SD Enterprise Structure Part 3: Sales Area, Plant and Shipping Point Determination

📌 KEY POINTS
✅ The sales area is entered or derived at order entry; the customer must be extended to it (sales area data in the business partner).
✅ Delivering plant is proposed in this order: customer-material info record → customer master (ship-to) → material master (sales org 1 view).
✅ Shipping point = shipping condition (customer or order type) + loading group (material) + plant, maintained in OVL2.
✅ The proposed plant must be assigned to the sales organization/channel (OVX6), otherwise the item is incomplete or rejected.
⚠️ Missing loading group in the material master = no shipping point = no delivery.

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▶ WHERE WE ARE
Part 2 configured and assigned the units. Now we see how a sales order finds them automatically.

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▶ 1. SALES AREA AT ORDER ENTRY

• User enters sales org, channel, division — or selects from the customer's sales areas.
• The customer (sold-to) must have sales area data for that combination (or for a common channel/division, Part 4).
• The order type can be restricted to certain sales areas.

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▶ 2. PLANT DETERMINATION

• 1st: customer-material info record (VD51) — customer-specific plant.
• 2nd: customer master, ship-to party, sales area data, Shipping tab — delivering plant.
• 3rd: material master, Sales: Sales Org. 1 view — delivering plant.
• User can overwrite; a BAdI/user exit can implement custom logic (e.g. availability-based).

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▶ 3. SHIPPING POINT DETERMINATION

• Shipping condition: from sold-to customer (Shipping tab) — or from the sales document type if set there.
• Loading group: from material master (Sales: General/Plant view).
• Plant: determined as above.
• OVL2 table gives proposed shipping point and allowed manual alternatives.

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▶ 4. OTHER DERIVATIONS

• Business area: from plant/division or sales area (FI account assignment).
• Storage location: determined later in the delivery (picking location rule MALA/RETA/MARE).
• Route: from departure zone (shipping point), transportation zone (ship-to), shipping condition, transportation group.

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▶ 5. TROUBLESHOOTING

• "No shipping point": check loading group, shipping condition, OVL2 entry.
• "Plant not allowed": check OVX6 assignment.
• Wrong plant: check info record first, then customer, then material.

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▶ STEP BY STEP

1. Maintain delivering plant in customer (ship-to) and material master.
2. Maintain loading group in the material and shipping condition in the customer.
3. Maintain OVL2 for shipping condition + loading group + plant.
4. Create an order and check the item's Shipping tab: plant, shipping point, route.

✅ CHECKPOINT: you can explain where each value on the item Shipping tab came from.

A pharma distributor introduced a cold-chain shipping point for refrigerated products. After go-live, refrigerated items still landed on the ambient dispatch dock. The cause: the new loading group "Cold" was maintained only in the plant-level material data of new materials, while existing refrigerated materials still carried the standard loading group, so OVL2 kept returning the ambient shipping point. A mass change of the loading group (via material mass maintenance) for 1,200 refrigerated materials fixed it, and the material master data-quality rules were extended to derive the loading group from the storage condition.

• Missing loading group in the material, so no shipping point is found.
• Looking only at the material master for plant determination and ignoring info record and customer.
• Forgetting that the shipping condition in the order type overrides the customer's.
• Plant proposed but not assigned in OVX6 for the sales area.
• Maintaining OVL2 without manual alternatives for exceptional dispatch.

• Define one clear owner for plant determination data (customer vs material).
• Derive loading group from material characteristics in a data-quality rule.
• Maintain OVL2 completely for all plant/loading group/shipping condition combinations in use.
• Use the item Shipping tab and incompletion log for troubleshooting.
• Document the plant determination sequence for business users.

Questions: "How is the plant determined in a sales order?", "How is the shipping point determined?", "Order says no shipping point — what do you check?"
Strong answer: plant from customer-material info record, then ship-to customer master, then material master (sales org 1 view); shipping point from shipping condition, loading group and plant in OVL2. Troubleshooting checks loading group, shipping condition source (customer or order type), OVL2 entry and plant assignment to the sales area.