Auto populate variant characterstics values in sales order

Question

Hi Sapients,
we are trying to configure variant configuration at sales order level. We have created several characterstic and assigned it to class. Now some of the characterstics will be fixed at material level and some of the characterstics are dependent on the values supplied by the user in sales order. we have created characterstics like grade, profile, size, length, tdc number , tdc date, tdc customer, hardness, composition etc and assigned it to class salesspec ( class type 300 ).The characterstics like profile, grade, size, length are entered in the material master itself.
TDC related details like tdc no, tdc date, tdc customer, hardness, composition will be entered through a ZPROGRAM and the details will be stored in ZTABLE (ZTDC) where TDC number wll be the primary key and the respective details will be stored here.Now when we create sales order, after entering the material and clicking on variant configuration, the configuration screen comes up where the user will enter the appropriate TDC number . based on the TDC no entered by the users , the other dependent values like TDC date, tdc customer, hardness, chemical composition needs to be automatically populated in the sales order variant configuration screen .
Please guide me how to resolve this issue. shall i create dependency based on TDC no. In dependecy what is the code i have to write . Please elaborate in detail as i dont have idea on dependency.
Is it possible through user exit.
Thanks

Answer 1

Starting right is the first significant step. Looking at the answers to my questions, I think your industry certainly needs VC as also righty figured out by you. VC is a long way to go, and in my opinion you will need good experts handle this situation. In VC you will discover thatt there are 10 different ways to achieve the same outcome, but what matters is which solution you choose. This will depend upon a oot of factors during producg modelling, cutting the classification system, bulding configuration profiles, etc.
To give you a guideline:
1. You have 2 situtations MTO and MTS. MTO is 100% configurable material and MTS is where your KMAT will be replaced by an SKU (stock-kept-unit). For this you should emply variant type matching functionality. It's explained in SAP LO-VC help. Let me know if you do not have it.
2. For MTO you build classification system thoroughly to classifiy your products accordingly. This also involves creation of cstics. Ensure that you don't want to create cstics you will need to abondon in future.
3. To answer your question in the post: Steps involved in VC are:
a. create cstics, assign them to relevant class (type 300)
b. assign class to material CL20N or in configuration profile.
c. create configuration profile for material CU41 and write your object dependency (OB type = procedure)
d. In your OD (procedure) employ a table, say ZTDC. This is not ABAP table but a variant table created via CU61 and values maintained in CU60
e. your code in OD may look like this:
TABLE ZTDC
(TDC_NO = TDC_NO,
TDC_DAT = $SELF.TDC_DAT,
TDC_CUST = $SELF.TDC_CUST,
TDC_HRD = $SELF.TDC_HRD)
Here, TDC_NO is the key field you should define while table creation and when this is keyed in by users the other elements get determined autmoatically as per the varaint table.
Hope this helps. Let me know if you face any issues. Thank you.
- Nikhil.