This overview describes S/4HANA Digital Supply Chain Inventory and Warehouse Management aspects from an architectural perspective.
Some additional S/4HANA Business Process Integration areas are:
S/4HANA Core Inventory and Warehouse Management processes are deeply integrated with each other. These processes further depend on close integration with other digital supply chain modules like e.g. Manufacturing Execution, Accounting, Production Planning, Quality or Transportation Management.
S/4HANA offers Extended Warehouse Management (EWM) and Stock Room Management as business solutions to handle goods movement and stock management. The integration between Core Inventory and Warehouse solutions is based on movement types.
S/4HANA Core Inventory handles stock with plants and storage locations. At least one storage location has to be linked to the EWM warehouse number. Best practices recommend to create two storage locations ROD (Received On Dock) and AFS (Available For Sale).
EWM determines these storage locations with assigned availability groups. Stock types in EWM represent groups of storage bins which are defined on the basis of their spatial or organizational features like goods issue or receipt area, open storage space or different rack types.
Storage sections are subdivisions of storage types. They join storage bins regarding their characteristics for putaway processes.
Extended Warehouse Management (EWM) is the strategic warehouse management solution, embedded in S/4HANA or as decentral system.
Classical EWM implementations handle warehouse movements asynchronous with own documents (delivery, warehouse order and task) and qRFC queues.
EWM delivery processing executes goods receipts, goods issues, posting changes and internal stock transfers. Delivery documents contain all the data required to document and control delivery business processes.
From process perspective EWM mainly supports three areas:
EWM processes goods movement with Warehouse Task documents. Warehouse orders group warehouse tasks or physical inventory items to work packages.
Some EWM Storage and Operations features are:
Embedded EWM in S/4HANA is available as Basic and Extended version. S/4HANA and eEWM run on the same system which avoids redundant documents or customizing and reduces integration effort.
S/4HANA eEWM streamlines warehouse processing with deeper integrations to other modules including synchronous transactions. Synchronous transactions (without qRFC) between S/4HANA Core and embedded EWM reduce the need for separate EWM documents.
Some innovation highlights of S/4HANA embedded EWM:
Synchronous S/4HANA-EWM
Synchronous S/4HANA-EWM goods movements reduce the need for documents with redundant information like delivery or warehouse order.S/4HANA eEWM Synchronous Goods Receipt (GR)
Information about Synchronous Goods Receipts is provided in S/4HANA on the eEWM tab in transaction MIGO for purchase orders, scheduling agreements or stock transport orders and for in-house production goods movements. Synchronous GR support HUs, Unified Package Builder (UPB), serialized products, creation of inspection lot and automatic putaway WT creation.
Out of scope are Confirmation Category LA (Inbound Delivery), mixed HU creation and HU creation for serialized products or several batches.
S/4HANA eEWM Synchronous Goods Movements
Post Goods Movement (MIGO) directly in eEWM for goods receipt, goods issue and transfer postings that are not related to production or external procurement.
Production Confirmation
Production confirmation with automatic posting of goods issue for components (backflush processing). The confirmation triggers stock adaptions with one material document in S/4HANA and created EWM warehouse tasks (WT) for GR/GIKanban Processes
Kanban replenishment for EWM managed storage locations with single-step stock transfers. Setting S/4HANA Kanban container to EMPTY triggers EWM WT creation. Confirmation of WT sets Kanban status to FULL. Reported EWM goods movement triggers transfer posting own-to-own stock(with movement type / BWART 411) in S/4HANA. Further capabilities are, reversing Kanban FULL to EMPTY in one step and posting Consigment to Own stock with WT confirmation.Quality Management
S/4HANA 2020 introduced Warehouse Defects to enhance the eEWM integration with QM. Warehouse defect with reference to storage location with assigned warehouse information. Follow-up actions trigger stock eEWM stock postings e.g. to blocked or unrestricted stock, scrap.
Since S/4HANA 1909 enhanced information on the material master quality view enables QM-integration without inspection rules and the usage of same inspection types for EWM- and non-EWM related inspections.
Side-by-Side decentralized EWM can be deployed independently as central Hub for multiple S/4HANA systems. Decentralized EWM has to exchange delivery documents with S/4HANA with higher integration effort for qRFC queuing.
Some process examples are:
Some differences to Embedded EWM:
Stock Room Management allows to ECC LE-WM with basic warehouse management to S/4HANA. S/4HANA Core Inventory and Stock Room Management are integrated on process level with warehouse movement types. Reference table T156 defines the mapping between Core Inventory and Stock Room movement types.
There are no innovations planned for S/4HANA Stock Room Management and the functionalities have been reduced in contrast to ECC LE-IM (e.g.
S/4HANA Core Inventory Management is part of Material Management (MM) within the Digital Supply Chain. S/4HANA Core Inventory processes are implemented with a simplified data and controlled by movement types.
S/4HANA introduced a new simplified data model (NSDM) based on the denormalized table MATDOC. S/4HANA Core Inventory management documents goods movements with material documents in table MATDOC to update material stocks quantity and value based.
Hybrid tables like MARC, MARD, MCHB hold master data and calculate stock information on the fly. The MATDOC_EXTRACT table speeds up the calculation implemented with CDS views like e.g. NSDM_V_MARD.
SAP Note 2206980 describes the insert only mode of table MATDOC without DB locks. Nevertheless, stock decreasing processes with ABAP locks to ensure stock consistency.
Stock transfers and transfer postings are used to represent organizational-relevant transfers within the company.
Transfer posting are not connected to physical goods movement. Examples are movements from Stock to stock, Material to Material (movement type 309 changes the material number and value, which triggers an update in financial accounting), Consignment to Warehouse.
Stock transfers of physical goods movement can be processed with Stock Transport Orders (STO) in one or two steps, with different methods of material valuations and accounting documents. One step transfers streamline processing, but two steps allow tracking goods with status "in transfer".
Examples of stock transfers are storage location to storage location, company code to company code (results in two accounting documents). Plant to plant stock transfers affect financial accounting (created accounting document is valuated at the issuing plant) and MRP.
Valuation for stock transfers is performed after changing plants or company codes (with two accounting documents) or material splitting with different values in involved storage locations.
Examples of one step procedure examples are two movements within one transaction handled with one material document or movements between storage locations from any issuing to any receiving stock type.
Two step procedures process steps goods are assigned to receiving plant with status in-transfer and valuation occurs at the time of goods issue.
Purchase requisitions generated by MRP, can be converted into Stock Transport Orders (STO) to perform GI/GR steps. STO act as internal purchase orders with optional creation of deliveries and additional association of costs like freight.
Overdue Materials of stock in transit can be monitored with predicted delivery dates based on analytical supply chain models (20N).
Material Ledger accounting documents are created in table ACDOCA for goods movements which update values of G/L accounts like Goods Issue (GI), Goods Receipt (GR) or transfer postings.
Consumable materials are not held as value-based inventory in stock. Accounting objects (e.g. production or sales order, cost center) have to be assigned for consumption in purchase requisitions or orders.
Goods receipts of consumable materials lead to debits on consumption accounts and credit GR/IR liability accounts. Invoice Receipts (IR) debit liability and credit Account Payable. Payments debit account payable and credit cash (asset) accounts.
S4H Supply Chain & Procurement
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