Lesson 1 of 5
Building plan-to-produce coverage from scope items
10 min
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A plan-to-produce sign-off says three things at once: the plan is right, the shop floor can execute it, and the books show what really happened. If the test plan covers only one of those, the signature is worth a third of what it claims. This course builds a test and sign-off plan for Contoso Motor Co.'s alternator business in SAP S/4HANA, from coverage through to the process owner's signature, as part of the conversion from SAP ECC 6.0 EHP 8.
Start from the scope items, then make them yours
SAP Best Practices describe standard processes as scope items, each with a process flow and test script, published in SAP Signavio Process Navigator. For discrete make-to-stock production the baseline is BJ5, Make-to-Stock Production - Discrete Manufacturing. Its flow runs from planned independent requirements, through MRP at plant level and evaluation of the stock/requirements situation, to converting planned orders into production orders for subassembly and final assembly (including an availability check), release, material staging, confirmation, goods receipt and review. The flow links to neighbors: J45 for procuring the direct materials MRP asks for and BEI for period-end closing in the plant. BJN covers rework for stock-manufactured material. Scope item content changes by release, so open the current version in Process Navigator before you copy steps.
Contoso is converting, not implementing Best Practices, so the scope items are a checklist and a vocabulary, not the definition of Contoso's process. Priya's team uses them to ask "which standard steps do we run, and how do we run them differently?" The answers become test scenarios.
Contoso's scenario list
Contoso builds the alternator CMC-ALT-100 in plant 1710 Detroit (standard cost $150) and plant 1720 Chicago ($156). The rotor CMC-RTR-200 is bought from Lakeside Components; stator CMC-STA-300 and housing CMC-HSG-400 are also components. Production orders use order type PP01 and run through work centers WIND-10, ASSY-10 and TEST-10. Priya's workshop with the production planner, the production supervisor, a quality engineer and Dan (finance) produced this list.
| ID | Scenario | Baseline | Variant or exception | Risk |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| PTP-01 | Demand to planned orders | BJ5 | Planned independent requirements for October; MRP Live run for plant 1710 | High |
| PTP-02 | Bought-in component | BJ5 / J45 | MRP creates rotor purchase requisitions over $10,000 that need release | High |
| PTP-03 | Order to goods receipt | BJ5 | Convert, release, issue, confirm, receive 500 pc | High |
| PTP-04 | Missing component at release | BJ5 variant | Stator shortage blocks release; order released after receipt | High |
| PTP-05 | Scrap at confirmation | BJ5 variant | Five rotors damaged at ASSY-10; extra goods issue | Medium |
| PTP-06 | Failed end-of-line test | BJN | Rework order for 12 alternators that fail at TEST-10 | Medium |
| PTP-07 | Quality at goods receipt | Contoso variant | Inspection lot on receipt; stock usable only after usage decision | High |
| PTP-08 | Second plant | BJ5 variant | Same flow in 1720 Chicago at $156 standard cost | Medium |
| PTP-09 | Period-end for production orders | BEI | WIP for open orders, variances and settlement for delivered ones | High |
Contoso's plan-to-produce scenarios. Order quantities and defects are fictional test data.
- Does Contoso run this scope item step?Yes → keep it as a test step · No → record it as out of scope, with the reason
- Does Contoso run it differently (data, settings, custom code)?Yes → write a variant scenario · No → the baseline step is enough
- Does a failure cost supply or inventory value?Yes → risk High; run in every cycle · No → Medium or Low
- Does it cross into finance, quality or purchasing?Yes → include the downstream step and its owner in the same scenario · No → test within plan-to-produce
Add the integration steps on purpose
Most plan-to-produce defects that reach production live at the edges: a purchase requisition that never reaches the buyer, an inspection lot that leaves finished goods blocked, a variance that settles to the wrong account. So every high-risk scenario ends where the money or the material ends, not where the production supervisor's job ends. PTP-03 is not finished at goods receipt; it is finished when the order is settled and the variance is explained. That is why Dan owns test steps inside plan-to-produce scenarios.
What would you do?
Two weeks before the test cycle, the plant manager asks Priya to drop PTP-09 (period-end) because "costing is finance's problem and they test it in their own stream". What should Priya do?
In SAP Cloud ALM, the same structure carries the coverage: the solution processes in scope (with BJ5, BEI and BJN as their reference) hold the test cases, test plans group them by cycle, and defects raised from a failed step keep the link back to the process. In SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition the scope items are activated as delivered and the Test Automation Tool for Public Edition offers standard test scripts for many of them, which makes the "which steps do we run differently?" question even more important: the differences are where Contoso-specific tests are needed.
- BJ5 is the baseline for discrete make-to-stock; J45, BEI and BJN cover the neighbors.
- Scope items are a checklist: test Contoso's variants, data and custom code, not the standard alone.
- Each high-risk scenario ends where the money or material ends, including settlement.
- Trace every test case to a scope item step and record out-of-scope steps with a reason.
Check your understanding · not graded
Lesson check
1. Which scope item is the baseline for discrete make-to-stock production?
2. Why does PTP-03 end at settlement rather than at goods receipt?
3. How should a scope item step that Contoso does not use be handled?
4. What makes PTP-02 an integration scenario?