Warehouse Management in SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition 2508 Release – What’s New

[Dhiraj_Tamke]

Core Function 

Enablement of Additional End-to-End Processes 

Following our Suite-First strategy, we consider it essential that Warehouse Management works with all scope items and process variations that are available within SAP – and as you might know, that is quite a lot. Therefore, I am happy to share that with this release we were able to release the enablement of six (!) additional end-to-end processes: 

• Stock transfer with delivery (BME) in combination with transportation management 
  • Intercompany stock transfer returns (2TS) 
    • Intracompany stock transfer returns 
      • Customer returns for sales kits (5CX) 
        • In-house repair (3XK) - Send back to customer 
          • Just-in-time supply to customer (2EM) - Summarized JIT calls 

            For all of these, the respective delivery can now be distributed to and processed in Warehouse Management. The selection of the delivery via the according reference documents is enabled, e.g. to select an outbound delivery based on the JIT reference. You’ll find more details on each of these in the linked What’s New presentation. 

            Stock Removal Strategy for Direct Goods Movement Postings

            In my view, this innovation is quite special, because it is different from the classical paradigm to always go via warehouse tasks when removing stock. Some customers asked for a very simplified way of posting the consumption for the components of their production orders. Instead of using one of the production integration patterns where you first stage the components to the production supply area and then post the consumption from there, the staging and consumption is done in just one step. This is achieved, by posting the consumption directly from the storage bin in the warehouse. The operator is then responsible to physically remove it from there and hand it over to production, but from a system perspective the stock is already consumed. To simplify this process, we have introduced a new button in the app “Post Goods Movement”, to run the stock determination and to thereby propose the storage bin from which the consumption can be posted.
            
            

            
            
            Combined Picking in RF 

            This feature has already been very popular in Private Cloud EWM and has now been asked for by many of our Public Cloud customers. The scenario is to have multiple outbound deliveries, all requesting the same product. A typical scenario would be e-commerce where many different end customers have ordered one piece of a certain product. Since a picking warehouse task is always created per outbound delivery order item, this would mean in this scenario, that multiple picking warehouse tasks are created, all requesting one piece of the same product from the same storage bin. Obviously, confirming those in RF on the mobile handheld device one-by-one is quite cumbersome for the warehouse operative and very inefficient. With this innovation, those quantities are now combined, summed up and displayed as just one pick in RF, while in the background, it is still individual warehouse tasks. To prevent a day-one impact, this feature must be activated in the configuration. 
            
            

            
            

             Updating Media

            Migration Object: Assign Storage Bin to Production Supply Area   

            Even though this innovation is “just” a migration object, I am convinced that it is very important to many customers. When working with the Advanced Production Integration, it is mandatory to maintain the assignment of storage bins to the production supply area, including the staging behaviour for individual products. As some of our customers have thousands of products to be maintained here, it is essential that this maintenance can be simplified with a migration object.

            Compare Stock with Inventory Management 

            When using Warehouse Management, the stock is managed in the warehouse on individual storage bins, but the stock is also still managed in Inventory Management on storage location level. Warehouse Management is then the leading system in terms of stock management. All stock postings are done in Warehouse Management, but they always update Inventory Management. Therefore, the stock balance in Warehouse Management and Inventory Management is always in sync. In rare cases it can happen that deviations occur, for example because of rounding issues. Worst case, this can then lead to an error when trying to update Inventory Management from Warehouse Management. Therefore, we have released a new app to compare the stock in Warehouse Management with Inventory Management. If there are any differences, then this app allows to immediately correct these differences with an additional stock posting, correcting the stock in Inventory Management. 

            Extensibility 

            New CDS Views 

            Same as with the last releases, we have again shipped additional CDS views, allowing customers to access the data they need to build their extensions. 

            There is a new CDS view to access the storage bin data, thereby making one of the most central objects available. In addition, there are new CDS views available in the area of wave management, providing access to wave headers and wave items but also to settings such as wave templates and wave types. 

             

            Integration 

            Additions to the Warehouse Order and Task API 

            With the Warehouse Order and Task API being one of the most central APIs in Warehouse Management, it has received some additions in this release: 

            • Merging multiple warehouse orders into one warehouse order 
              • Splitting warehouse tasks from an existing warehouse order 
                • A new parameter to prevent the full handling unit withdrawal during the confirmation of product warehouse tasks.

                  Additions to the Storage Bin API 

                  The Storage Bin API had been a read-only API so far but has now been enhanced with the following: 

                  • Create storage bins 
                    • Update storage bins 
                      • Action to block storage bins 
                        • Action to unblock storage bins 

                          FIND OUT MORE! 

                          This blog only pointed out some of the highlights of this release – you can find the full list of innovations in the What’s New presentation.