Class Items 

In a BOM for a configurable material, you can enter a class in which materials or documents are classified as an item. When you configure the material, the class is replaced by one or more materials, according to the characteristic values assigned.

Advantages

For products with many variants, class items make the bill of material easier to maintain.

  • The class item is used as a placeholder for an item, and has several objects allocated to it (for example, screws from different suppliers). Each object has a unique identifier in the class. Which object is replaced for the class item depends on the characteristic values that are required for a particular configuration of the material.
  • If you enter all the possible objects for an item individually, you must allocate a selection condition to each item, so that only the component you require is selected when you configure the material.

If you use a class item, you no longer need to maintain these selection conditions. When you configure the material, the system selects the component whose characteristic values in the class are identical to those required for this material.

Material requirements planning (MRP) is supported for class items. In Customizing functions for MRP, you can define that a check is made in MRP as to whether an order BOM exists. If an order BOM does exist, requirements for a material selected from a class item are transferred to MRP.

Disadvantage

In a class item, the item quantity is always the same, regardless of which classified material is selected. For this reason, only use class items in cases where you use the same quantity of different materials.

Selecting an object during configuration

A class item can only contain a class for materials or a class for documents. The class type of the class defines which object type (material or document) is classified in the class.

The class in a class item has characteristics. Different characteristic values are assigned to the objects that are classified in the class. During configuration, an object is selected on the basis of these values.

Before you can enter data that is relevant to the object classified in a class item, you must define a resulting item category.

If the class type supports material items, you can choose one of the following resulting item categories:

      • Stock item,
      • Non-stock item (with reference to a material master record)
      • Variable-size item,
      • PM structure element.

If you configure a BOM, and the system cannot select one material, you see an inconsistency message. You then need to specify more data for the class item.

For more information, see the R/3 Library, under CA Classification Guide.

Before you use a class as a class item:

The following requirements must be met before you can use a class as a class item:

  • The class must be created with a class type that allows the use of classes in BOMs. In the standard R/3 System, for example, the following class types are supported in BOMs:
    • 200 Material (configurable objects)
    • 201 Document (configurable objects)
    • 300 Variants
  • The class type must allow the objects (material, document) classified in the class to be used in BOMs.
  • Under the additional class data, you must specify how the class is to be used in BOMs.

You must enter the following data for the component determined by class selection:

    • Item category

In the bill of material, you enter the class with the item category class item. The item category that the component is to have is the resulting item category. You assign this item category to the component when you enter a class item.

    • Base unit of measure
    • Can one or several objects of the class be selected?

For information on maintaining classes, refer to the R/3 library, under CA Classification System.