Streamlining Purchase Order Process in SAP R/3 for Book Manufacturing: Challenges and Solutions

[TalhaM11]

In our current manufacturing process, we utilize a subcontracting model where we supply raw materials to our vendors. Here's the breakdown: we procure paper and board as raw materials, store them in our warehouse, and issue purchase orders to vendors when book manufacturing is required. However, we encounter a challenge: for each book produced, we manually calculate the required paper and board on Excel and include this information in the purchase order.

The process involves issuing three separate purchase orders for each book:

1. The first purchase order covers printing and references the raw material (paper and board) as the Bill of Materials (BOM).
2. The second purchase order is for binding and refers to the first purchase order as the BOM.
3. The third purchase order is for the movement of paper and board associated with that specific book.

Upon receiving the books, we perform a goods receipt against the second purchase order, reflecting the production cost of that book.

Unfortunately, this process restricts us from issuing bulk purchase orders, as we are limited to creating purchase orders for individual books. Currently, we are using SAP R/3.

We are seeking suggestions or solutions to streamline this process and enable the issuance of bulk purchase orders for improved efficiency." 

Currently we don't have BOM data, we manually define components every time when issuing purchase orders, A single book has three PO.