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Ritesh Dube
September 14, 2012 6 minute read

SAP VC Material Variants : Creation,Usage in Sales order for

replacing Con gurable Material – Part 1
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Material Variants
Do you want to wait for customer order to plan and start production for the fastest selling
and in demand con guration of your product ?

In many industries when we deal with Con gurable material, many of times we come across a con guration which is
asked every now and then by many customer.

Also business don’t want to wait for customer to enter order and then start its production , instead there is a need to have
something similar to Make to Stock for this con guration to  bring lead time down and maintain some stock of this fast
moving con guration.

To address all of these and many other requirements, there is a standard option available in SAP to create “Material
Variant”.

This document will be useful for beginners in VC area to understand the concept of Material Variant and how it can be
setup using standard SAP. Also we will discuss how when you con gure a material in sales order (VA01) or Con guration
Simulation CU50, you can check whether a material variant already exists that has the same characteristic values and it
will manually or automatically replace the con gurable material in sales order. You can display existing material
variants on the characteristic value assignment screen. However, the con gurable material is not automatically
replaced by the variant.

By de nition from SAP Help,

Material Variants (1)

A material variant is a material that can be kept in stock and that arises from an individual con guration of a
con gurable product.

The material master record of a material variant is linked to the con gurable material and con gured using the
characteristics of the con gurable material. This variant of the con gurable material can then be manufactured and
kept in stock.

A. You have a Con gurable Product “BIKE” which has 3 attribute on which it can be con gured, which become
Characteristics of this con gurable material.

These characteristics will have possible values associated

· COLOUR

o Red

o Blue

o Black

o Green

o Golden

o Silver

o Orange

o Purple

o Yellow

o Dark Red

· ENGINE TYPE
 

o 200 CC

o 400 CC

o 600 CC

o 800 CC

o 1000 CC

o 1200 CC

o 1400 CC

o 1500 CC

o 1600 CC

o 1800 CC

· EXHAUST

o S- EXHAUST 1

o S- EXHAUST 2

o S- EXHAUST 3

o S- EXHAUST 4

o S- EXHAUST 5

o S- EXHAUST 6

o S- EXHAUST 7

o S- EXHAUST 8

o S- EXHAUST 9

o S- EXHAUST 10

You created con gurable material with all Basic settings required for “Variant Con guration”

 
 (3)

Below are the steps to create a Material Variant”, Create a new material, BIKE – BLACK – 1000

Transaction: MM01

(3)

Select views
 (3)

Complete the material creation process by lling out necessary details and mandatory elds.

To manufacture the material variant in-house, you must maintain the variant at plant level, so that BOMs, routings, and
so on can be determined. Cross-plant variants can be used in Purchasing, but are not supported in Sales.

To set up the material variant speci c to a plant, in MRP 3 View, in eld “Con gurable Material ( MARC-STDPD) “ in put
the con gurable material number.

Press enter; you will get a message to “Con gure the material.

(3)

Press   to con gure this variant, you will get a pop-up

 (3)

Come out of the screen using,complete the process of creation of material following all required view and mandatory
elds.

In the basic data, you can link the material variant to a con gurable material. This con guration applies to all plants.

Now the Material Variant is created, and need to be linked with BOM and Routing of Con gurable Material.

Transaction: CS40

(3)

Press enter

(3)

Save the assignment., Assign Routing

Transaction: CA02

(3)

Open a routing of con gurable material

 
 (3)

Use the material assignment option, Enter Group counter, Material and plant
 (3)

Save the routing.

Now the material Variant is ready to be used.

If the strategy group associated is relevant for “Make to stock: production, you can plan the independent requirement,
have MRP run, generate plan order, convert it to production order and con rm to generate stock of this material
variants.

Make to Stock Production for Variants (1)

Variants can be planned on the finished product level using any make-to-stock strategy, such as Planning with Final Assembly
(40) or Net Requirements Planning (10)

Make to Order Production for Variants(1)

Variants can be planned on the finished product level using any make-to-order strategy, such as Planning w/o Final Assembly (50)
or Planning with a Planning Material (60)

Replacement of Configurable material with material Variant in Sales order.

You can define the settings for variant matching in the configuration profile of a configurable material and on the characteristic value
assignment screen.

I. In the configuration profile, choose Settings, and on the characteristic value assignment screen choose View —
Settings.
 (3)

Prerequisites (1)
You define the settings for variant matching in Customizing for Sales and Distribution, where you maintain item categories.
§ Configuration of Sales and Distribution -> Sales -> Sales Document -> Sales Document Item -> Define Item Categories.

(3)

Activate variant matching for an item category, by put a tick as shown above
Define Material variant action to decide how the system reacts if it finds a material variant:
The system automatically replaces the configurable material with the material variant.
You see a message telling you that a material variant with the same configuration exists.

If the material variant is not available, you can:

Receive an automatic message with a list of the material variant stock situation. You can then decide whether to replace the
material variant.
Decide that you do not want to replace the variant.

Create Sales order

Transaction VA01:
 
 (3)

Input configurable material as required material

(3)

Configure the configurable material in the sales order.

On the value assignment screen, you can check whether material variants match the configuration of the material

(3)

Material Variant matching the values will listed on lower part of screen.
 (3)

(3)

(3)

Once you have configured the material, leave the configuration editor.

 
 Depending on the settings in Customizing, either the material is replaced by the material variant immediately, or you see a
message telling you that a suitable material variant has been found.

Save the sales order.

Individual or collective requirements can be generated for the material variant. Pricing also applies to the material variant,
unless you define the configurable material as the pricing material for the material variant.

Relevant SAP Notes:

Note Number ,Description & Link

Note 794941 – Explosion of material variant as a configurable assembly

Note 513288 – Material variant as a component in multi-level configuration

Note 456510 – Material variant in multi-level configuration

Note 900732 – Variant matching does not work

Note 774346 – Composite SAP Note: Material variants

Alert Moderator
References:

(1) Some part of text copied from SAP help

Assigned tags
(2) Link mention is a document by Philip Cluster on SAP SDN

(3) All screen copied are from SAP IDES

| bom
PLM Variant Con guration assignment | sap erp manufacturing production planning | sap erp sales and

distribution | sap(z) |
sd courtesy : https://www.motorcyclelegalfoundation.com/types-of-motorcycles/
 View more...

 
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57 Comments

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Navaneetha Krishnan

September 19, 2012 at 1:41 pm

Hi Ritesh,

Excellent document on material variant.

Your e ort on this is much appreciated.

I especially liked the way you have mentioned your references and the system you have used!

Thanks for such a nice document. I will try it some day this month (little held up for sometime)

If you can move this to SD area, you will have more consultants reading your document, more will get bene tted. Dont
know what should be done for that though.

Like(0)

Ritesh Dube | Post author

September 20, 2012 at 5:40 am

Navaneetha Krishnan,

Thanks for comments, I will check if i can move it to SD.

Regards

Ritesh

Like(1)

Ritesh Dube | Post author

June 9, 2014 at 2:26 pm

SAP ERP Sales and Distribution (SAP SD)

may be it will link it to SD forum.

Like(1)

Former Member

September 21, 2012 at 7:41 pm

Nice document, Ritesh

Thanks for sharing.

Regards,

Senthil

Like(0)

SIVA KUMAR

November 2, 2012 at 9:45 am

Nice document, Ritesh

Basant

Like(0)

Monst Yang

December 14, 2012 at 8:36 am

hi,Ritesh:

Is variant also work in MD81?I test it in MD81 but variant doesn’t replace VC material..

Like(1)

Former Member

March 5, 2013 at 11:53 am

HI,

Please i need your help

1) I created a class with categorie 300 and i a ected it to some characteristic

2) I have created a con gurable material ‘BIKE’  and o material variant like nished product ‘BIKE-1000-BLACK’ .

3) I a ect the class in con gurable materiel ‘BIKE’

4) In the basic data, i linked the material variant to a con gurable material.

5) Now i can’t  create a link to a con gurable materiel with the transaction CS40. Should i create a BOW First? and the BOW it’s necessary
to complete the process of con gurable materiel?

Please ‘im bloqued in this step.

Thanks

Like(0)

Former Member

September 21, 2013 at 3:22 pm

Good document.

I will give it a try

Thanks

PV

Like(0)

venu gopal

October 14, 2013 at 2:09 am

Hai very wonderful document

thanks a lot for sharing

Like(1)

Ritesh Dube | Post author

October 14, 2013 at 12:25 pm

venu gopal,

Thanks for comment.

Ritesh

Like(1)
 Thierry Mathieu

April 11, 2014 at 7:39 am

Nice document, Ritesh

Thanks for sharing.

Regards,

Like(1)

Ritesh Dube | Post author

April 22, 2014 at 12:55 pm

Thanks for comment.

Ritesh

Like(1)

Former Member

May 14, 2014 at 9:49 pm

Thanks for Contributing to the community Ritesh,

It is appreciated and the document is very helpful

Like(0)

Ritesh Dube | Post author

May 19, 2014 at 8:24 pm

Amber Naseer,

Thanks a lot for comments, I am just following your foot steps

I can see you help a lot to community memmbers & share your knowledge & expertise.

Regards

Ritesh

Like(1)

Former Member
June 6, 2014 at 1:41 am
Very Useful and it solved my problem about the “Super Routing”.

Thanks a lot!!!

Like(1)

Ritesh Dube | Post author

June 6, 2014 at 3:59 am

Thanks for comment , appriciate if you rate this documnet too , by clicking on *  and like option too.

Thanks

Ritesh

Like(1)

Navaneetha Krishnan

June 6, 2014 at 5:21 am

Hi Ritesh,

Read this document once again today just to clarify some doubts.

1. Why do you use CS40 and CA02. Is it mandatory even in a non PP scenario. I have been working purely on SD
perspective and have not used CS40 till date. Is that an acceptable approach. Actually I am of the belief that the MRP3
view or the basic view links the variant with the con gurable material and hence CS40 is redundant. Please clarify if I am
incorrect.

2. Also Why do we need routing for variant material which anyway should be a MTS material. Again to my primitive
understanding about routing, we can have routing only for MTO materials from SD perspective. During TOR, we send
requirements to PP and then the production/assembly order will have the routing for the material. Hence in a stock
scenario, this should not be applicable.

If you can help me understanding these two concepts, it will help me.

Like(1)

Ritesh Dube | Post author

June 9, 2014 at 2:16 pm

Navaneetha Krishnan        

With MRP 3 entery you connect the con gurable material with material variant ,

using CS40 you connect material variant with BOM and through CA02 you made link between material variant & routing
operation of con gurable.

BOM and routing are required object from PP prespective.

weather its a MTO or MTS both require this object.

Hope this explanation will help you.

Thanks

Ritesh.

Like(1)

Navaneetha Krishnan

June 11, 2014 at 3:23 am

Hi Ritesh,

This makes my understanding very clear. Thanks a bunch for your response.

Like(1)

Former Member

July 22, 2014 at 4:09 pm

Hi Ritesh,

Nice document ! By the way for deleting/removing a material variant shall I go about in the reverse of the order in which
we created it?
If so, Will removing MV from mat.assignment in routing or

Link to con gurable material a ect the routing in any way like deleting the comp.allocations?

Like(1)

Ritesh Dube | Post author

July 22, 2014 at 5:31 pm

Krishnan Sekar,

Thanks for comment , I dont think removing of MV from routing material assignment or changes to component
allocations will a ect anything.

I truely trust SAP’s integration for all object.

Also, when you say reverse , I hope you do not want to remove con gurable material from basic data 2 or MRP 3 view
from con gurable material eld. Its Not possible

Like(1)

Former Member
October 27, 2014 at 11:39 am

Hi Ritesh,

Many thanks for the excellent sharing!

I have particular question – if there are more then one suitable material variants in my case system propose only one of
them (with least mat.num.). Is it expected behaviour or some customisation is missed?

Like(0)

Caetano Almeida

October 27, 2014 at 1:18 pm

Hi Ritesh

Very nice document. I wrote the following document about an error that may happen with variant materials that may be
useful:

Con gurable planned order for material variants: Exception “53: No BOM explosion due to missing con guration”

BR

Caetano

Like(1)

Ritesh Dube | Post author

October 29, 2014 at 4:57 am

Thanks for comment Caetano Almeida, I follow you in PP forum and already gone thorugh yoru document.

Like(1)

Former Member

December 10, 2014 at 9:09 am

Hi Ritesh,

Really a very useful document to understand the material variant concept. Your explanation with screenshots would
leave no doubts in mind of the reader.

Regards

SD

Like(0)