Questions about third-party Warehouse Management and associated APIs

[kpersing]

Hi All,  I have a few questions surrounding the SAP_COM_0440 communication arrangement and the associated APIs.

1. Once a Warehouse Shipping Order Request or Warehouse Stock Transfer Shipping Advice has been sent, is there a way to re-trigger/resend the data?
2. Some 3PL warehouses are not capable of receiving the Warehouse Stock Transfer Shipping Advice or sending Warehouse Stock Transfer Receipt Advice, but still want to receive the Warehouse Shipping Order Request and send back the Warehouse Shipping Advice. Is there a way to stop S/4 from sending the Warehouse Stock Transfer Shipping Advice to those warehouses?  And secondly, is there a way to get inventory availability into a 3PL storage location without sending a Warehouse Stock Transfer Shipping Advice and receiving back a Warehouse Stock Transfer Receipt Advice?
   
   
3. Once the Warehouse Shipping Order Request or Warehouse Stock Transfer Shipping Advice has been sent to the 3PL, what is the process for changing the associated delivery due to wrong/missing data?

[Darius_Nowak]

Hi, 

thanks for the questions.

1) The request is only sent once. With help of the Message Monitoring app it should be possible to edit/resend a failed message.

2) This is not (easily) achievable in my opinion. You could switch-off the respective outbound service in the communication arrangement to avoid sending a message. But as you deal with a 3PL managed storage location the system expects a goods receipt to be triggered/posted by the 3PL.

3) There is a configuration option (Configure SAP 3PL-Specific Parameters) available that allows you to switch on “Change Management” per Warehouse Number. By switching on this feature, you can edit deliveries even after initial distribution to a Third-Party WMS. A change triggers a new message to the Third-Party WMS.  

Best regards,

Darius Nowak

SAP SE, Cloud ERP Product Management Logistics

[kpersing]

Darius,Thanks for the reply!

[kpersing]

Darius, Is there a way to get inventory availability into a 3PL storage location without sending a Warehouse Stock Transfer Shipping Advice and receiving back a Warehouse Stock Transfer Receipt Advice?

[Darius_Nowak]

Hi,

could you please provide some more details what you exactly mean with “get inventory availability into a 3PL storage location”? Assumption: You would like to see the stock situation in the connected Third-Party WMS / 3PL on storage location level in your S/4HANA Public Cloud system. Without sending a Warehouse Stock Transfer Shipping Advice and receiving back a Warehouse Stock Transfer Receipt Advice it won’t be possible to post goods receipt in the warehouse and to increase the stock.

Best regards,

Darius Nowak

SAP SE, Cloud ERP Product Management Logistics

[kpersing]

Hi Darius, Your assumption on my question is exactly correct, but with one caveat. I want to stress that we are not talking about a production situation, this is strictly for testing. If the only way to get inventory to be increased in a 3PL storage location is to use the Warehouse Stock Transfer Shipping Advice and Warehouse Stock Transfer Receipt Advice, it makes it very difficult in a testing situation where you have yet to create those interfaces. The reason behind the question is because in order to be able to select a 3PL storage location on an order or outbound delivery and have the system produce a Warehouse Shipping Order Request, is to first have a positive stock value for the material in the 3PL storage location. In other words, to test a 3PL, you first have to get the Warehouse Stock Transfer Shipping Advice and the Warehouse Stock Transfer Receipt Advice working first, so that you are able to have inventory available. Only then you can move on to the Warehouse Shipping Order Request and the Warehouse Shipping Advice. We are wondering if there is another way (again, strictly in a testing situation) to get the 3PL storage location inventory increased without using those Warehouse Stock Transfer interfaces to facilitate our testing prior to developing those interfaces. Best, Ken Persing SPS Commerce