Bill of material quantities may end up in extremely complex combinations and calculations. With this enhancement the user receives much better support and guidance on where and what is allowed to be updated and which quantities are defined purely by the system. Overall, this will drive down a lot the errors and corrections required during the sales cycle. 

A new pop-up drives user efficiency in providing firstly, a summary of the update-eligible line-items and a quick-to-goal user interface which minimizes user clicks by only looking at ONE interaction with the system

Figure 1: User updateable quantity values are being collected and presented summarized to the user to get a one-touch update per line-item

Benefits

• Rely on the correct quantity calculations and permissions
• Eliminate errors in accidental changes
• Provide intuitive and supportive QTY control
• Drive efficiency in making the right decision

Features

• Calculate automatically the correct QTY of Sales Bill-of-Material explosion
• Set the right permission of changing QTY by user
• Pop Up for user enabled QTY updates on parent’s QTY change
• Based on the product BOM setup you can
  • Auto propose quantities
  • Make quantity read-only to prevent changes
  • Use script to calculate quantity
  • Lock user input on script generated QTY
• User pop-up is shown only if a user input is necessary:
  • BoM quantity factor is user updateable
  • BoM child element is manually added
• User pop-up gives:
  • Summarized view on updateable items
  • User may select Proposed, Current or new quantities for affected quantities

Bill-of-Material explosion and architectures

Bill-of-Material factor calculation is based on the following configuration and architectural behaviors:

All MX Architectures except LO-VC (SSC integration) use

The Product BoM update mechanism allows a flexible and controllable form of calculating the correct QTY numbers for children when a parent is being updated. The respective quantity factors and permissions/options can be set within the products’ Product BOM entries.

 

Functionality

The tree denotes which BoM explosion combinations of permission settings are available and hence how the children’s quantities are updated accordingly, resp. the UI is controlled:

• Subline-item quantity input field state/permission
• Whether a pop-up is presented

 A pop-up is presented to user when:

• System-based explosion of child items and the child’s quantity permissions set to R2P & UbU.
• Manually added child items

Figure 2: BoM quantity control, permissions and pop-up presentation architecture for all architectures (except SSC integration)

 

Calculation

Each BoM quantity update calculated is recursively brought into the next child level.

E.g., line item 1 updates configurable line item 1.3 where the quantity factors apply according above rules. Same is applicable for quantity calculations on deeper levels, such as 1.3.2 etc.

 

Figure 3: Simple example with exploded children and sub-children

Summarized, all subline-items must update their own children according to their own product BoM quantity factors and permissions.

 

Exemplary Product BoM configuration on explosion

Definition in KMAT and appliance in quote using the KMAT (and based on configuration of it).

Figure 4: Left hand-side KMAT configuration, right hand-side usage in Quote

Changing the quantity of the parent will invoke the quantity modifications according above set-up. Here e.g. changing the quantity of parent material from 1 to 3:

Figure 5: Initial BoM exploded view, with user updates on 1.4 (77) and 1.8 (99)

Figure 6: Pop providing the summarized view with suggested (sub)material quantities

Figure 7: Applied and updated material quantities after the pop-up was presented

 

Note: Currently there is a limitation to be documented, that on initial addition of materials to the quote line-items, the second-level children and consecutive items will not present the correct line-item quantities. For getting the correct quantities a quantity change of the parent is required to calculate through the entire hierarchy.

 

Configuration & Set Up

A business administrator can configure BoM explosion under the Product Modelling by product entry and defining each behavior of the quantity factors and permissions based on the above architecture. The main options are:

• Quantity factor: How many times does this product gets added for one UOM of the parent to the sales BOM
• Quantity changes in relative with parent: in case this child demands a multiple quantity and depending on the parent’s quantity. This option is by default presenting the quantity field on the line-item table as read-only to the user
• Quantity updateable by user: Factor is presented based on entry, but maybe be edited by user at any time.
• Combination of relative to parent and user updatable: the factor is being multiplied accordingly, but the user may update at his discretion the quantity during the quoting process
• Quantity updateable by Script: a groovy or IMC script do set the quantity. If you want the user to overwrite this value manually then you can use it along with Quantity updateable by the user as true.

Figure 8: Product BOM Configuration for BoM explosion

 

Static BoM quantity

For static BoM quantities none of the flags shall be set. Quote line-item table shows read-only field for item. As the Quantity is not editable by user, it will not show in the Quantity Update Pop-up

 

Relative to parent

Dynamic but not editable BoM quantity, directly related to multiple of parent quantity. Quote line-item table shows read-only field for item. As the Quantity is not editable by user, it will not show in the Quantity Update Pop-up

 

User updateable quantity

BoM quantity factor is used, but user may update to any value. Quote line-item table shows editable field for item. Pop-up will use the edited or already inserted value.

Relative to parent & User updateable quantity

BoM quantity factor is used and proposes related on parent quantity, but user may override with to any value. Quote line-item table shows editable field for item. Pop-up will use by default the proposed quantity, however user may change value.

Script-based quantity calculation & User updateable quantity

This option was not available before 21/11 release. This is to indicate that quantity will be calculated via Script but can be overwritten by the user in the line item table. When the quantity is calculated via Script we do not show it in Qantity update pop-up, as we do not know the proposed value.

Script-based quantity calculation 

Dynamic but not editable BoM quantity, directly related to multiple of parent quantity and other criteria, such as material configuration. Quote line-item table shows read-only field for item.

Example of an IMC script: this IMC script is executed on AFTER UPDATE SALES ITEM event and uses a configured characteristics-based batch quantity, multiplies with the parents quantity and updates to the new quantity:

Note: Adding a BoM element via Groovy Script and bypassing the material's knowledge base, resp. BoM explosion trigger will not set the quantity field on the quote line item table as read-only. Please see screenshots and code excerpt as below. In case the read-only flag is required for preventing a user updating the script-calculated  quantity, please make sure the material is exploded via BoM trigger.

Groovy script exploding a sub-line item:

 

With 22/11 release we have introduced two new flags at the Quote Line Item, which will help you decide for the sub items added via script should be editable by the user or not, and also by setting the quantity updatable by the script you can avoid that item to show up in the quantity update pop-up.

If the quantity is calculated via a script we can never show the correct proposed value hence should not be shown in the quantity update pop-up hence it's highly recommended to set quantityUpdatableViaScript to true.

• Schema.quantityUpdatableViaScript: Quantity updatable via Script when set to true will not show the line in the Quantity Update pop-up.
• Schema.quantityNotUpdatableByUser: Quantity Not Updatable by User when set to true – then the quantity is read-only.

 

BoM explosion in Commerce

In respect of Commerce application and BoM explosion the entire BoM quantity calculation is based on above architecture, with the difference that the is no pop-up shown. The only part where a quantity is visible is the Cart Summary.

• Permissions and QTY calculations are brought 1:1 into commerce from the standard CPQ BoM Quantity calculation architecture.
• Where a pop-up is required in MX CPQ the MX Commerce will use apply proposed (newly calculated) values.

Figure 9: BoM explosion architecture for Commerce

 

Figure 10: Initial product quantity in Inquiry Cart

 

Figure 11: Quantity change of Parent to 3, left hand-side shows updated quantities without presentation of pop-up using proposed values only.

 

LO-VC based architecture (SSC integration)

The Product BoM behavior is a bit different in the LO-VC case. Despite the ERP provides read-only quantity fields for sub-line items, as well as relative QTY factors, it will not be considered in MX Quote line-item View UI.

Functionality

The behavior is that all line-item QTY fields are treated as user definable when sub-line items are available. The tree shows:

• Subline-item quantity input field state/permission
• Always a simple dialogue pop-up is presented

A simple pop-up is always presented to the user.

 

Figure 12: BoM quantity control architecture for SSC integration

 

Figure 13: Traditional simple pop-up for SSC integration