During my initial days of SAP consulting, I was asked to explain sub-contracting functionality and setup. Being a logistics consultant I was able to answer it with ease and explain the functionality and setup required for it to work in SAP.

Then I was asked how sending different BOMs based on vendor could be accomplished using Sub-Contracting in SAP.  This question required a bit of research.

I was all over the SAP help portal trying to find an answer to the question, and as usual it was buried knee deep.  I was surprised to find out that the requested functionality was a standard functionality available in SAP.  Below are the steps on how to send different components of the same material based on sub-contracting vendor:

1. Setup material as Sub-Contracting material. Special Procurement key 30
2. Create Production versions with different BOMs for the sub-contracting material. Ex: Production version 1 will have a BOM with components A,B,C. Production version 2 will have a BOM with components A,E,F
3. Create Sub Contracting PIR for each vendor
4. Assign the correct production version to the PIR by vendor

When Purchase requisition or Purchase order is created for the sub-contract vendor, the correct BOM is read based on the production version assigned to the PIR.