What is SAP QM? Quality Management Module

By : Olivia Turner Olivia Turner
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⚡ Smart Summary

SAP QM (Quality Management) is the SAP ERP module that plans, records and evaluates quality checks across procurement, production and sales, and it shares its data with every other logistics module.

  • 🔘 Scope: Quality planning, quality assurance and quality control run inside one integrated module.
  • ☑️ Inspection lot: Every check is processed as an inspection lot that ends in a usage decision to accept or reject.
  • ✅ Master data: Master inspection characteristics, inspection methods, sampling procedures and inspection plans define what is measured.
  • 🧪 Triggers: The inspection type in the material master QM view decides which event creates an inspection lot.
  • 🛠️ Notifications: Quality notifications capture defects and record the root cause analysis that prevents a repeat.
  • 📈 S/4HANA: The classic QM transactions still run, and role-based Fiori apps present the same processes.
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SAP QM Quality Management Module Overview

What is SAP QM (Quality Management)?

SAP QM stands for SAP Quality Management. It is an integral part of several key business processes of SAP such as material management, plant maintenance, production, procurement and sales. SAP Quality Management is used mainly in the logistics functions of SAP through its integration with the other components.

SAP itself is an enterprise-wide business software package designed to integrate each area of a business, so all business processes are interconnected. A change in one department has an impact on the others, and because the system works in real time, a quality result recorded by an inspector is immediately available to purchasing, production and sales.

SAP contains many modules, such as SD, MM, PP, QM, FICO, PM, WM and HR, and each one is connected to the others. SAP QM is a key module of SAP ERP and it covers three areas.

Quality Planning

  • Basic master data for quality management.
  • Inspection planning using the inspection plans of materials, which standardizes quality planning across plants.

Quality Assurance

  • Quality inspection is performed through inspection lot processing. During this process the quality results are captured, and a usage decision is taken to accept or reject the inspection lot.
  • Quality certificates of analysis are issued for the inspected material.

Quality Control

  • In a SAP QM quality notification, the root cause analysis is done for the identified defect.
  • The SAP QM information system is where you analyze reports such as vendor evaluation, the list of quality notifications and quality charts.

Business Processes in SAP QM

Those three areas come together in three business processes. Here are the main business processes of the SAP Quality Management module.

Quality Management in Procurement

SAP Quality Management is fully integrated with the purchasing and inventory management processes.

It consists of a receiving inspection, in which the material is received against a purchase order. An inspection lot is triggered if the material is flagged for a quality check in its material master.

Quality results are entered against master inspection characteristics. Depending on whether the results are within or outside the tolerance limits, a usage decision to accept or reject the inspection lot is taken.

The stock posting from quality inspection stock to another stock category is then done in the SAP system.

Quality Management in Production

SAP Quality Management also connects to the production and inventory management processes.

It covers in-process inspections, where an inspection lot is triggered on release of the production order.

In an inspection after production, the inspection lot is triggered after the goods receipt is posted from the production order.

In-process inspections are not relevant to inventory, whereas an inspection after production involves a stock posting from quality inspection stock to another stock category.

Both cases run as inspection lot processing: quality results are entered against master inspection characteristics, and the usage decision to accept or reject follows from those results.

Quality Notifications

In this process you record how defects found during a quality inspection are analyzed and captured in a SAP quality notification.

The notification holds the root cause analysis of the problem found during the inspection, together with the corrective tasks that prevent it from happening again.

For in-process inspections you can also raise an internal quality notification and record the problem analysis there.

Benefits of SAP Quality Management

SAP QM provides the following benefits for a company at various levels:

  • Quality is integrated with procurement and production, which gives more control over the process.
  • Planning support through the use of inspection plans.
  • Monitoring of vendor and customer complaints by implementing corrective tasks in quality notifications.
  • Automation of the quality certificates that are printed during the sales delivery to customers.

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SAP QM Master Data

None of those processes start until the quality master data exists. Master data is created once, at plant level, and then reused by every inspection so that two inspectors measure the same material in the same way.

  • Master inspection characteristic (QS21) — the specification that is measured, such as length, width or viscosity, with its tolerance limits.
  • Inspection method (QS31) — the procedure used to carry out the measurement.
  • Sampling procedure (QDV1) — the rule that decides how large a sample is drawn from the lot.
  • Code group and catalog (QS41) — the coded lists of defect types, causes and usage decisions.
  • Inspection plan (QP01) — the task list that groups the characteristics into operations for a material and plant.
  • Quality info record (QI01) — the release of a vendor to supply a given material.

The master inspection characteristics tutorial walks through the creation of this data in detail.

Inspection Types and Inspection Lot Origins

Master data describes what to measure; the inspection type decides when SAP creates the inspection lot. Inspection types are activated per material on the Quality Management view of the material master, and each one belongs to an inspection lot origin that is delivered by SAP and cannot be created new.

Inspection type Origin Lot is created when
01 01 – Goods receipt from purchase order A goods receipt is posted against a purchase order
03 03 – In-process inspection The production or process order is released
04 04 – Goods receipt from production The goods receipt from the production order is posted
08 08 – Stock transfer Stock is transferred between plants or storage locations
10 10 – Delivery to customer An outbound delivery is created in sales
89 89 – Manual inspection A user creates the lot manually in QA01

If two inspection types with the same origin are active for one material, an indicator marks the preferred one, so only a single lot is created per event.

Important SAP QM Transaction Codes

These are the transactions a quality user opens most often. They are grouped by the phase they belong to, which makes them easier to remember than an alphabetical list.

T-code Description Phase
QS21 / QS23 Create and change a master inspection characteristic Quality planning
QS31 Create an inspection method Quality planning
QP01 / QP02 Create and change an inspection plan Quality planning
QI01 Create a quality info record for procurement Quality planning
QA01 / QA32 Create an inspection lot and process the worklist Quality assurance
QE51N Record inspection results Quality assurance
QA11 Record the usage decision Quality assurance
QM01 / QM02 Create and change a quality notification Quality control

All of these transactions still run in SAP S/4HANA. Alongside them SAP ships role-based Fiori apps such as Manage Inspection Lots, Record Inspection Results and the Quality Engineer Overview page, which read the same data from the underlying tables.

Next, we will look into each phase of SAP QM and learn how to operate the module, starting with quality master data and then the incoming inspection of a material.

FAQs

Machine learning scores inspection results to predict which lots are likely to fail, image recognition detects surface defects on the line, and text mining clusters quality notifications so a recurring root cause is fixed once rather than logged repeatedly.

Copilot can draft the ABAP for a QM user exit, a CDS view over inspection lot tables or a script that calls the QM BAPIs. Specification logic, authorizations and testing still belong to a developer working in a test client.

An inspection lot is a request to inspect a specific quantity of material and it ends in a usage decision. A quality notification records a problem that has already occurred, along with its root cause and corrective tasks.

The usage decision closes an inspection lot. The inspector selects a code that states whether the stock is accepted, accepted with restrictions or rejected, and that code drives the follow-up stock posting and the quality score.

Yes. Quality Management remains a standard component, and the classic transactions continue to run. SAP adds role-based Fiori apps and embedded analytics on the HANA database, so quality figures update as results are recorded.

It evaluates inspection lots, inspection results, defects, quality notifications and vendor quality. Standard analyses include vendor evaluation, quality scores, defect Pareto charts and control charts, and the data can be filtered by material, plant and period.

A quality info record links a vendor to a material and releases that vendor to supply it. It can block purchase orders when the release expires, and it stores the agreed technical delivery terms and the quality assurance agreement.

A goods receipt for an inspected material posts into quality inspection stock, which is valuated but not available for use. The usage decision then moves it to unrestricted use, to blocked stock, or returns it to the vendor.

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