Knowledge Management

Question:
Hi all,
I have a question on how to solve the customer special QM requirement in SAP.
We are in steel industry, we use variant configuration,batch management, with inspection type 04.
Sometimes the customers have their special requirement on inspection char, for example, add an additional inspection char, or change the standard spec for one char.
Because sometimes the customer is trading company, so the special requirement will not be fixed, so it is impossible to assign a special inspection plan to material/customer.
We also don't think it's a possible solution to create new material for everytime's special requirment.
I think it is also not feasible if manually maintain the inspection lot after it is created because there will have many inspection lots for one customer order.
Anyone has any suggestion? Do you have this kind of issue? How do you solve it?
Thanks in advance.
Regards,
Beginner
Answer:
Changing the spec can be possible from the sales order and in the inspeciton type set up for the material select the field "from configuartion"? I think that is it.
The person taking the sales order can enter in the specification requirment then.
I don't know an easy way to add a characteristic though. I would think this would be an unusal request as I would think you labs would need to approve a new test. Who's to say they can even perform the desired test or perform it to the tolerance the customer wants?
You could set up the material with all possible tests.. but then that might be nasty looking!
Craig
Answer:
i agree with Craig. the indicator "inspection by configuration" should be set ON in your inspection type and OSS note 119708 (QM: No Intervals can be derived in Configuration) should be applied if you require upper and lower tolerances to be passed to MIC.
in 2 previous projects (1 also on steel) we noticed that if you don't maintain any range in your configurator General Characteristic (that is linked to the MIC) then the MIC will assume the theoretical value from its Master Data (don't remember what status the MIC will assume in the result recording stage, so either the MIC status or some procedure passed to the users telling them not to perform result recording when theoretical values are displayed -set them very obvious e.g. 0-999,999- should allow them to identify which ones to skip).
let us know how it goes.
dp
Answer:
Hi Craig and DP,
Thanks very much for your input.
I have planed to use 'inspection by configuration' functionality, a MIC will be linked with a class char.
The business requirment is that in steel industry, customer maybe requires a tighter tolerance for an inspection char, or add an additional inspection, these requirement will be reviewed by related department.
For additional inspection char, I plan to list all possible additional chars out, add these in class type 300, if there's no additional requirment, leave the char blank, if has, just enter the tolerance when order entry, then the requirement can be transferred to inspection lot.
As for a tighter tolerance for one inspection char, I still have no good idea, because the requirement will not be fixed, even for material/customer combination. 80% of sales orders will follow product norm exactly, so I want to fix the spec in inspection plan, but how to solve the left 20%? especially when more and more customers have their customized requirement.
The data I used is as following:
- Class char: yield point special (used in class type 300)
- MIC: yield point, link with the class char 'yield point special'
- disable the link in inspection plan (because of 80% business)
- the char spec in inspection plan is : 195 - 999 MPa,
- if no value entered in yield point special, the inspection lot will have 1 line
1. yield point, the spec is 195 - 999.
- if some value is entered, for example, 205 - 999, then there will have 2 lines in inspection lot:
1. yield point 195 - 999
2. yield point special 205 - 999
I think the result is not good. We have quality testing subsystem and MES system, so we need to let these related subsystem know the real requirement by interface.
How do you solve this kind of problem?
Regards,
Beginner
Answer:
why arent you considering only having 1 configuration General Characteristic linked to only 1 MIC, being that if a special customer requirement is maintained in the configuration step (eg 205-999) then the MIC will assume these tolerances, if not tolerances (eg 195-999) will be set from the MIC available data (either inspection plan or master data)?
why do you need 2 MIC's?
dp
Answer:
I only use one MIC, but I unlocked the link, then if I enter customer special requirement (eg. 205 - 999), there will have two lines for the same MIC in inspection lot, one for normal range, one for special requirment as I tested.
Regards,
Beginner
Answer:
hence the obvious question: what are the reasons for not setting the link again in your inspection plan?
dp
Answer:
Because for normal sales order, the value limit can be fixed in inspection plan, otherwise it's too complex to use variant table or dependency to get the value for normal order.
Regards,
Beginner