7    Quality Management

The objective of this chapter is to highlight the business processes enabled by SAP S/4HANA’s Quality Management (QM) functionality. This includes master data, sales contract management, billing, invoicing, foreign trade, and more

We'll begin with an overview of the quality management process as envisioned with SAP S/4HANA. Then we'll explore the quality management functionality (inspections and notifications), calling attention to places where substantial improvements have taken place, to relevant operational reports, and to SAP Fiori apps. The chapter includes a discussion of where quality management occurs in nearby logistics processes, and it closes with the strategic quality reports available in SAP S/4HANA.

7.1    Quality Management Basics

The QM module of SAP S/4HANA deals with tasks such as quality planning (planning the inspections, creating the data required for inspection), quality inspection (carrying out the actual inspection and generating inspection reports), and quality notifications (processing problems related to inspection), which are all covered in different sections of this chapter.

Quality planning is creating and managing the master data task lists, which are required to plan and execute quality inspections. By using quality planning, you can do the following:

• Manage quality information for materials and vendors/customers in combination.
• Plan and trigger inspections at various stages of the logistics supply chain such as procurement, production, and sales.
• Plan and trigger inspections for the preservation of materials and for calibration of orders.

Quality planning is divided into the following subcomponents:

• Master data
  • QM specific master data
  • General master data
• Inspection planning
  • Inspection plans
  • Routings

Master data is created and used often as master records and provides the basis for inspection processing.

Following are the key master data elements maintained for QM:

• QM specific master data
  • Catalogs, selected sets
  • Inspection methods
  • Inspection characteristics
  • Sampling schemes/procedures
  • QM work centers
• General master data
  • Material master
  • Quality info records for material and vendor/customer combinations