Length of MARA-BISMT 'old material number'

[Former Member]

Hi,

I'm working on an ERP implementation project and we are facing the following issue:

For reference, reporting and look-up purpose we would like to store the previous used material number from the legacy system in the field mara-bismt in the material master of SAP. Unfortunately we have thousands of legacy material numbers exceeding the field length of 18 characters defined for mara-bismt.

To shorten the original material number is not an option, also using the short text to keep this information is not suitable.

Does anyone of you face a similar situation? How, did you manage it?

Thanks for your help,

Frank

[JL23 · Accepted solution]

dont use the BISMT field, create a material classification with old material number as characteristic.

You can define the length of the characteristic yourself in CT04.

[Former Member]

Many thanks to you all.

There's one question left, if I will setup/use the classification, will there be an easy way to find a material by searching for a value maintained in the classification view?

Thank you,

Frank

[JL23]

for sure.

the material  classification is part of the F4 search for material numbers.

see your F4 search help, it is has tab Material for class.

you enter your class, then you get the usual CL30N selection screen

[Former Member]

I have setup the classification + characteristic now. The search works fine . Now I tried to distribute this information to our WMS system by using the IDoc MATMAS05. Unfortunately the classification is not covered by this (I think we have to use the IDoc CLFMAS in addition). But by investigating the MATMAS Idoc I saw that the Idoc contains a field in Segment E1MARA1 called MATNR_EXTERNAL which is 40 characters long.

Does anybody know the linkage between this field and the material master?

Thank you,

Frank

[JL23]

there is a business function for long material numbers in a DIMP system

see note 1597790 - Activation of Long Material Number in DIMP

Yes you have to use CLFMAS to distribute the classification. CHRMAS for characteristics and CLSMAS for classes if you dont maintain them manually in the target system.

[Former Member]

Hi,

Generally old material number and industry standard description fields are used to store legacy material numbers, but then it is limited to 18 characters only.

So, in order to increase the field lenght it is better to use characteristic field in the material classification as suggested by Jurgen.

Regards

Vijay

[eduardo_hinojosa]

Hi

Other possibility is create a customer field and set it in a dynpro (see Note 44410 - Integrating cust.-specific fields in matl master). After you could create a search help for this field.

I hope this helps you

Regards

Eduardo