Subcontracting is a critical process for many organizations, and from an SD consultant’s perspective it’s quite unique.  Let’s take a closer look at the handoff from Purchasing to the SD Delivery.  Read on for more about the SAP Subcontracting PO Delivery Setup.

What is Subcontracting?

In general terms, subcontracting is the outsourcing of some process to an external vendor.  Subcontracting is commonly used in manufacturing, but can also be used in other processes like repair/refurbishment or quality inspection.

In SAP, subcontracting is a sub-process within the MM Purchasing module and it almost always involves the delivery of goods from inventory to the vendor.  To illustrate with an example, your company manufactures lenses.  Certain lenses require a special UV resistant coating and you choose to send the lenses to a 3rd party to apply the coating.  You create a delivery for the lenses to be shipped to your vendor.  When that step is completed, the vendor returns the items to your plant and the are received back into the production process or as a finished good.

SAP Subcontracting Process Overview

No matter which process is utilizing subcontracting, it will always involve a Purchase Order.  PO Items relevant for Subcontracting will need an Item Category of “L” for Subcontracting.  Adding this value will open up the “Components” button located on the item Material Data tab.  This is where you maintain all the components which need to be sent to the vendor.  This can be done either manually or through the use of a BOM.

Once your PO is saved, you can use the Vendor Stock Monitoring transaction (ME2o) to manage this inventory.  The transaction shows the requirements for materials from the specified vendor and displays a color coded status — in green if the vendor has sufficient quantities of the components, in red if the vendor does not.  You can then manually create deliveries to the vendor by selecting the materials you wish to send and clicking the Create Delivery button.

Subcontracting Delivery Configuration

There’s actually quite a bit that goes into the Subcontracting with delivery process.  First, we’ll start with…

Prerequisites

It goes without saying that you’ll need some basic things setup before tackling the rest of this process:

• Relating to Enterprise Structure, you’ll need some basics:
  • Your delivering plant must be setup.  This is the plant specified on your PO as the originating plant for the components.
  • A Sales Area must be setup and assignable to your Vendor/Customer.
• And, of course, your Master Data must be setup:
  • Your vendor master must be setup in your Purchasing Org.
  • A customer master must be setup in your Sales Area.  A Ship-to should suffice (a.k.a. Goods Recipient).  This customer master will be assigned to your vendor to enable the logistics process.
  • A BOM is an optional piece of master data which can help pre-populate your Components information on the PO.

Let’s now get into some details…

Standard Configuration

This is the part that I found interesting.  Generally, SAP SD processes rely upon copy controls to define how documents and data are copied from the source (i.e. Sales Order) to the destination (i.e. Delivery).  However, there is no copy control from an Subcontracting PO to an SD Delivery. So, how does SAP know when and how to copy data between these two objects?

The process uses what you could call a ‘Dummy’ Sales Document Type.  As mentioned previously, the Subcontracting delivery keys off of a Purchase Order.  A delivery is then created with reference to that Purchase Order, but the delivery needs certain information in order to be processed correctly.  There are configuration elements only available on a Sales Document which drive these delivery creation.  Delivery Basics like logistics defaults, pricing for freight, and partner determination have to come from somewhere.  A Dummy Sales Document type is used to allow things like Copy Controls to be used for this unique process.

I’m going to highlight the standard configuration as it exists within a standard S/4 HANA system.  There are 4 key areas:

1. Assignment of the Subcontracting Delivery Type (LB) to the Delivering Plant
2. Assignment of the Default (Dummy) Sales Order Type (DL) to the Subcontracting Delivery Type
3. Configuration of the Default Order Type Setup (DL)
4. Assignment of Copy Control Settings between the Sales Order (DL) and the Delivery (LB)

1.  Assignment of the Subcontracting Delivery Type (LB) to the Delivering Plant

The Subcontracting configuration starts with the assignment of a Delivery Type to the Delivering Plant for use in the Subcontracting process.  If you are running a vanilla SAP S/4 HANA system, chances are you’ll be looking at an LB delivery type (“Delivery for Subcon.”).  To access this piece of configuration, you’ll want to navigate to the IMG node below:

IMG → Materials Management → Purchasing → Purchase Order → Set Up Subcontract Order

There’s not much more here than assigning the plant to the Delivery Type.  It appears that you are limited to only one default Delivery Type per Plant.

2.  Assignment of the Default (Dummy) Sales Order Type to the Subcontracting Delivery Type

If you take a look at the delivery type defined in step (1), you’ll notice a setting in the ‘Order Reference’ area called ‘Default ord.ty.’.  The F1 help on this field explains its own usage:

The default for a “pseudo” order type for deliveries or delivery items that do not refer to an existing order.

Essentially, this order type is the stand-in for what would be a normal order type in a standard OTC scenario.  Use the IMG path below for this piece of the config:

IMG → Logistics Execution → Shipping → Deliveries → Define Delivery Types

The only field worth mentioning is that ‘Default Order Type’ field; the rest of this is standard delivery setup.

3.  Default Order Type Setup

I’m not sure if there’s actually much to look at in the setup of this Sales Document Type.  There are relatively few logistics-related fields.  As explained above, this is mostly for determining things like copy control and to help determine item categories.  You probably know where this configuration is, but for the noobs:

IMG → Sales and Distribution → Sales Document Header → Define Sales Document Types

These are all default settings, so…  again… not much to say here.

4.  Setup Copy Control

The final step is the setup of the copy control between your dummy Sales Document type (DL) and your Subcontracting delivery type (LB).

Logistics Execution → Shipping → Copying Control → Specify Copy Control for Deliveries

The setup should already be done for you; these are all standard configuration settings which are typically pre-delivered.

Conclusion

That’s about it.  I showed how the Subcontracting process has a default delivery type per plant, how that delivery type contains a default (“dummy”) sales document type, and how those two objects are connected through the standard Order/Delivery Copy Control.  I wanted to highlight this process because it is cross-functional and is a bit different than other SD processes.  What do you think?  Have you had to do much with your default SAP Subcontracting Delivery Setup configuration?  Please let me know in the comments.  Thanks for reading.