Hi Mijodrag,
The problem you are refering to is unharmonized master data. There are various ways to deal with it. The most sofisticated way is called Master Data Management (MDM), a separate system where you manage master data coming from various satelite systems in order to harmonize them.
If you don't have an MDM system in place, then you will have to do the harmonization in BW. In a Layered, Scalable Architecture (LSA) approach you will take care of it in the Harmonization & Quality layer.
There are basically 2 ways to harmonize the different master data codifications:
- Concatenation;
- Compounding.
Concatenation means that you extend the length of your InfoObject (e.g. with 2 characters) and use it to "prefix" the codes coming from different ERP systems. E.g. ERP system A gets prefix '10' and ERP system B gets '20'. This way you can generate unique codes.
Compounding is usually done with InfoObject 0LOGSYS. Also this way you will get unique codes because of the context of the logical system.
There are also other harmonization activities one can think of, e.g. mapping of local master data to group master data by using mapping tables, cross-reference tables or look-up tables.
It will depend on your specific situation how much effort it will cost to harmonize the master data. Also the differences of the data models and your "ambition level" towards an integrated data model will play a role.
Best regards,
Sander