How to setup attribute inheritance?

Product attributes on Finished goods can be inherited from Semi-Finished goods in the Bill of materials. This article explains how to get this configured.

Product specs (attributes) can be stored on semi-finished good. Example of these product specs for food products are the taste, the colour and the preparation. When this semi-finished good is packed, this results in a finished good. This finished good most often has these same product specs (or most of them are the same). In order to only manage these product specs once, specs on the finished good can be inherited from the semi-finished good item which is linked in the Bill of materials.

When are product specs inherited?

Product attributes can be inherited from semi-finished good to finished good. The following attributes will be inherited:

• The attributes on the semi-finished good item which are marked as 'Inherit' for the semi-finished good's product class.
• AND this semi-finished good item is the only semi-finished good item in the Bill of Materials (BOM) of a Finished good. ^{1) 2)}
• AND these attributes are also marked as 'Inherit' on the product class of the Finished good this semi-finished good belongs to (in the BOM).

¹⁾ The Finished good can have Packaging components or other Finished good products in the Bill of Materials. It's only checked that there is only 1 semi-finished good item is the BOM.

²⁾ Only the currently active Bill of Material items are checked. All items which have been part of the BOM are ignored.

Setup inherited product attributes

Per attribute per product class is defined if this attribute is inherited for this product class. So in the example of the French fries, there can be 2 product classes. 1 for the semi-finished good and 1 for the finished good. The attribute 'Taste' needs to be marked as 'Inherit' on the semi-finished good product class and also on the finished good product class.

Inherited attributes can be configured via an XLSX template. Please contact your SyncForce Implementation Partner to have this configured:

What's in the XLSX template?

• On the rows, all product attributes are listed which:
  • Are on level 'Variant'. Attributes on 'Master' level cannot be used for inheritance.
  • Are NOT marked as lead attribute.
    • When you want to mark derived attributes as 'inherited', make sure that the lead attribute which triggers these derived attributes, is NOT assigned to the finished good product class. This to prevent that setting the inherited attribute values interfere with derived attribute values.
• In the columns, all product classes
• Per attribute - product class combination:
  • Cell colour is red or yellow

    • The yellow coloured cells implicate that this attribute is available for this product class and can be marked as inherited.

    • The red coloured cells implicate that this attribute is NOT available for this product class and can NOT be marked as inherited.

  • Content is 'X' or '-'
    • 'X' means it's configured as inherited
    • '-'means it's NOT (yet) configured as inherited

Attributes assigned to the product classes

Make sure the right attributes are assigned to the product classes BEFORE you start working with this template. If there are still attributes which need to be assigned to the product classes, contact your SyncForce Implementation Partner to get this configured first.

Mark as inherited

• If an attribute needs to be inherited, indicate that attribute for the related product classes with an 'X'.
  • NOTE that both the semi-finished good and the finished good product classes are selected.
  • If the semi-finished good and finished good items have the same product class, this is also OK and the attribute only needs to be marked once.
• If an attribute NO LONGER needs to be inherited, indicate that attribute for the related product classes with an '-'.
• Only 'X' and '-' are allowed as value in the yellow cells of the matrix.