John,
Since this question shows as not answered, I am trying to give a brief answer here without going into links suggesting detailed answers for a quick start. Reward points if you are happy.
WM integrates with IM, QM, Production Execution, Shipping and Transportation Modules where a transaction is planned in the integrating module and executed in WM. Naturally warehouse is a hub in Supply Chain. What comes in should go out. this gives us
1) goods receipt area
2) goods issue area
What ever moves for production within the site should go to
3) production staging area
The above three nodes connect warehouse with external entities. then we need to configure space to store and retrieve material from warehouse. This would result in setting up space in the following order.
1) Storage type (top most)
2) Storage Sections
3) Storage bins (bottom most configurable space)
Quant: (smallest association of material with space. result of material movements. not configurable. When you are moving material, you are basically moving quants)
What comes into goods receipt area should be putaway into bins. This requires putaway strategies. SAP has many standard strategies for this like next empty bin etc.
What should go out to goods issue/production staging area should be retrieved from bins with strategies as well. Ex: FIFO
Now you have to map these strategies to storage type/section indicators. These indicators are maintained at material master level so that each material will have a storage and retrieval strategy.
Material Movements within a warehouse:
1) Physical: where the material has to move within out side warehouse. This would require a Transfer Requirement and Transfer Requirement would be converted to a Transfer Order. Transfer Order is confirmed while material movement.
2) Logical: material will remain in its place, but qualitative changes happen like stock status change from QI to unrestricted etc. This would require a posting change notice. A posting change notice is converted to a Transfer order and transfer order is confirmed for material movement.
Each material movement at the integrating modules (IM) should be mapped to a reference movement type. This is because you don't need an many movements in WM. Since in WM we can at the most broadly think of placement/removal/status change. Then the list of reference movement types can be mapped to few WM movements. Each WM movement is configured to manage transfers.
Internal Warehouse operations:
1) Companies tend to receive large qty (as a result of production) in the receiving area and ship small qty for customers (smaller customer orders). Replenishments within the warehouse facilitate this by creating periodic transfer orders from large rear storage bins (pallets) to forward shipping storage types (cartons/eaches).
2) Physical Inventory/Cycle counting: Since what we store and retrieve over a period of time may result in inconsistencies between physical stock and system stock, we have to do this and adjust one to reality.
Bluesky
