Production Area

Used for production capacity planning, it requires mandatory setup of a capacity calendar for production.

In the "Posting" section, you can find:

Direct Unit Cost: Also known as direct labor cost, it is the planned production cost per unit of measure for the production area. Typically, the following are specified:

• Costs per minute for internal production areas.
• Unit costs for external production areas.

Subcontractor No.: Direct link to the vendor, mandatory for external production areas and recommended for internal ones, with additional fields populated as specified in the vendor card.

Consumption Method: Specifies how consumption quantity is recorded in the production area:

• Manual: Consumption is recorded manually in output or production postings.
• Forward: Consumption is calculated and recorded automatically when the production order is released.
• Backward: Consumption is calculated and recorded automatically when the production order is closed.

For material consumption settings, refer to the definition of additional raw material fields in the raw materials master data.

In the "Planning" section, you can find:

Unit of Measure Code: This is the time unit used to calculate the cost of the specified production area (days, minutes, hours).

Additional Vendor Master Data Fields

Below is the mandatory setup for defining a vendor as a subcontractor in the production area.

Subcontractor: Identifies if coded as a subcontractor; this should be selected.

Subcontractor Location Code: Defines the warehouse used for component transfers; it is recommended to define a warehouse for each vendor-subcontractor.

Subcontractor Inventory Management: Selected to enable inventory control for the subcontractor's location.

Internal Subcontractor: If the selected code is associated with a production area, it follows the same management methods as external production areas, even if it is an in-house operation. Selecting this option will automatically activate the following operational modes for the production area in question:

• Subcontracting orders will be generated similarly to an external production area.
• Shipping documents will be generated with a predefined serial number.
• When the subcontracting order is closed, the cost used for warehouse valuation will be the one specified on the subcontracting order.

Linked to Production Area: Indicates if selected in a production area.

Additional Raw Material Fields

In this section, only fields relevant to defining production areas are shown. Located in the replenishment section, the consumption method allows the selection of the component deduction mode.

For components with the consumption method set to "Backward", the system calculates and deducts the consumed component quantities when the phase or production order is completed and/or advanced. If set to "Manual", consumption postings must be entered manually during phase advancement. If set to "Forward", materials will be deducted when the production order is released.

For remaining values:

• "Pick + forward".
• "Pick + backward".
• "Pick + manual".

The meanings are practically the same as the previous methods, but the context in which they are used is typical for location and/or bin-managed materials, where movements occur during picking.

Particular attention during component configuration is required for defining the rounding precision field, which determines the number of decimal places used for management.