Data Object Definition

Material represents all information regarding goods that are relevant for production, sales, purchasing or inventory management. This can include finished products, but also raw materials, intermediates, packaging, and other material types.

This data is available in the Data Ocean as of Q2 2023.

Data Model

Material data in the Data Lake is composed of below tables/views:

1. DIM_material
2. DIM_product

Project Space: prj-data-pricing-dev
See how this entity relates to the others in the pricing data model here.

Additional Info & Comments

• There are important differences between the terms Material and Product, even though they are sometimes incorrectly used as synonyms.
• In daily business usage, the term Material tends to refer to a specific SKU including a specified packaging format, while the term Product or Commercial Product tends to refer to a certain chemistry without specifying the packaging format (so one level higher in the product hierarchy).
• In context of the SAP data model, SAP refers to Material in the generic sense as anything which can be held in inventory or sold. This includes finished goods, but also trading goods, raw materials and intermediates, and can even include spare parts or services. SAP distinguishes these different types based on the Material Type, where Material Type "FERT" is referred to as Finished Products.
• In context of the Salesforce data model, Salesforce uses the term Product to refer to all saleable finished goods, while using a separate Raw Material object for raw materials. Salesforce also stores higher levels of the product hierarchy as non-saleable Products.
• There is a hierarchy defined in SAP including 5 levels. there is no alignment between GBU for levels 1, 2 and 3, but all GBUs, have the same definition for level 4 and 5. The level 4 is Matrial group/Product, and level 5 is Material 
• One product (or material) belongs to a product family per GBU. 
• Product birth specifies the first time that the product has been produced 
• Important Notes:
  • Product information at Solvay is not centralized, each GBU and business line may have a different product hierarchy and standards. 
  • Product/Material data in the data lake is retrieved from SAP PF1 and WP1 via SAP BW.
    • Each of these instances (PF1 and WP1) have their own product hierarchies.
    • Other sources, such as Salesforce, can use different hierarchies. 

    • Products are mostly unique to of the sources (SAP Instances), however, some SAP instances cross-products can be found, and these could have the same code or not, for the ones with the same code, they could be identified by the following rule: if it starts by "3" and the code has 6 digits, it is same product, otherwise it is not.

  • There are, potentially, other sources of product information not available in the lake, such as:
    • Salesforce (although unlikely)
    • GBR (Global Business Repository)

Data Flow

• Extract Type(Snapshot/Delta): Full data will be extracted from source (SAP-BW) on a daily basis
• Schedule: Jobs will be scheduled to run everyday at 7PM CET 
• Mapping Document:

Data at a Glance

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Tables & Attributes

View ID:  prj-data-pricing-dev.DataOcean.V_DIM_material

View ID: prj-data-pricing-dev.DataOcean.V_DIM_material_type

View ID: prj-data-pricing-dev.DataOcean.V_DIM_package_type

View ID: prj-data-pricing-dev.DataOcean.V_DIM_product_line

View ID: prj-data-pricing-dev.DataOcean.V_DIM_material_group

View ID:  prj-data-pricing-dev.DataOcean.V_DIM_product_hierarchy