As we are halfway through August by now, I would like to take the time and remind you that we added new innovations in the area of Warehouse Management in SAP S/4HANA Cloud. We are constantly working on enhancing our state-of-the-art optimization techniques so that our customers always have new options available to improve asset utilization, minimize inventory costs and maximize service levels through fulfilment acceleration and inbound-outbound processes coordination. The 1908 innovations are aimed to increase warehouse automation, simplify clerical tasks and offer new analytical capabilities. This blog post provides an overview of the updates we made in these areas, starting with the topic of automation.
Warehouse Goods Receipt from Repetitive Manufacturing
The new scope item
Warehouse Goods Receipt from Repetitive Manufacturing (41U) allows you to perform the goods receipt of finished material from repetitive manufacturing into the warehouse. In a repetitive manufacturing environment when a predefined quantity of a finished product is produced, the production operator confirms the produced quantity in the system. With the repetitive manufacturing confirmation finished material is received into the specified warehouse goods receipt bin and raw material are issued from stock. The benefits are obvious:
- Seamless integration between warehouse management and production (repetitive manufacturing)
- Keep manual posting effort to a minimum
- Improve visibility and control in warehouse operations
- Synchronous updates of stock in inventory management and in warehouse management
- No delivery and warehouse request documents needed for goods receipt postings from repetitive manufacturing into a bin-managed storage location
Fig. 1: Warehouse Goods Receipt from Repetitive Manufacturing process steps
Fig. 2: Synchronous Goods Receipt and Goods Issue in one Material Document
For setting up the scenario you can maintain the Warehouse Number, the Receiving Location and the Destination Bin with the ‘Manage Production Versions’ app.
You can maintain the Warehouse Product Attributes with the apps ‘Manage Product Master Data’ or ‘Warehouse Monitor’. The
Control Indicator for Process Type Determination allows to define per product whether warehouse tasks should be created automatically or manually.
Fig. 3: SAP Fiori app ‘Manage Product Master Data’ – Maintain the ‘Process Type Determination Indicator’
Process Warehouse Tasks – Putaway
With the new SAP Fiori app ‘Process Warehouse Tasks – Putaway’, you can process the warehouse tasks destined for putaway. In the overview screen, you can view all relevant information about the putaway warehouse tasks in your warehouse. You can directly choose one or multiple warehouse tasks for confirmation or cancellation. You can print a putaway list with this app. You can also view the details of a warehouse task or handle an exception.
Fig. 4: SAP Fiori app ‘Process Warehouse Tasks – Putaway’
Warehouse KPIs – Operations
With 1908 we are launching the first analytical overview page in SAP S/4HANA Cloud Warehouse Management. With this app, you can view an overview of key performance indicators (KPIs) relevant to your warehouse operations, for example, the total number of open warehouse tasks to be processed on the current date. On the overview page, you can see different types of KPI cards. As a warehouse clerk, these cards help you to better manage and process your daily tasks.
Fig. 5: SAP Fiori overview page ‘Warehouse KPIs – Operations’