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:
- Setup material as Sub-Contracting material. Special Procurement key 30
- 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
- Create Sub Contracting PIR for each vendor
- 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.