Maintaining Stocks at WM Level

Question

Dear All,
I have a request from the business whether we could maintain stock at WM level without account assignment. That is stocks are GRN in IM Level with account assignment and when it comes to WM level the stocks should not be based on Account Assignment.
From the system behavioural pattern i believe this is not possible, the reason they are insisting on this is due to the following factors.
1. Our industry is Apparel and with regard to Raw Materials like fabric our present practical scenario is such that we GRN stocks in IM based on Sales Order / Line item. So for eg:
PO/LI    - Material A - 200yds - SO/LI1 ( SU 1, SU 2)
PO/LI2  - Material A - 100yds - SO/LI2 ( SU3)
So when the GRN is done the stocks are allocated for the respective Sales Order / Line items. Physically we have three SU (100 each) satisfying the two Sales Order/ line items. So when the user wants to issue for a production order he has the flexibility to select either of the three SUs to satisfy SO/LI1 or SO/LI2 (without the WM system in place)
With WM in place the storage units would be allocated for the respective sales order / Line items as shown above SO/LI1 (SU1 & SU2) & SO/LI2 (SU3). Now the user does not have the flexibility to issue SU3 for SO/LI1.
( The reason the business follows this practice is due to the fact that the product (Fabric) has quite a lot of characteristics such as Width, Shrinkage, Shade so only after the inspection process do they know which SU satisfies which SO/LI.
How do we overcome an issue like this, since at the point of GRN ( MM & WM) we cannot gurantee the correct SUs are getting allocated for the correct SO/LI. As a temporary measure i am doing an MB1B (413) process to switch SUs between SO/LI. Is there any other way i could mitigate this issue, 
2. The second issue is during stock counts
   Since with WM in place all the SUs will be specific to Sales Order / Line items but when the stores do a stock count they do
   based on material / SU alone and are not aware how much yardage is available for SO/LI at Storage Unit Level. Thus the   
   continous inventory process breaks the stock at SU ( SO/LI Level). Do i have to create a seperate ZPROGRAM to facilitate the
   stock count process or is there any way i could do a continous count for material & SU without taking into account the SO/LI.
Hope my queries are clear, would appreciate a response
Thanks
Shabeen Buhary

Answer 1

Hello,
Based on my understanding . You are receiving goods with "E" stock ( special stock indicator). This E indicator comes with sales order number and line item will be stored( ex: E '151'000020) in the IM and WM stock. (you can see this in LS26/MMBE once you receive).So you canot issue this item for another line item of the same order. Coming to the questions you raised
1. "whether we could maintain stock at WM level without account assignment?".
What ever comes from IM will be the same in WM. So you can not change the stock indicator value only in WM while issuing goods to a specific on hand orders with "E" indicator. I hope you should do a process change either in SD/IM area than in WM. Because  you said that "product (Fabric) has quite a lot of characteristics such as Width, Shrinkage, Shade only after the inspection process do they know which SU satisfies".
and So when you are creating a sale order of that kind you should have either not having the specific purchase( E stock ) or should have a BATCH with characteristics. OR you should transfer the stock to quality for quality inspection and then make available for issue. Either way you need to see this issue beyond WM level because this is a process of (SD/IM/FI) cross function.
2. "is there any way i could do a continous count for material & SU without taking into account the SO/LI.?".
I hope NOT.
I could not understand yardage problem while counting.i don't know if any physical material handling problem in warehouse will intern effect of your continuous counting.
I Hope looking more options in Batch/quality/sales order areas will certainly help you..... thanks
tkreddy