Describe products and released products
You can use Product information management in Supply Chain Management to create and maintain an enterprise product repository. This repository has the definitions of all the products an organization buys, stores, distributes, manufactures, and sells.
You can choose from two product types:
Item: You buy items that you use for consumption or distribution resale. You include items in the production of manufactured bill of materials items.
Service: You use services, for example, to quantify hours bought or sold.
Product types can be broken into two product subtypes: Product and Product master.
A product is a uniquely identifiable product. It serves as a core product that doesn't vary. Therefore, you can't associate product dimensions with the definition.
For example, let’s consider a carton of eggs. You sell the carton without breaking any eggs. The number of eggs are the same within each carton. We can consider a carton of eggs as a product, which doesn't have any variant based on the product dimensions, like color, size, style, or configuration.
To create a new product, you navigate to the Product information management > Products > Products page. Product isn't a legal entity–specific page, which means you can access the product page from all the legal entities.
The product page has the following features:
You can associate storage dimension and tracking dimension with a product on the Product page**.**
You can associate a product with a product category hierarchy and a product catalog.
You can't use a product for inventory transactions unless you release it to a legal entity. To release a product to a specific legal entity, you need to select the Release products button in the action pane of the Products page. The system shows you all the legal entities available in the system. You need to select the legal entity where you release the product.
Once released, you can find the product under the Released products page of the specific legal entity. You can access this page from Product information management > Products.
Consider a multi-national company that has one finished product. The company sells the product in different countries/regions through subsidiaries in the respective countries/regions. In such a situation, you need to create the product that isn't legal-entity specific. Then you need to release the product in different legal entities where you want to sell the product. In different legal entities, the price, discount, inventory, and costing are different for the same product. Therefore, you should configure all other products on the Released products page, which could differ across legal entities based the country/region requirements.
The following FastTabs are included on the Released products page. These FastTabs provide a wide range of product functionalities.
The General FastTab contains information related to product type and subtype, along with product name and item name. Item name is the code of the product in a specific legal entity. It can be different from the product code. You also define product names, item model groups, and dimensions on this FastTab.
The Purchase FastTab contains product information for purchase operations, which includes unit, purchase price, charge groups, discount groups, over/under delivery thresholds, and item sales tax groups.
The Sell FastTab contains product information for sales operations, which includes units, sales price, charge groups, discount groups, commission groups, over/under delivery thresholds, and item sales tax groups.
The Manage inventory FastTab contains weight measurement and the physical dimension of the product. You can also set up the batch number group and serial number group if the relevant tracking dimension is enabled for the product. This FastTab also contains counting groups, packaging information, catch weight setup, and product compliance data.
The Engineer FastTab is an important FastTab for manufacturing companies to define bills of materials (BOMs). Production type is a useful field that you configure on the FastTab that defines how the product will be used during the production process. Other information, including BOM units, scrap details, and calculation groups are also available on this FastTab.
The Manage costs FastTab holds the Item group information that helps you post transactions to the ledger book. It contains other information such as cost groups, inventory cost units, and ABC classification details.
The Warehouse is an important FastTab for warehouse-specific items, which includes unit sequence groups, minimum pick quantities, pack size categories, catch weight item handling policies, and fixed product locations.
The Released products page has a series of action pane menus with several functionalities associated to products.
On the Product menu, you can create and apply product templates to speed up the product creation process. You can also configure the dimension groups and reservation hierarchy from this menu. You use category hierarchies for many reasons, including both efficiency and increased productivity. In addition to category hierarchies, you can use product attributes to define the details that you want to keep for your products, such as brands, manufacturer, and model. Product attributes define other details that you want to record for a particular product or category.
Under the Purchase menu, you can view the purchase price and associated discounts. You can also view the trade agreements for the selected product and find the vendor invoice matching policies.
Under the Sell menu, you can view the sales price and associated discounts. You can also view the trade agreements for the selected product and find the available-to-promise (ATP) information.
From the Manage inventory menu, you can check the on-hand inventory and item-related transactions. You can review all the batches associated to the item. This menu contains information related to quality and compliance.
The Engineer menu helps product engineers and managers manufacture the new product, approve BOMs quickly, accelerate product introductions, and approve products for production. You can also define the production route for the manufacturing items.
The Plan menu is required for master planning configuration. Here, you can define the item coverage and default order settings that are required to run master planning.
The Manage costs menu defines the setup for calculating inventory cost.
We'll cover product masters in the next unit.