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Application Area – MM

Overview

Material numbering plays an important role in material management. Every material range from raw material to trading goods must have a unique material number to identity itself in the company. For manufacturing company, there must be a verified material numbering rules to support daily manufacturing activities.

SAP provides two methods for material numbering. One is internal assignment, the other is external assignment. When creating the material master, if leave the material number blank, the system will assign a number automatically, otherwise your entered material number will be checked against the defined number range.

The material number in R/3 is technically defined as an eighteen byte, character field.The logic that formats material numbers is contained in a conversion exit and is controlled by configuration tables, number range objects and standard R/3 customer functions.

Configuration Detail

This configuration setting enables to set up material numbering rule and material number range.

1. Follow the menu path: IMG-Logistics General-Material Master-Basic Settings-Define Output Format for Material Numbers. T-code: OMSL

2. Enter the maximum length of the material number that can be entered or displayed.

a) Material number template controls the format of material numbers, in particular, it defines the positions at which the system is to insert additional characters.
b) Lexicographical defines the way numeric material numbers are stored in the database. This indicator makes it possible to distinguish material number ‘000000000000000123′ and ‘123′.
c) Leading zeros specify whether a numeric material number is to be shown with leading zeros to fill up its defined length.If lexicographical indicator is set, it is meaningless of leading zero indicator. If lexicographical indicator is not set, the leading zero will be appended to material number for a numeric material number.

3. Maintain the material number range. Follow the menu path: IMG – Logistics General – Basic Settings – Material Types – Define Number Ranges for Each Material Type. T-Code: MMNR.

General T-Code for SAP number range is SNRO. Enter number range object name ‘MATERIALNR’, it will also lead you to below screen.


4. Create groups. You can group a couple of material types and assign the group to a number range interval.

a) create a new group

b) Assign the group to a number range interval.

c) Assign a material type to the group.

d) Add the defined material number range to a trasport manually.