BUSINESS NEED
Companies may have a need to restructure their organization underneath the Company Code level that’s set up for various reasons, be it that they want to allocate a plant to a different Company Code or that they are planning to divest a Plant to an outside entity. Some people call this a Plant move, others call it a Plant reallocation, and some consider this a divestiture at the Plant level. In any scenario it is largely the same event. The drivers can be tax related, restructuring, a divestiture or preparation for a sale. There are situations where only a portion of the Plant is relevant, which is an option as well. In the example below we will speak about an entire Plant being relevant.
TRADITIONAL APPROACH
SAP recommends creating a new Plant for the new Company Code and then moving or re-entering all relevant data from the old Plant to the new Plant and to then delete the old Plant.
The execution of such a project is as follows:
- Prerequisite for “closing down” an existing plant: All open documents be completed/finished before.
- “Shut down” the corresponding Plant in the initial Company Code
- Create a new Plant and assign it to the new Company Code
- All Master Data for the new Plant must be re-maintained. All material transfer postings must be carried out, etc.
- All open procedures must be created again, like the content of the “source” Plant.
In Finance, the closing Plant accounting items must be balanced to zero. Balances and Open Items need to be brought to the new Company Code using data extraction processes and import functionality.
cbs’ APPROACH
cbs uses a software supported approach using our Enterprise Transformer® and a mix of fully automated direct database update transformation and more SAP traditional semi-automated transformation.
In essence, this is what happens in a cbs ‘Plant Move’:
As part of such a project, all Master and Transactional data for Logistics, related to the original Company Code and Plant is identified, and re-attached to the corresponding new Company Code and Plant. This includes related CO data also.
In Finance, the relevant Master data is extended to the new Company Code. The Finance Transactional data is not transformed but values for Account Balances and Open Items are first cleared in the original Company Code and then Posted into the New Company Codes. This follows a traditional SAP approach for the postings.
Lastly, there is a re-connection of the document relationships between Finance and Logistics.
The big advantage of the cbs method is the high level of automation and the elimination of error prone manual efforts.
Simplified graphical description of the cbs Plant Move process:
1) Relevant Finance Master and Transactional Data is migrated from Company 0001 to Company 0002
2) All relevant Plant related Logistics data is transferred from Company 0001 to Company 0002
3) Re-linking of the Logistics documents to the Finance documents
