Welcome to the next blog. In the last blog we focused on creation of manufacturing bill of material.
If you have missed it please find the link below.
Conversion of Engineering BOM to Manufacturing BOM (VEMP) | SAP Blogs
In this blog we will discuss about Shop floor routing.
Shop floor routing usage and concept
For working on manufacturing BOM, we need to have series of operations with which the operator can perform the activities.
In this scenario normal routing does not suffice for which SAP has provided a special type of version based routing known as Shop Floor Routing. The shop floor routing is used for manufacturing bill of materials. The manufacturing bill of material and shop floor routing together creates a production version, henceforth is used for performing the activities.
The shop floor routing is more relevant to the manufacturing solution. Shop floor routing has some of the most helpful out of box solutions like activities, buyoffs, qualification. interactive process instructions etc.
Creation of a shop floor routing
Shop floor routing can be created in any of the below 3 ways :
- Directly from the VEMP UI
- Via the app “Manage shop floor routing”
- Via T-Code MSFR1.
The shop floor routing is similar to the normal routing but with some extra features, and can only be used for Manufacturing BOM. Any other BOM usage other than MBOM will not work and give you an error.
For every shop floor routing further integration are also possible for example
The use of different types of parameters in the above screenshot is as follows.
Flexible Processing – The operations can be processed or used in any sequence
Execution in SAP ME – Execution with be done in SAP MES (MES Integration)
ERP Integration – This routing can be used or transferred to planning and used in normal routings.
We have the possibility to create three hierarchies
Operations : Operations is the initial header which contains the activities and the groups. It is the header placeholder for the detailed activities.
Activities : Activities are more details of the operations to be performed by the operator. In shop floor routing activities are the main level at which you can control various features and in shop floor orders as well, activities are the key task to be performed.
Group : A group is used to group together activities, which can be performed in series or parallel. It is also used to specify the relationship between two activities or operations.
One more important aspect from the Shop floor routing T-Codes and apps are Workspaces
Different Types of Workspaces are there :
Structure Workspace : The complete structure of the routing can be created here. For example Operations, activities and groups.
Component Assignment Workspace : In this workspace the Manufacturing BOM components can be assigned to the operations or activities.
Details Workspace : In this workspace we define each operation and activities in more detail. The operation details are pretty similar to that of the options from normal routing. But the activities details are additional functionalities which are new.
Auxiliary Data Workspace : This workspace is used to access and check the PMI data, which in turn is attached to the engineering snapshot along with the 3D visuals.
If we see under the details of Workspace activities there are some salient features which are good to be highlighted and be used from processing.
Work Instructions : We can create interactive work instructions which the operator can use to enter the required information for the order while working on shop floor orders. We can maintain the work instruction based on the language and add the components or the inspection characteristics or PRTs or Image or text to the Work Instructions.
HR Qualification : If you mention the qualification then only a qualified person will be able to perform the activity, if the qualification is not adequate SAP will not allow to perform the work.
Buyoffs : Buyoffs are the validation added to the activities. If the the operator has completed the task then via Buyoffs a quality person or the supervisor can do digital validation of the performed activity. Buyoffs cycle can also be added which is nothing but grouping of various buyoffs.
Once we have mentioned all the information about the routing. We can create the shop floor routing by releasing the routing.
Always remember the same principle – Once the shop floor routing has been released, it cannot be changed. If any new process or operation needs to be incorporated a new version has to be created.
Once the shop floor routing is created a new production version can be created from the same transaction which links the shop floor and the manufacturing BOM together.
I hope this blog helps !! See you in the next one.
