QP01 — Create Inspection Plan

QP01 builds an inspection plan, which technically is a task list of type Q, structurally identical to a production routing but carrying inspection characteristics instead of production operations. Each plan has a group and a group counter, header-level usage and status, one or more operations, and characteristics assigned per operation, either plan-specific or pulled from a master inspection characteristic. The structural fact that explains most confusion: the plan itself is not tied to one material. It is linked to material-plant combinations through a separate allocation table, and a single plan group counter can serve several materials, or a material can have several competing plans with different validity windows and usages. Whichever plan the system actually applies at lot creation depends on that allocation and on status, not on what a consultant assumes is 'the' plan for a material.

QP01 belongs to the quality planning phase, done before any inspection lot exists: when a new material enters production or procurement and needs defined inspection characteristics, when an existing inspection process needs a new sampling scheme, or when characteristics need to move from ad hoc plan-specific entries to reusable master inspection characteristics. It is not used during day-to-day inspection processing. Once a lot exists, the relevant transactions are QA01 to create a lot manually, QA02/QA12 to work an existing lot, and QE51N to record results. A consultant reaches for QP01 specifically when a lot has no characteristics, wrong characteristics, or when a new inspection type or plant needs its own inspection logic defined from scratch.

Start in MAPL: filter on material and plant to find the group (PLNNR) and group counter (PLNAL) actually assigned, and check the deletion indicator and validity date fields there rather than assuming the plan a consultant expects is the one linked. Take that group/counter into PLKO and confirm the status field shows released, not in-process, and that the key date falls within validity. Then check PLPO for the operations and PLMK for the characteristics attached to those operations, confirming sampling procedure and catalog fields are populated rather than blank.

QP01 and its underlying task list tables are unchanged in S/4HANA; inspection planning is still done through the classical transaction. There is no confirmed dedicated Fiori app that replaces creation of inspection plans end to end, so this remains one of the QM areas still run through the SAP GUI transaction even in an otherwise Fiori-first S/4HANA landscape.

Inspection plan content is owned by the QM functional consultant, in coordination with production planning where operations mirror a routing and with the material master QM view that must have inspection setup active. Basis or ABAP involvement is rare, limited to mass upload tooling or authorization objects for task list maintenance. A good handover states the material, plant, group/group counter, and the specific symptom observed in the lot, not just 'the plan is wrong'.

Read QA01 next to see how a created plan actually gets consumed into an inspection lot, since most QP01 support tickets are diagnosed backward from a lot problem. QS21 covers master inspection characteristics, the reusable objects a plan-specific characteristic in QP01 can reference instead of duplicating entries. QP02 and QP03 are the change and display counterparts used to correct or inspect an existing plan without recreating it, and QA12 shows how the characteristics assigned here surface during actual results recording.