17.02.2017

Batch an­a­ly­sis in SAP® MM

For many a production process it is not enough to conduct an analysis just at material level. Instead you have to look at single batches of a material. This blog post points to SAP® transactions and associated tables that may be needed for the job. Typical questions in this context concern batch attributes like production date or shelf expiration date, whether or not valuated unrestricted use stock, and what is the stock situation.

A requirement is the labeling "Subject to batch management" for the particular material:

Figure 1 – Labeling of a material as "Subject to batch management"

SAP® documentation states that the label can be set manually. But if the valuation procedure calls for single batch valuation (defined at plant level), labeling is automatic. Whether or not material stock is available also affects alterability: This is not possible if stock is available in the current period or preceding period.

The attribute "Subject to batch management" has the technical field name XCHPF and can be found in the table MARA (Material master). This can be followed in SAP® GUI by the transaction MM03 (Display material master) in the shot "Sales: General/Plant"), which was also used for Figure 1.

The next steps depend on whether you are interested in general attributes of batches, or attention is also drawn to batch stock. Shelf expiration date, for instance, is a general attribute of a batch. The following screenshot shows date of production and shelf expiration date, based on SAP® transaction MSC3N (Display batch).

Figure 2 – Date of production and shelf expiration date of a batch

The top part of the screen shows the material number and organizational units that must be stated. Extra to the number of the actual material, the batch number must be entered as well as the plant. Analogous to the usual SAP® system this corresponds to the key fields in the particular table in which the contents are stored. For the batch attributes this is the MCHA table, the field for the shelf expiration date is VFDAT, the information "Available from" is saved in VERAB.

Another step is necessary to include batch stock in the analyses:

This is done by clicking on "Environment" and then on "Stock overview" in the SAP® navigation menu. Then you see a listing of the individual stock of this batch:

To display all batch stocks of one storage location, you can use SAP T-CODE MMBE using the criteria material / plant / storage location. SAP will then display all batches which are assigned to that storage location including the quantity in stock.

Figure 3 – Stock per batch (SAP® GUI)

For the purpose of analysis you need a further table: SAP® table MCHB saves stock per batch at the level of storage location; the field name for this is MCHB_CLABS (valuated unrestricted use stock). The following screenshot shows the data of the MCHB table in ACL™ Analytics, extracted by dab:Exporter. It is easy to recognize the system, how the SAP® display in Figure 3 is stored with batches C2, C3, C4 and C6 with the appropriate stock.

Figure 4 – Stock per batch (data view)

We hope this has given you an initial eye-opening start into the exciting subject of batch management in SAP®.

For any comments on this article, feel free to write us at info@dab-gmbh.de.


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