Knowledge Management

Question:
Hi there,
When we create inspection lot manually in QA01, a manual assigned lot no. will be input in the short text field. As this lot no. will be used for reporting, the correctness of the short text is very important to us. Is there any user exit which can check the content length input in the short text field when creating inspection lots? I have tried several user exits but still cannot find a suitalbe one. Thanks a lot in advance.
Regards,
Iris
Answer:
Iris,
I don't have a user exit for you offhand. But I'm curious. Is the lot number your putting in the short text field the same as the inspection lot number?
If so.. what is the purpose for this? I know it's not easy to report out text and given the free form of text I can understand your desire to verify this info somehow. I'm more curious as to why you'd want to enter the lot number in the short text in the first place when it's readily available in QALS table as well as a few other places.
You could also enter the lot number as an MIC in the lot itself and then report it out in any number of standard ways.
Craig
Answer:
Craig,
i guess Iris is refering to the "Batch" number but i am also slightly confused as this field is available in QA01 if the material is "batch managed", hence there is no need for an input in the "Short text field"...
Iris,
did you check QPL10001? let us know how it goes.
dp
Answer:
Hi Craig and Daniel,
Thanks a lot for your help. Daniel's guess is quite correct. Actually the lot no. input in the short text is the production lot no. The QA users would use it as a key reference to communicate with the production people, so the correctness of this field is very important to them. Unfortunately we haven't implemented batch management in the system and the criteria for creating an inspection lot for final inspection is very special, so the users have to create the inspection lots and input the production lot no. manually.
Daniel,
I have tried QPL10001 already but it doesn't work.
Thanks & Regards
Iris
Answer:
hum... so your material is "batch managed" in real life (in the production shop floor) but not set as such in the system. that brings unnecessary extra complexity in my opinion, but there must be a very strong reason behind.
ok, back to the problem. some months ago we manage to do some serious validation in MB1A/B/C/11 material document item field "recipient" and re-labelled this alphanumeric field as "box qtty". we set it as mandatory, numeric, integer and (above all) checking the quantities good received previously (a routine had to be written to check if box quantities in warehouse -MSEG for material/batch/plant- were consistent with quantity being issued in a particular material document).
we did this without changing the standard code using a "field-exit" rather than a "user-exit". talk with your ABAPer. you should be able to introduce a check in your inspection lot short text via this technique.
dp
Answer:
Also, you don't mention if your using production orders or not. Even though your not batch managed, why not generate 04 inspection lots via the release (early lot creation) or at GR from production?
Then the lot is automatically linked to the order. If your using orders, I would think the order number would be excellant to use.
Unless your one of these shops that create like one order for the month and do ALL production under that single order? (a very poor design if you ask me when your also trying to use QM).
If this lot (batch) number is manually inputted, how are you verifying? Is there some other table or place in the system you are verifying it against? Or are you just checking it for a format? (sorry. probably irrelevant to the dicussion.. my curiosity!)
Craig
Answer:
Daniel,
Thanks a lot again for your input. Actually I don't quite understand your approach. Where should I put the routine for the field checking and how to do it? What's the difference between "field-exit" and "user-exit"?
Craig,
Thanks for your adivse. Actually we're using repetitive manufacturing, so there is no production order but run schedules only. Besides, the users would like to control the lot size for each inspection lot, so the inspection lot cannot be generated thru system automatically during backflush. We have no choice but to create the inspection lots manually. Currently we have no cross checking of the manual lot number. We know that it is very dangerous but we got no choice. So we would like to check the format of the manual lot number to minimize the errors.
Daniel & Craig,
Many many thanks again for your valuable advise.
Regards,
Iris
Answer:
Thanks Iris,
I admit that repetitive mfg is not an area I have much experience in. But I would still think you could create inspection lots automatically. (Types 13 & 04 I believe). Maybe some others here who have more experience in rep. mfg. can chip in. Since your not controlling stock with your current process, (manual creation), I would see no reason why you can't turn off automatic assignment and tick off post to inspection stock and tick on manual sample calculation.
Then, users can use QA02 to adjust the lot size to whatever you want and perform the sample calculation. While you still may have to enter the production lot number manually, I still think linking to the run schedule is important.
Also, I haven't had to do it, but I believe you can create custom sample types.
QM-->Quality planning-->Basic Data-->Sample,SPC-->Define Sample Determination.
You can create custom determination rules here that have a function module behind them. By manually doing the sample calculation, (which you would be doing in a manual lot or in the scheme mentioned above), the function module can be used to calculate your samples, and maybe verify the inspection lot text for the formatting of your production lot text.
Craig
Answer:
Iris, when your Quality people create the inspection lot, what is the source of the production lot number? Do they read it off a label or some paper form? I'm thinking that you could perhaps get that number printed in a bar code and use a bar code scanner to input the number into the Inspection Lot short text. That would reduce the format errors caused by manually typing in the number.
Just a thought, hope it helps.
Dennis