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The brand new Specification Management solution is released with 2211 of SAP Enterprise Product Development.

With this new capability, you can manage the data that represents the single source of truth of your product, and collect the various parameters that define it. Specifications are used both in discrete and in process industries.

You can find the User Guide of Specification Management here.

However, before the solution can be used by product developers and other end users, there are a few configurations and master data setups to be done by the administrator.

You can find the Admin Guide of Specification Management here.

Data Model and Business Objects


The data model, which is also included in the Admin Guide, is the following:


Data Model of Specification Management


The arrows mean where the given business object will be used.

Let me explain briefly the different business objects:

Specification: A description that uses identifiers and value assignments such as physical and chemical properties, medical notes, and details on transport and storage. Specifications can be managed for different categories, such as: Substances, Agents, Packaging, Waste codes, Dangerous goods classifications.

Specification type: An exact grouping of specifications based on their use and significance in companies, such as real substance or listed substance.

Property: The details on a specification in the form of numeric values including the appropriate unit of measure, or in the form of textual information.

Property tree: A collection of properties organized into a clear structure. A property tree contains all the properties for a specification type, and is filtered down by product category.

Phrase: A standard text. Phrases can be used, for example, for value assignment of characteristic fields in the property tree, or value assignment of certain input fields. Phrases are managed in libraries. A phrase can group the same text in several languages.

Qualitative statement: A declared value that indicates whether a specification contains a certain substance, for example: trace elements, contains, does not contain, unknown.

Role in composition: A value that indicates the role of the substance in the standard composition of a specification, such as active ingredient or impurity. This classification is used mostly for compliance purposes.

Value qualifier: A collection of values that are used as qualifiers for composition items within a specification, for example: measured, certified, warning.

For further explanation, you can refer to our glossary here.

Process Flow


The high level process flow for the administrator is explained in the following video:


Start video


In the video, the following example configurations and master data are used:

  • Qualitative statement group: biodegradable packaging (example values: yes, no)

  • Role in composition group: chemical roles (example values: active agent, catalyst, etc.)

  • Value qualifier group: internal validations (example values: validated, not validated, pending, etc.)

  • Composition item type: Vitamins

  • Composition item: Vitamin C

  • Composition item group: Vitamin content

  • Property: Vitamin content

  • Specification Type: Unpackaged Product

  • Property Tree: Property tree for food products


All these data have the sole purpose of describing your product the most detailed and exact way you need. For that, you have the Manage Specifications app, which uses all of the previously defined configurations and master data.


An Example Specification


You can have specifications on many levels, based on the need of your company, for example: substance specification, component specification, ingredient specification, semi-finished product, finished product, etc. What’s more, you can use one specification inside another specification as composition.

You can use this solution as your single source of truth for your product data. And it’s now released with SAP EPD 2211.

Summary


In this blogpost, you’ve learned what Specification Management, the new capability within SAP EPD is about, and where to find useful information regarding the administrative tasks before it can be used.

Feel free to provide feedback in the comments section, and I would like to encourage you to follow the “SAP Enterprise Product Development” and “Specification Management” tags and post your questions under the “PLM” tag.

If you are interested in Specification Management specifically, you can also follow my profile as I’m planning on informing you about the latest news.

About the author


Zsofia is a senior user assistance developer in SAP, working in the PLM area for 10+ years.
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