AVC Material Variants for S4HANA

One of the exciting new features in S4H will be the ability to determine a Closest-Match Material Variant. This new search functionality for Material Variants goes above and beyond existing ECC functionality by providing a list of partial matches as well as a quick comparison of configuration...

Categories: SAP Solutions

Tags: Configuration, SAP, SAP Solutions, Tech Tips + Tricks

Why is my BOM not exploding?

It’s a common experience: you create the BOM, go to the configurator, fill the conditions, try to explode the BOM and… no items show up. If you want to explode a BOM in a Production Order, you’ll want to build the BOM with Production-Relevant line items. If you want to...

Categories: SAP Solutions

Tags: SAP, SAP Solutions, Tech Tips + Tricks, Variant Configuration, BOM

SAP VC: Best Practices and Warnings for Change Management

Engineering Change management (ECM) is a powerful feature of SAP.  It allows you to implement changes using effectivity dates and keep a thorough history of changes made to most VC elements. ECM lets you keep VC elements in two states: before the change, and after the change.  This is...

Categories: SAP Solutions

Tags: SAP, SAP Solutions, Tech Tips + Tricks, Variant Configuration

Configure to Stock in SAP ERP

"It's not that easy for us to do" doesn’t garner much empathy in market anymore.  A particularly candid customer once told us "just because it is difficult for you doesn’t make it more valuable for me".  Is it difficult for you to handle low volume (i.e. special) product configurations?  The conventional thinking is that focusing only on high volume configurations will generate greater efficiencies that translate into better margins.  But consider that many customers prefer a single supplier that can provide whatever configurations they need.  To them, they are all just products.  They are special in your eyes, not your customer's.  Uh oh.

Categories: SAP Solutions

Tags: Configuration, SAP

Order BOMs

Engineered products can be pretty complex.  In some cases, a VC model can be written that covers all the possible combinations that can be built.  Other times that’s unreasonable.  There are too many “once a year” options and customer special requests to ever...

Categories: SAP Solutions

Tags: Configuration, SAP, Variant Configuration

Interoperating Platforms: What is Interoperation & why should I care?

If you read my “Don’t Wait, Integrate” and “Go Native AND Integrate” blog series, then welcome to the sequels.  Unlike most sequels, these won’t be just a rehash of the originals.  There is so much new ground to cover!  Platform evolution, cloud commerce and middleware, indirect access, and IoT are on the minds of many IT professionals these days, and I hope to give you a glimpse of what eLogic is doing in this new series of blogs.  

Categories: Microsoft Solutions, SAP Solutions

Tags: Dynamics 365 for Sales, Go Native, Integration

How SAP PLM Supported a Move to the Variant Configurator [ASUG Presentation]

Lincoln Electric (The Harris Products Group) + eLogic to present at the ASUG Annual Conference  Using Configuration to Automate Product Creation + Maintenance Organizing your products in the SAP Product Lifecycle Management application (SAP PLM) provides benefits that reach...

Categories: SAP Solutions, News + Events

Tags: ASUG, Configuration, SAP

Changing Characteristics

Sometimes, despite your best efforts, you have to go back and change things after you’ve gone several miles down the road.  Characteristics can be one of those things. I have a tendency to create characteristics as simply as possible.  I make them CHAR unless there’s a real reason not to.  I only make them as long as the longest value I currently have...

Categories: SAP Solutions

Tags: Tech Tips + Tricks