? Your customer only told you, that he is interested in SAP Recipe Management for his Product Development Process. Before you start getting even more excited, let’s please understand what you customer probably means.

Here is a list of SAP functions which sound quite similar – but which actually mean quite different things: 

• SAP Recipe Management (old version)
• SAP PLM Recipe Development (this is what your customer wants)
• SAP Master Recipe Management (that's not it – although related)
• SAP Receipt Management (not related)
• SAP Records Management (not related)

Now that we excluded the SAP functions your customer is not interested in this case, let’s understand what the difference between Recipe Management and Recipe Development really is:

• SAP Recipe Management (PLM-RM) is the older SAP GUI based version. It is based on the EHS-Specification Database and allows product developers to do their recipe formulations and calculations in this tool. The so called Recipe Management Workbench is launched in SAP-GUI via transaction RMWB. It is part SAP ERP which is supported by SAP till 202x.

• SAP Recipe Development (PLM-WUI-RCP) is the newer SAP web-ui based version. It also uses the same EHS-Specification Data as a backbone. The data tables for the actual recipes and formulations are however different from the predecessor solution. SAP PLM Recipe Development is part of SAPs new Business Suite S/4HANA.

• SAP’s future with S/4HANA: SAP PLM Recipe Management (RM) is not available in SAP S/4HANA, on-premise edition 1511. … Business requirements are covered within successor functionality SAP S/4HANA PLM Recipe Development … Please read the exact details in the S/4HANA Simplification List.

SAP Recipe Management (PLM-RM)

If you type transaction “RMWB” in your SAP GUI, you will enter the Recipe Management Workbench.

As you can see from the screenshot above, the functions look very similar to the functions of the newer Recipe Development.

There are recipes with formulas – they use input and output substances (linked to materials) and there are various tabs for calculations and aggregations available.

Let’s now take a quick look and find out where Recipe Management Settings are hidden in the IMG. Originally SAP RM was part of the PP-PI module. Therefore the Recipe Management Settings still can be found under:

IMG: Production Planning for Process Industries – Master Data – Recipe Management

Then with ever new PLM functions appearing in the ERP system, the Recipe Management settings were regrouped under:

IMG: Logistics General – Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) – Recipe Management

SAP Recipe Development (PLM-WUI-RCP)

SAP Recipe Development only works in the web-ui. If you are working with SAP-GUI, please type transaction NWBC (Netweaver Business Client) and select SAP_PLMWUI_PROCESS_MENU2 or 3.

Then the Recipe Development Work Environment appears in your default web browser.

You can start navigating and you can for example search for existing recipes with the Advanced Search.

When you then enter a specific recipe, you will find quite some similarities with recipe in Recipe Management.

Let’s now take a quick look at the IMG to find out where Recipe Development Settings are hidden. You can find them under:

IMG: Logistics General – Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) – PLM Web User Interface – Recipe Development

Quick Summary:

• SAP RM = old solution,  based on SAP-GUI, no more new developments from SAP, not part of S/4HANA
  
  
• SAP RD = new solution, based on SAP web-ui, new developments from SAP and new features with each Enhancement Pack, part of S/4HANA

This blog belongs to a series of blogs regrouped on the SCN page “SAP PLM Recipe Development for Beginners”.

In today’s blog, we would like to take a closer look at the Recipe to BOM Synchronization. The steps below demonstrate how to synchronize a Recipe with a BOM.

In order to synchronize a Recipe to a BOM, we first need to have a recipe which has a recipe formula which is correctly maintained. This means, that all substances are assigned with materials and that the correct quantities and corresponding units of measure are maintained in the Formula tab. The check if our recipe is fine, we can click on “Check Consistency”.

Then we need to make sure that the recipe is on status “released” (or any other status allowing a BOM synchronization).

Our recipe looks very good. So let’s go ahead and create a BOM for this recipe. To do this, we click “You can also” – “Synchronize Recipe to BOM”.

Now the so called GSS (Guided Structured Synchronization) -  Recipe to BOM Synchronization Workbench opens up.

Before we can go ahead, we have to make sure that we have a valid engineering change number we can use. If we do not have one, we click “Related Links” – “Create Change Number”.

We now created and saved the change number.

We copy the newly created change number and click on “Start Synchronization” in the GSS tool.

When we click on "Save and Continue", we come to the so called "Reconciliation Workbench".

This workbench really makes sense when updating existing BOMs repeatedly. The system spots possible conflicts and proposes solutions.

The conflict S+ mean for example, that there now is a new item in the source (which is the recipe). The system will ask us if we want to transfer this new position to the BOM or not.

After we resolved all possible conflicts, we click "Save" and the BOM is created (or updated accordingly).

Now as a final step, in the Work Center, let's click on “Material BOMs – Display Material BOM”.

We can now see the newly created (updated) Bill of Material

Links:

SCN – Guided Structured Synchronization (GSS)

SAP Help – Guided Structured Synchronization (GSS)

SAP Help – Synchronizing a Recipe with a Manufacturing BOM

SAP Help – Reconciliation Workbench

This blog belongs to a series of blogs regrouped on the SCN page “SAP PLM Recipe Development for Beginners”.

In today’s blog we take a closer look at the search capabilities in SAP PLM Recipe Development – in particular at the Advanced Search (or Enterprise Search).

In the Work Overview of your Recipe Development System, in the Quick Search Section, you can select the PLM object which you would like to search for. After having selected an object, click “Advanced Search”.

Now appears the Advanced Search screen and you can navigate through the different tabs and select and maintain various search criteria.

With the tab “Recipe Input or Output” you can for example search for all recipes which contain a certain input substance. If you want to identify all recipes which contain one of several input substances, you can also include a whole range of substances as search criteria.

The “X” on the tab “Recipe (X)” indicates, that in this tab there are also some search criteria maintained. You are thus combining various search criteria from various tabs.

If you are regularly searching for similar things, you can save the selection of maintained search criteria in a “personal query” or “global query”. Global Queries can be loaded by anyone, personal queries are only visible for you.

When you then hit the “Go-Button” or when your press “Enter”, the search hit list (a list of all objects which match with your search criteria) appears.

From the hit list, you can directly access the objects by clicking on them. You can also add them to your favorites or an object set, so you can quickly find them again later.

Another elegant way of grouping those objects is adding them to an Engineering Record.

What if you get this error?

Especially during the system implementation, you might get the following error when trying to search something “Enterprise Search Connector for object type PLM_RSPSUB is not available”.

If you do not have time to get too technical you still try to find your objects (specification or recipes) with the following temporary workaround:

In some search fields, you can switch from the “Enterprise Search” to the “Database Search”. The database search does not require any indexing and searches directly on the database. It is slower and there a less search fields available – but it’s good to know for workarounds.

If you want to find the root cause for your error message, you can take a look at the Enterprise Search Cockpit (transaction ESH_COCKPIT).

Here you need to know which search objects are relevant and need to be indexed. In the case of specifications, the object is “BUS1077”.

You can now schedule the re-indexing of those objects.

You can now schedule the re-indexing of those objects.

If there are some error – you can use transaction SE11 to check table TCGES01 and you will see all object which have not been indexed.

Also, it is good to know that when you change user authorizations, you need to run indexing afterwards for this object: USER_AUTHORITY.

If you don't do this, certain users might have problems finding objects with the advanced search. With SE11 you can check table ESH_AU_USR_UPD – which should always be empty. If it is not empty, it means that you have to index the USER_AUTHORITY object, as some users are probably facing search issues.

Here are some useful links:

USER_AUTHORITY – Enterprise Search

How to schedule a periodic delta index – Enterprise Search

S/4HANA Simplification Item: PLM Enterprise Search

Embedded Search for SAP Application

SAP R&D presented the new SAP S/4HANA Variant Configuration solution and roadmap at the ASUG Webcast taking place on August 16th 2016. (Walldorf/Chicago).

The presentation was about today’s solution, planned innovations and the future direction of variant configuration capabilities in SAP S/4HANA. The delivered solution in SAP S/4HANA on Premise 1511 primarily focused on the compatibility with existing variant configuration models.

In the planned innovations section, the highlights are Embedded Analytics based on CDS views using variant configuration and/or classification data, and the planned UI5 harmonized UX for variant configuration/classification apps.

Finally, the highlights of the future direction will be the new state-of-the-art configuration engine, which is highly compatible with existing configuration models, and the new integrated reusable configurator with SAP Fiori UX integrated into the sales order and material master apps. This will provide higher flexibility when defining the configuration UI. Furthermore, this will also improve user guidance with precise value restrictions and will enhance conflict handling.

https://www.asug.com/events/detail/Development-Update-on-VC-in-S-4HANA