Overview to SAP PP Master Data

The more accurate the master data, the more effective the transactions will be.

When I have started to learn and work with SAP, for me it was very difficult to understand it's basic concepts, terms and technical language. So, the purpose of this article is to help and support the beginners who have just started working in SAP Production and Planning.

Behind every transaction and documentation  in SAP there is a Master Data. I would like to say that Efficiency and perfection of all transactions depends upon the accuracy of Master Data. So, to get better results with SAP, we should have to understand and maintain Master Data nearest to the actual.

Master Data for PP

In general, Master Data in Production and Planning consists of:

• Material Master
• Bill of Material (BOM)
• Work Center
• Routing / Recipe
• Production Version

Lets check out the definitions in simple words.

Material Master

The material master contains information of all the materials that a company procures or produces, stores, and sells. It is the company's central source for retrieving material-specific data. This information is stored in individual material master records.

You have to fill in all the required details such as material number (if external number assignment), material type, industry sector, etc. as per company requirements.

We will discuss material master creation process in some other article.

Bill of Material (BOM)

A bill of material (BOM) describes the different components that are required to produce a material/product. Just think of a packet of biscuit, you often see ingredients mentioned on a packet. Bill of material (BOM) is not same but similar to it.

The bill of material contains the item number of each component and it's quantity required in the manufacture of a product and the unit of measure of the item as per the Base quantity. Base quantity is there for the header material. It says that the component quantity mentioned in BOM is required to manufacture "base quantity" of material. This will reflect in the production / process order.

We will discuss Bill of material (BOM) creation process in some other article.

Work Center

A Work Center can be a place or a machine or a labor where production operations/activities are performed. In SAP PP, Work Center is used in routing operations and production orders. It contains data related to scheduling, capacity planning, and production costing. All the manufacturing activities are performed in the work center.

Work centers are also used in other applications (SAP modules) like Plant Maintenance, Project System, and Quality Management.

We will discuss Work Center creation process in some other article.

Routing / Recipe

It is not like a recipe of cooking or baking. In SAP a Routing or Recipe is a description of which operations or list of activities has to be carried out during the production and planning process. It also tells the order or sequence in which the activities/operations needs to be carried out at work centers or machines. There may be several alternative routing / recipes for a product.

We will discuss Routing / Recipe creation process in some other article.

Production Version

The production version is the link between a product BOM (Bill of Material) and the process Routing. It determines which alternative BOM is used together with which routing to produce a material or plan a material. There may be different production versions based on the lot sizes and validity dates.

In a manufacturing environment, we may have different processes or BOM for a same product (with slight changes). To overcome this situation we should have to create alternate BOM and/or routing for the same product. 

For instance we have 2 different BOM (A and B), and 2 Routing/Recipe (X and Y) for the same product. It means we will have to create 4 production versions for this product as below:

• BOM A with Recipe X
• BOM A with Recipe Y
• BOM B with Recipe X
• BOM B with recipe Y

We will discuss Production Version creation process in some other article.

All of the above master data are needed to execute production process as well as to calculate the costs for this production process.

I would like to say again..!

The more accurate the master data, the more effective the transactions will be.

Have you any queries, please comment below. I will reply for sure.