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How to Adopt a Field on the Product Location Master and Displaying in the Planning Book

ByShaun Snapp

Executive Summary

  • There are options for meeting business requirements and adopting a field on the Product Location Master and displaying the Planning Book.

Introduction to the Product Location Master

Frequently a company will need to have a company-specific field. This field means something to the company but does not exist in APO, to be assigned to a product location combination, not to drive any functionality, but to use for navigation in the Planning Book.

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Meeting the Requirement

There are several options for adding a field:

  1. Use one of the five available extra fields (on the Extra Tab on the product location master)
  2. Add a custom field (which is a development, of course)
  3. Adopt one of the pre-existing fields
  4. Adopt one of the pre-existing fields — which can be shown in the Object Selector in the Selection Profile.

Of the four options, the fourth is the most desirable. It requires no development. However, the trick is finding a suitable field (for instance, is the right number of characters), which is already not taken, and which will not kick off some undesired functionality.

Reviewing the Fields in the Object Selector

Thus the first step is finding out what is available. Below I have done this and coded each field for its use at a fictitious client. This list took quite a while to compile because SAP has no easy way to lookup fields available in the Object Selector. (I have extracted some fields from the product location master into a database that can be searched, but I do not have them all.)

1. Location: (Used, Not Suitable)
2. Product: (Used, Not Suitable)
3. Location Type: (Used, Not Suitable)
4. Product: (Used, Not Suitable)
5. APO SNP Planner: (Used, Not Suitable)
6. APO Processing Indicator: (Not on Product Location Master)
7. ABC Indicator: (Used, Not Suitable)
8. Interchangeability Group: (Used, Not Suitable)
9. Country: (Used, Not Suitable)
10. Demand Planner: (Used, Not Suitable)
11. Demand Profile: (Used, Not Suitable)
12. Material Type: (Used, Not Suitable)
13. Procurement Type: (Used, Not Suitable)
14. Production Planner: (Used, Not Suitable)
15. SNP Planner: (Used, Not Suitable)
16. Supply Profile (Used, Not Suitable)
17. Transportation Planner (Used, Not Suitable)

And that is the problem; the standard objects are usually taken. So this means that option 3 is the most likely option available to most companies. But this requires the development work that whatever objects are used are added to the Object Selection in the Planning Book.

Good Field Adoption Characteristics

Typically, a field that can be added should meet the following criteria.

Must Haves

  • Not currently used or possibly used in the future
  • Will not switch on any functionality if populated
  • Exists in ECC as well as APO

Nice to Haves

  • Easy to find
  • Distinct from other fields

Adding the Field to the Shuffler

After you have found a field that meets your criteria, the next question becomes how to add the field to the shuffler so it can be used as a selection in the planning book.

Unfortunately, there is no standard way to configure this. For some reason, SAP requires that you run a BADI, which is the BADI /SAPAPO/SDP_SELECTOR. I quote from Andrew Zugay at the SAP SNC website.

“There is a method called INIT_OBJECT_LIST which populates the selection field list in the shuffler – this is the first step. The method F4 is where you will need to provide the F4 values when the dropdown of your added field is used – thsi is the second step. Also in this BADI are methods that end with VALUE_LIST which are used to filter values after selection based upon the different value you enter in the Show field of the shuffler. For example LOC_PROD_VALUE_LIST is invoked when ‘APO Location Product’ is entered in the Show field. There is documentation in the BADI.”

This is in SPRO in the location shown below:

This brings you to the selection screen where the changes are made.

To make a change to F4, you need to have a developer key on the system.