Master Data in SAP

Master data is the set of data which is commonly used across the entire organization and all business processes. Master data is shared by different people for different purposes at the same time. Information about material, customers, suppliers etc are not changing frequently. Therefore if the users have to re-enter those information it will be a huge waste of effort. Hence it’s efficient to keep this information in a place which every user can access. SAP has defined master data for different modules.

E.g.

Master data used in production process

Bill of Material (BOM)

Work Center

Product Routings

Material Master

Production Resource Tools (PRT)

The importance of master data definition of SAP is the introduction new management practices.  For example some organizations have not defined work centers in their manufacturing plants. Therefore SAP encourages user to adopt best management practices across the industry. That’s why SAP is not regarded as an ordinary software system.

SAP standard tables contain too many fields. For example CRHD (Work Center Header) table contains 129 fields. This is because SAP uses one work center header table across all modules of SAP. Different people need different information about work center. LOART (Wage Type) field is not important for production planners. It is important for the FI or HR people who are responsible for salary making process. SAP provides room for everyone to represent their data in a single work center header table. 

Figure 1.1 Table CRHD list of fields

 SAP standard tables relevant to Work Center

CRHD         Work center Header Data
CRCA         Work center Capacity Allocation
CRCO         Work center Cost Center Assignment
CRHH         Hierarchy Header
CRHS          Hierarchy Structure
CRTX          Work center Text
KAKO         Capacity Header
KAZY          Intervals of Capacity 

Data redundancy and duplication problems will not arise with the use of one database across the enterprise. This will increase the system efficiency.