Question on cycle count

[Former Member]

Hello all,

I am wondering if you can provide some guidance on the following question.

I have a project which will go live on Jan 2015, and we use cycle counting method for our process.

• Question: 1 - Does the business is require and need to provide us the ABCvalue for each material so that for us to load the MARC-ABCIN during material master migration?

• Question 2 - If business not able to provide the ABC indicator, I am wondering if business can provide a default value like (B) for all the material records for us to load. After that,  we perform the MIBC transaction to create the ABC entry into the material master after project live? If the answer is "yes" on this question no.2, there seems to have a problem on using MIBC as when I run this MIBC using the "consumption/usage" with one year range, and there is a problem because there is no A, B, nor C value generate for the material on our first migration loading mock testing. I got the message ("Total value = 0, no analysis performed. Message no. LC255") after running the MIBC.

BR,

Daniel

[JL23 · Accepted solution]

If the field is optional, then it is not required from a data load perspective. If the business needs an entry to have a business process supported then business should have its very own interest in giving you the necessary information to load the master data.

The functional consultant should explain to the business how the ABC indicators for cycle counting get computed in SAP. Based on that info the people who know the legacy system might be able to rectify  if they can compute this info in their legacy system or decide to start with a certain default, maybe just assigned to materials based gut instinct or other criteria.

Executing MIBC after an initial load does not make any sense, since you have no history in SAP.

If you start for example on January 1st and your A items have to be counted monthly and B items quarterly, then you know that you only need to count A items in the first month. So you schedule an inventory for the last day in January and until then you have normally already collected some history data and can run MIBC the day before.

In general you have to understand that you do not have a figure for last inventory count , hence the count is determined based on the creation date of the accounting view in material master.  And as you loaded all materials on the same day, all materials are due for counting on the same day.

This means  that you do not have less work compared to an annual inventory in the December of the first year as all your D items will appear only in December, together with all  A, B and C items.

This is usually an unwanted situation.

And you have basically just 2 options to avoid that.

a) you determine the materials to be counted ourside SAP in the first year and create inventory documents using the annual inventory method.

b) you create a program to load random last inventory dates to all of your materials, so that SAP Cycle count can use those dates to determine what has to be counted when, so that the workload is equal among all countrs throughout the year.

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi Jurgen,

Big thanks on your clear feedback, and if you do not mind if I have further question which you can help validate in response to your previous message.

Your Statement: If the field is optional, then it is not required from a data load perspective. If the business needs an entry to have a business process supported then business should have its very own interest in giving you the necessary information to load the master data.

Question 1: Basically running the MIBC for the ABC value to compute and to generate (especially using the consumption option) is that R/3 needs historical data on each of the material records? In another word, if an A, B, C value is provided and load into material master, the MIBC run will not treat the loaded A, B, C value as a main factor to determine the new A, B, C value as because MIBC will base on consumption value of the material.

Question 2: Will it be a good idea to request the business to "Fix" the A, B, C value in the material master so that cycle count always base on the mateiral master ABC value and not determine by the MIBC run (in another word, ignore the consumption history of the material but base on business process decision). Is this a good idea?

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Your Statement: The functional consultant should explain to the business how the ABC indicators for cycle counting get computed in SAP.

Question 3: Frankly I am still not 100% sure the logic behind the MIBC compute, could you provide me a link for this information?

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Your Statement: In general you have to understand that you do not have a figure for last inventory count , hence the count is determined based on the creation date of the accounting view in material master.  And as you loaded all materials on the same day, all materials are due for counting on the same day. This means  that you do not have less work compared to an annual inventory in the December of the first year as all your D items will appear only in December, together with all  A, B and C items.

Question 4: You means in order to run MIBC, one factor (aside of having consumption history) i sthat the material must went through at least one (i.e. past) inventory count with date captured in the system? If yes, I kinda get your meaning, that means all A, B, C material will appear in December as a proposal by system to count?

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Your statement: This is usually an unwanted situation. And you have basically just 2 options to avoid that. a) you determine the materials to be counted ourside SAP in the first year and create inventory documents using the annual inventory method.

Question 5: to avoid the problem on question 4, I think I prefers solution your solution A. But I am quite confused by your explanation. You means business should give me a list of material in excel which are going to perform cycle counting outside SAP in first year. That means after having this list, those inventory count count it physically in the warehouse of the stock and pass back to me and I will create a regular physical inventory document using MI31 (as i can select a list of those material) to generate the PID, and the above problem on question 4 will be resolved?

BR,

Daniel

[JL23 · Accepted solution]

Only the fix indicator can prevent an existing CC indicator from replacement by a new MIBC run.

Once you have historic data for some materials and do a calculation for all materials, then all materials without history will become a D item.

There might be materials which are very important for your process, and need a high accuracy too. But MIBC would rank them low because they are just used with a very small quantity   compared to other materials, or minimal value despite of high quantity. Such materials will get a manually assigned CC indicator along with the fix indicator, so that the CC indicator cannot be overwritten by MIBC.

I explained the logic of MIBC a couple years ago:

if you don't do anything yourself to distribute the counts, and assuming that A will be counted 12 times a year, B 6x, C 3x and D only 1x), then it is like this

January: only A items

February: only A items

March: A items + B items

April: only A items

..

June: A, B and C items

July: only A items

..

September: A, B and C items

...

December A, B, C and D items

But ideal you should have ABCD items in any inventory count throughout the year, so that you have to count almost anytime the same number of materials, otherwise you do not know how much you have to count, do not know how much people you need for the count.

I am not sure if you need such list from the business of if you are able to prepare it yourself.

I would just download the MB52 inventory report into Excel after a few days live with SAP.

Would define on which dates the counts shall be conducted in this year.

Assuming you want do 12 inventories, then I would just assign number 1 to the first material in MB52 report, number 2 to second..number 12 to the 12th and then start again with 1 to 13th position ...

All materials with a 1 will be counted in January, all with 2 in February.etc

This way you get an almost equal number of materials in each inventory.

you just take the material numbers from excel with copy and paste into the multiple selection of MI31 transaction.

In the second year you can then use MICN

[former_member197616]

Hi,

Instaed adding the B to the materials as a default , i think that is better if you could get the right anaylysis for the materials . Normally based upon the timings systems will fetch the materials .

Regards,