Hii Ahmed,
This kind of scenario is common to Steel Industries and for that first production definition need to be fixed.
for any family of product, you need to fix which product attribute to be taken into material code and which one to be define in classification.
Basis for fixing the attributes in product will be as following
1) APO planning constraint (No of Material Code handling)
2) level of Information to be working from SAP standard reports like (More the attributes in characteristic less will be the possibility to track and work with standard reports like stock, etc).
3) To what extent sales person required product to be identified at material code and punch the Sales order with remaining characteristic.
4) Project master data work and post maintenance. Generally, more the product attribute taken in material code more will be the PP master data and less will be the Object dependency work, same will be with the nature with maintenance like new product introduction.
5) A business process flow check based upon clear identified input/output materials codes in relation with working rules and process.
6) Legal requirements of Excise.
7) Many more depend upon each and every module like SD, MM, CO, Excise etc business requirements
On fixing the level of attribute coming in product material code, it will come out whether the business is left with limited number of variant or still left with large number of complex configuration. Generally the lesser the attribute taken in material code more will be the probability for variant configurable scenario and vice versa. (This even depend upon APO planning constraint)
Once the business come out with proposed material definition then business need to identified the Super BOM and Super Routing for each header material having all the possible components and operations and identify the rules based upon product/Header material/parent material characteristic which can trigger correct dependent components and operations in routing. Similarly SuperBOM and Routing and rules to be identified for further down the level components as header material . This will result in coming out with blue print of product flow chart for the end to end business process.
As per my experience in steel industry, business get mapped with variant configurable scenario when APO is part of package and can even go to variant configurable to discrete manufacturing scenario when APO is not part. However it solely depend upon the business requirement.
Do let us know any question in your journey.
Regards,