Configurable Bill of Material in SAP GTS Compliance Management

What does SAP standard offer?

Legal control functionality in SAP GTS Compliance Management supports license determination at the bill of material (BOM) level. However, the explosion of BOM components is not preconfigured in SAP standard and has to be implemented.

Legal control licensing requirements are normally considered on finished goods in a sales and delivery document. Finished goods are represented by material number and product classification (for example Export Control Classification number) and components consumed by the production are not relevant for Legal control checks.

What is the Business Scenario?

Besides that, especially by configurable BOMs, there are special business cases where particular components can change the character of the finished goods and therefore Legal Control check on component level is required.

Let’s take a simple example of a Laptop in multiple configurations (processor type, display type, HDD type etc.) and let’s say that processor in one of the configuration requires dual-use export license. From SAP point of view, laptop is a configurable BOM – KMAT type (Material number ZXPS_DELL_7590) and contains components dynamically assembled by the chosen configuration characteristics within the sales document.

Laptop configuration that contains 56WHR 3-Cell battery, i5-9300H CPU and 15.6” 4K UHD Display does not require a license, as BOM material number as well as component material numbers are not classified as dual-use in SAP GTS. Sales & Distribution (SD) document with this configuration will not be blocked by SAP GTS. Below image shows the BOM component tree with material numbers.

Processor i7-9750H (Material number ZXPS_CPU_I7_9750H) is classified in SAP GTS as dual-use relevant and subject of Legal control licensing. SD document that contains Laptop with this processor should be blocked by SAP GTS and Export license requested.

KMAT creation

Configurable Bill of Material has to be created and configured in several steps:

Initially create Configurable Bill of Material similar to standard material in SAP ERP Material Master [MM01] and mark with configurable flag in Basic Data 2 Tab. Item category equal ‘0002’ or ‘0004’ in Sales org. 2 tab can be selected.
Create Super BOM with all possible components [CS01]
Maintain Characteristics for Configuration [CT04]
Create Variant Class and assign Characteristics [CL01]
Create Configuration Profile [CU41]
Create Object Dependencies [CU01]
Assign Object Dependencies to Super BOM Components [CS02]
Configuration can be simulated via Configuration Simulation [CU50]

Customizing in SAP GTS

Assumption for standard Legal Control functionality is creation and activation of Legal Regal regulation, definition of License types and maintenance of Determination Strategy. In our example, let’s use Legal regulation “ZDUAL”.

BOM Components check can be enabled in SAP GTS customizing Global Trade Services > Compliance Management > Legal Control > Control Settings for Legal Control for used Legal Regulation:

“Determination for All BOM Items” takes every relevant BOM component separately into consideration during license determination. “Determination Ends at First Check” searches for a first license assigned to a BOM component, the subsequent BOM components are ignored.

BAdI implementation in SAP ERP

As mentioned before, SAP Standard does not offer BOM explosion during the transfer of SD document to GTS. This functionality can be implemented in the following BAdIs for SD0A (Sales Order) documents:

1. /SAPSLL/IFEX_SD0A_R3

2. /SAPSLL/BOM_SD0A_R3

The conditions, when the logic should be executed is requirements-dependent. It can be for example activated for all KMAT materials by checking the kmat_indicator = ‘X’ in is_itm_cdoc-gen as shown on the below screenshot or advanced logic can be implemented using customizing table.

Function module ‘/SAPSLL/KMATBOM_EXPLODE_R3’ can be called to get the exploded BOM components.

Similar solution can be implemented for the SD0B documents.

Process Steps

Create Sales Order

Standard Sales Order is created via transaction VA01 and contains KMAT with chosen configuration. In our case, characteristics using processor i7 will be selected.

By saving of the Sales Order document is transferred to GTS and newly developed code is executed. As soon as GTS identifies the incoming document that contains BOM and exploded components, GTS blocks the document.

SD document will be initially ALWAYS blocked by legal control!

Display Document in GTS

Document processing log in SAP GTS Area Menu > SAP Compliance Management > Legal Control – Export > Display Blocked Documents displays the blocked status of the document and information about incoming Bill of Product (BOP is a different name for BOM in GTS system).

Particular components of the BOP can be displayed in the document in GTS by clicking on the eyeglasses button next to the BOP ID within the item data. Components are not yet checked by Legal Control Export. Every document that contains BOP will be simply blocked and message “Document item has a bill of product and will be checked later” displayed.

BOM explosion

Finally the transaction /SAPSLL/CUHD_BOM_EXP or path SAP GTS Area Menu > SAP Compliance Management > Legal Control – Export > Worklist of Document-Related BOPs > Explode and Check Document BOPs is able to explode the BOP components and execute legal control export for them.

Notice the checkbox “Delete BOM” in this transaction. BOM is stored as a workload in GTS temporarily. It will be deleted after it is exploded. Eyeglasses button next to the BOP ID in the GTS document mentioned before will disappear as well.

Once the transaction is executed, log displays the components as separated subitems and component that requires a license is blocked.

Let’s go back to Legal Control – Export log in SAP GTS Area Menu > SAP Compliance Management > Legal Control – Export > Display Blocked Documents. Now the Legal regulation and license determination parameters are shown for every particular component. In our case, subitem B000100001 represents processor i7 and was blocked by Legal Regulation ZDUAL.

It is now finally possible to maintain the export license for the component under SAP GTS Area Menu > SAP Compliance Management > Legal Control – Export > Maintain Export Licenses and recheck the document SAP GTS Area Menu > SAP Compliance Management > Legal Control – Export > Recheck Documents. Document is released after assignment of a valid export license.

Verdict

BOM itself is in most cases subject of Legal Control Export regardless of its components. In other words BOM does not always require an export license, if its component requires export license. BOM explosion in Compliance Management is therefore used quite rarely.

SAP provides basis for the BOM explosion solution, but it requires custom development on the feeder system. On the other hand SAP GTS is preconfigured to work with BOM components. There are anyway still consequences to be considered within the O2C process:

At first, all SD documents transferred to GTS including BOM will be initially blocked and checked/released at first after execution of BOM explosion transaction in GTS.
Second critical point is the license determination on component level only. Export license can be assigned only to component and NOT to the BOM, license contains Export classification number and quantity/value of the component. That can cause problems by quantity/value based licenses.
Third problem can appear if Export control classification number should be printed on Invoice/Delivery note. This number is usually assigned to a material number (often MAEX table in SAP ECC or another source in SAP S/4). Invoice/Delivery note documents contain only line item with BOM and not the components. As only component is classified with Export control classification number, printing of this number for BOM needs a separately developed solution.