Material Substitution in S/4 HANA Sales

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This blog will explain the reasoning & configuration behind a simple material substitution using a case study.

Case:

Company Palo Inc. manufactures steel tumblers. It used to sell these tumblers to a customer Abhishek. Based on customer feedbacks, Palo Inc. have revised the thickness of the tumblers. Going forward, Palo Inc. wants to retire all the old tumblers & sell only the new tumblers to the customers. Internal SAP team has been asked to have a solution ready by end of the next week, to support the sales of the new tumblers via the system.

Technical Solution.

SAP team find out the best way is to substitute the old material code with a new one. For example, the old material code AA00-00001 & the New material code is AA00-00002. While creation of the sales order, the old code will be replaced by the new code. The details of the substitution will be captured in the General Sales data of the Item Overview.

Overview of the Process.

Technical Run-through of the process.

The old tumbler code (AA00-00001) should be replaced by the new code (AA00-00002) in the sales orders. At the same time, ensure that the product availability is checked for the new code & accordingly the schedule lines are confirmed. Please note that the master data for both the materials should be created & extended to the relevant sales organizations & plants. It is advised to copy the existing code AA00-00001 to create the new code.

 

 

Initial Stage – while creating the sales order

.. while creating the order, the system pops up a message to substitute the old code with the item list

& once selected and pressed OK, the old code is replaced with the new code

& the substituted code details are captured in the General Sales data.

Configuration to achieve this.

**Shall also highlight some major fields for understanding

1. SPRO >> SAP Reference IMG >> Sales & Distribution >> Basic Functions >> Material Determination >> Define Substitution Reasons

 Please note the Strategy is A against 0002 Customer Material, which means that the substitution will happen while displaying in the pop-up box & the user must select the substitute material & click OK.

In case you want automatic substitution, please leave the column in strategy as EMPTY

 

2. SPRO >> SAP Reference IMG >> Sales & Distribution >> Basic Functions >> Material Determination >> Maintain Prerequisites for Material Determination

This is exactly like the condition technique used in the pricing.

1. Creation of Condition Table


2. Maintain the Access Sequence (used an existing one)


3. 


4. Define Condition Types (created the Y001)


5. 


6. Map it to the Access Sequence (as seen above, mapped to A001)


7. Maintain the Material Determination Procedure(created a new one)


8. 

 

3. SPRO >> SAP Reference IMG >> Sales & Distribution >> Basic Functions >> Material Determination >> Assign Procedures to Sales Document Types

It is not advisable to map to the OR. You could create a custom sales document type & do the mapping. This is just shown for understanding purpose.

 

4. VB11/2/3/ - And finally maintain the condition records for the condition type Y001

 

This concludes the configuration. As explained earlier, the major objective is to have a substituted material in the sales order & we have achieved this.

Thank you for your time. Post your comments on any further details required on this concept.