Bill of Materials
SAP BOM Definition
Bill of Materials in any company is used for production or subcontracting activities. It gives
you a list of components required to manufacture a product for a given base quantity.
It is normally created by the product development team and changed over the product
lifecycle by the same team.
Uses - A Bill of Material contains the list of components/subassemblies required in desired
quantities to produce a certain base quantity of the header material
>>> If this is the definition of a Bill of Material, it can be used by MRP or Production
order to evaluate the components and their
quantities requried for production
>>> MRP uses BOM to evaluate the components requried and computes the shortages of
the same to trigger procurement
You can create the following BOMs in the SAP system:
Material BOMs - We will Discuss Material BOMs only under SAP PP.
Equipment BOMs
Functional location BOMs
Document structures
Order BOM
Work breakdown structure (WBS) BOM
SAP BOM
Single level BOM & Multi Level BOM
With the use of the Bill of Material master data, you can create a list of materials required for
producing an end product. The end product can be an assembly or a sub assembly.
Bill of materials in SAP is always created as single level bill of materials. Each level that is
produced individually is represented by a Single Bill of Materials. All these relevant
individual Single BOM subassembly levels if joined together form a Multi level BOM.
In general every product that is to be manufactured or subcontracted in SAP has a single level
BOM. A combination of single level Bill of material exploded from top to bottom is called a
multilevel Bill of Material.
For example
The Single level Bill of material of an Assembly A is as below
A (Base qty = 1 EA)
B = 2 EA (Raw Material)
C = 2 EA (Assembly)
The Single level Bill of material of a subassembly C is as below
C (Base qty = 1 EA)
E = 1 EA
F = 5 EA
A Multi level Bill of material for A would then be as below. A Multi level Bill of material
is created through joining many single level Bills of materials as shown below:
A (Base qty = 1 EA)
B = 2 EA (Raw Material)
C = 2 EA (Assembly)
E = 2 EA (for producing 2 of C you would require 2 of E and 10 of F)
F = 10 EA
A multi level bill of material is used to evaluate the multi level component requirement for
producing the header material. A multi level BOM is used by the MRP system to
Group BOM
When a BOM for a material remains the same regardless of the plant it is produced in, it is
wise to create a central level BOM which has no reference to any plant, such a concept in
SAP is called "GROUP BOM". You can then extend these Group BOMs' to all the plants
where it is required. Thus you end up referencing the Group BOM to the plants rather than
creating one at the plant which can be time consuming.
When you create a Group BOM, the system uses MARA level or client level materials. A
specific material need not be extended to any plant for creating a Group BOM.
Creating a Group BOM - When you create a Group BOM you can use the same Transaction
code CS01 to create it, but just ignore entering the plant code.
Extending a Group BOM - Using Transaction code CS07 you can extend the Group BOM to
the plant, while doing this you have enter the plant at the bottom of the selection screen and
not the plant option in the field number 2 of the selection screen.
Changing or Deleting and Extension - You can also delete an extension to a plant using
transaction code CS08.
Alternate Bill of Materials
If you have a product that requires many Bill of materials because:
a) of use of varied components periodically or seasonally
b) of use of varied component quantities periodically or seasonally
c) of use of varied components for producing a certain lot size of production
d) of use of varied components quantities for producing a certain lot size of
production
You should then go and create that many bill of material for the same product. This is
possible through SAP BOM alternates.
Every time you create the first alternate SAP allocates the BOM Alternate number as 1, the
second alternate would get the BOM alternate number as 2 so on and so forth. You can
create upto 99 Alternates for a material.
SAP BOM
Creating a Bill of Material
To create a Bill of material (SAP BOM), you need to enter the following:
Enter the following on the selection screen
Material
Enter the material number for which you are creating the Bill of materials.
Plant
Enter the plant; if you are creating plant specific Bill of Materials.
Validity Dates
When you are creating a Bill of Material, you have to Valid from date as todays date or
the BOM creation date. It is always wise to enter the Valid from date which is before or
equal to the Work center validity date, the cost center validity date and the production version
validity date.
BOM Usage
Enter the BOM usage, which would specify the ultimate use of the BOM, i.e., a BOM whose
usage is production can only be used in production or SAP PP, a BOM whose usage is Sales
and Distribution can be used only for explosion in SAP SD (for example - variant
configuration purposes and a Maintenance BOM would be used for Maintenance orders and a
costing BOM will be used of costing purposes only to evaluate the product cost.
Therefore we can say that a BOM usage decides the end use of the BOM.
A BOM with a Universal Usage can be used for Production, Sales, costing, maintenance.
Usage
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
Description
Production
Engineering/Design
Universal
Plant Maintenance
Sales and Distribution
Costing
Empties
Enter the following on the Item screen
Item number
Since SAP gives you a facility to include Material components, texts, documents in the bill of
materials, they need to be arrange sequentially one below the other, to do this you need to
give an item number to each of the items added in the bill.
The standard number range for this number in increments of 0010.
Item Category
Therefore it is clear that a BOM is not only a list of components that is required to
manufacture a product, but it also allows you to include texts, documents as items in the list.
Therefore to avoid any confusion on what is the category of the item that is added, there is
something called item category.
Item Category
C
D
I
K
L
M
N
R
T
Description
Compatible Unit
Document item
PM structure element
Class item
Stock item
Intra material
Non-stock item
Variable-size item
Text item
An item that is added can be a Material component - available in Stock item (something
that would always be available in stock) or a Non-stock item (something that would never be
available in stock and needs to be procured when the production order is created), or a
Variable size item, which is designed with a length, breath and height, or an Intra material
which is produced intermediately in the production processes and is consumed in the process.
It only lasts momentarily in the process (this qty is added with a negative sign)
An item that is added can be a text item (one line text of 40 characters) or a document
item (excel file or CAD Documents, Word document or any other document type).
An Item that is added to the BOM can be a Class item, which is used in variant
configuration to classify and select components belonging to the 200 class type.
In the Picture above:
Item 0010 and Item 0020 is a Raw Material which are assigned in an "alternate group"
Item 0030 is a semi-finished material which has an "Assembly indicator" - Meaning that it
also has a single level BOM
Item 0040 is a Text item to which you can assign any meaningful text for the shop
floor/production to understand.
Item 0050 is a material that is to be received as a by-product or co-product. In this case it is a
by-product.
Quantity and Unit of Measure
Specify the Quantity of the component added to the bill of materials. The unit of measure of
the quantity added is the base unit of measure or the unit of issue mentioned in the material
master Work scheduling views or plant data storage views. You cannot use any other UOM
other than them.
Note Again - The Quantity for a BOM Item is = Qty in base UOM or
= Qty in unit of issue in Matl Master Work
Scheduling view or Plant Storage view
Enter the following on the Item Detail Basic Data screen
Component Scrap
This is the scrap percentage used to increase the required quantities of the components by the
calculated scrap quantity. This increment is used in MRP and SAP PP order.
Operation Scrap
Operation Scrap is that scrap which is expected in one operation for the quantity of a
component to be processed.
Co-product
You can declare a component as a Co-product by specifying it with an indicator here and
adding it with negative sign.
A co-product is a product that is produced during the production of the main header material,
but has an appreciable selling price in the market. It is entered as Stock item in the BOM.
It is astonishing to find out that, when you produce something you can receive the main
header material for which a production order is created as well as the co-product in the same
way (through movement type MIGO or MB31 -101); to do you have to mention settlement
proportion rule in the material or in the order thereby allocating percentage proportion of the
production of each o the items (say 93% of the main header material and 7% of the coproduct). You can only receive the quantities mentioned in the rule.
Fixed Quantity
You can mark a component and the quantities in the BOM as fixed quantities. By doing this
the requirement qty of the component will always remain the same and will not be a multiple
of the production order/planned order demanded quantity.
Recursive component
When you include the header material for which you are creating the BOM, back in to the list
of components as a component used for production, the recursive indicator for that
component should be put on.
For example, to produce H2S04, you require some amount of H2S04 as a Catalyst in the
production process, so H2S04 component in the production of H2S04 is a recursive material
component.
Other example can be use of recursivity when you are creating a BOM for "Reworking",
which means you would be issuing the same material to produce/rework the same material.
Alternate Group
An alternate group is a grouping of components added to the BOM which belong to the same
family. You can include alternates of a family that would co-exist in the BOM and its
withdrawal/reservation for production will depend upon the usage probability, priority,
strategy mentioned.
For example when you are producing a PEN, you require the Plastic A or Plastic B
depending upon the availability in the market.
As soon as you enter an alternative item group in the item detail screen (say =01), you see
an additional dialog box with the following data: ranking order, strategy, usage probability.
The BOM of PEN is as below:
PEN (1 Pen)
Plastic A = 120 gm
(Alternate Group 01 / Priority 1 / Usage probability 100% / Strategy 2)
Plastic B = 125 gm
(Alternate Group 01 / Priority 2 / Usage probability 0% / Strategy 2)
Refill
SAP also provides strategies to help you decide between the alternates in the group.
Strategy 1 = by using strategy 1 in the alternate group, you can make the system withdraw
components for production by using the usage probability (for example A = 70% and B =
30% always). Priority in this case is only used for sorting the materials in the usage order.
Strategy 2 = by using the strategy 2 in the alternate group, you can the system withdraw
components for production only if 100% of any one of them is available. If 100% of none is
available for withdrawal or reservation, the availability check for all items will confirm the
available and in that case the reservation only occurs for the available quantity.
Special procurement & Phantom Assembly
If a certain product is marked with the special procurement = 50 in this view, the phantom
indicator would be put on for the assembly.
A Phantom indicator indicates that the material master level mentioned here or the assembly
level mentioned here is virtual or imaginary and MRP or production should not account for
planning/reservation of this phantom assembly level by itself, though MRP or production
should account for the planning/reservation of all the exploded child components in the
phantom assembly BOM.
Enter the following on the Item Detail Status/Long Text screen
Item Status
Item status is pre-configured. If you are using a Material BOM with an usage Production
which is to be used for production, the item status relevancy to production is auto-checked
along with the costing relevancy indicators.
If you are using the Material BOM with a usage Sales the default indicators of relevancy to
sales will be put on.
You can overpower them for certain components in the BOM as your wish.
Production Storage location
The Production storage location is pulled in from the components Material master MRP 2
view, if it is available there. You can overwrite the value pulled in if you wish to. This is the
location from which the component would be issued for production of the header material.
This is useful information if you would be using material staging.
Enter the following on the BOM Header screen
Base quantity
To create a BOM for a header material; you have to enter the base quantity for which you are
creating the BOM for.
Alternate BOM text
Every BOM alternate needs to be described by a 40 Character text, so as to individually
identify them.
BOM status
You can active a BOM or keep it deactivated by using the BOM status. If a BOM is
deactivated then you can not use anywhere. The BOM status is preconfigured as "Always
Active at creation".
Allocation of BOM Components to the Production Order
Normally the Bill of Material components are allocated to the operations in discrete
manufacturing or the Phases in the Process manufacturing through the Routings or Recipes.
Use of Allocation of Components in Routing/Recipes -
Point number 1 - The allocation of operations or phases to the BOM components in the
Routing or Recipes respectively is created to make a certain component available on the start
date of that operation/phase. When you create a production order or process order with a
Routing/Recipe which is already allocated with components, the MRP and the order creation
programs in SAP use this information to make the component available on the start date of
the operation/phase.
Point number 2 - The allocation of operations or phases to the BOM components in the
Routing or Recipes respectively is created so that the necessary backflush components are
automatically issued when you confirm the respective operation or phase.
If You Dont Allocate an operation or phase to the components SAP assumes that all the components are allocated to the first operation/phase and they
would be available at the start of the Production order/Process order and they will be issued
when the first operation/phase is confirmed.
SAP Phantom BOM
SAP Phantom BOM
A Phantom BOM is a prepetual BOM or an Virtual BOM structure included in the Higher
Level BOM for information purpose.
A Phantom BOM has an header material and components. The Header Material for which
you want to create a Phantom BOM is declared as Phantom Material in the material master
MRP View 2 (the special procurement key should be 52).
A Phantom Level itself is an Virtual level and is not considered as a stockable item in SAP
and SAP Skips this Phantom Level in MRP while planning the overall higher level BOM
structure and does not plan any material or scheduling requirements for the same.
Note: You can nevertheless stock a phantom level by creating the views like accounting,
costing and plant storage location views. The requirement to stock a Phantom Level can only
arise in very minimal number of business cases.
For example:
Normal BOM:
A Car has Left Front tyre, Left Back Tyre, Right Front Tyre and Right Back Tyre, Which can
be represented as below:
CAR
Left Front Tyre
Right Front Tyre
Left Back Tyre
Right Back Tyre
Adding a Phantom Level to a Normal BOM:
You can add a Phantom Level in the above BOM as below:
CAR
Tyres (Phantom Level)
Left Front Tyre
Right Front Tyre
Left Back Tyre
Right Back Tyre
The Level - "Tyres" is an Virtual level (an useless level) which is added in the overall BOM
structure for information purpose and SAP will not plan the requirement for the material "Tyre" but it will plan the requirements for Materials Left Front Tyre, Right Front Tyre, Left
Back Tyre and Right Back Tyre.
Other Uses of Phantom BOM:
It is a know fact that every BOM Level is to be produced through seperate production order
or process orders. Though if you want to have 2 (assembly level and sub-assembly level)
levels in the same order, you can declare the sub-assembly level as a phantom level, which
would result in creating only one order for the assembly level while the sub-assembly level
would be exploded in this production order as components and you would aviod creating the
sub-assembly level order.
