Migrating from SAP WM to SAP EWM – A Useful Guide

 

Migrating from SAP Warehouse Management to SAP Extended Warehouse Management

Abstract

SAP Warehouse Management solution may end by 2025 based on SAP Note “1648480 – Maintenance for SAP Business Suite 7 Software including SAP NetWeaver.” SAP S/4HANA customers can use SAP WM till 2025. Please refer to SAP note 2269324 – Compatibility Scope Matrix for SAP S/4HANA. WM is still part of S/4HANA but in a compatibility mode – see SAP Notes 2269324 and 2270211. With the compatibility mode, SAP allows customers to migrate their existing solutions smoothly into S/4HANA. SAP also restricts the usage of components which are in a compatibility mode until 31st December 2025 (refer to SAP Note 2269324 for details). SAP considers EWM as the strategic product for warehouse management and recommends implementing new warehouses by using EWM. Customers with SAP WM needs to plan for EWM Migration.

Introduction

Inventory should be stored efficiently to satisfy customer orders and supply production with raw materials. Warehouse Management is management of stock and management of locations where the stock is being stored.

SAP WM (Warehouse Management) has a big boost in new capabilities to manage warehouse operations. It is a scalable solution that has been deployed in various business environments from simple raw materials warehouses to complex, basic warehouse processes, small and medium volume. The functionality of SAP WM has been expanded further to S/4HANA EWM (Extended Warehouse Management) that has comprehensive warehouse management processes, full process transparency, flexible automated processes, high-performance, high-volume warehouse operations, medium & large-sized warehouses.

Benefits of SAP Extended Warehouse Management in SAP S/4HANA

Extended Warehouse Management provides us with the option of mapping entire warehouses in detail in the system. Using EWM, we can control and optimise various processes in the warehouse. SAP S/4HANA EWM solution covers complex warehouse processes in the whole supply chain. It offers customisable processes and supports direct integration to fully automated warehouses. If I compare to WM, EWM offers almost the same basic processes of WM and has additional capabilities.

1. Extended Warehouse Management offers you flexible, automated support for processing various goods movements and for managing stock in your warehouse complex. For example, the goods movement from the goods receipt zone to the warehouse can be planned in more detail according to labour and resources than is possible in the original warehouse management in SAP ERP that is currently still available in SAP S/4HANA. So the worker in the warehouse knows exactly when to pick a part and how to move it to the next bin. The system can also plan exactly where to put a truck in the yard and when it is directed to the door to unload the parts.
2. SAP EWM is the strategic warehouse management solution for SAP S/4HANA.
3. SAP EWM offers enhanced visibility and flexibility.
4. Labour management is a part of SAP EWM.
5. It also contains advanced warehouse functionality that you can use for your whole supply chain.

The Primary functions of EWM
1. Inventory Management at storage bin level
2. Storage bin determination for incoming goods
3. Stock removal for outgoing goods
4. Stock transfers
5. Physical inventory Management

SAP S/4HANA Simplifications and Innovations – Comparison SAP EWM vs SAP WM

New Functionalities:
1. Internal Routing
2. Expected Goods Receipt
3. Unloading of Transport units
4. Deconsolidation
5. Slotting/ Re-arrangement
6. Labour Management
7. Decentral Quality Inspection
8. Warehouse Automation (MFS)

Improved Functionalities:
1. Put away Strategies
2. Removal Strategies
3. Wave Management
4. Replenishment
5. Handling Unit Management
6. Yard Management
7. RF Technology
8. Resource Management
9. Value added services/ Kitting
10. Cross–docking
11. Dynamic Cycle Counting
12. Multi-Client Warehousing
13. Flexible Process Modelling
14. Layout Modelling

Migrating to EWM reduces costs through a better and improved process and improves productivity of the warehouse by using capabilities of EWM. It also offers flexibility. It is now embedded in SAP S/4HANA. This offers us “best in class” warehouse management application that provides real time transparency. Basic WM features are available as a part of the S/4HANA licence. Advanced features need an additional licence. It would be ideal to speak with SAP on this.

SAP Extended Warehouse Management (SAP EWM) normally runs as a de-centralised system. With SAP S/4HANA embedded EWM another deployment option is available. In general, the processes of a decentralised EWM system and an embedded EWM system are the same.

SAP ERP/SAP EWM System Landscape
SAP EWM shares the same server as other SAP SCM applications such as Advanced Planning and Optimizer (APO) and Event Management, but it is considered a standalone application. We recommend that you run SAP EWM on a different SAP SCM server to production planning applications such as APO demand planning and production planning/detailed scheduling.

Since the SAP SCM 2007 release of SAP EWM, it is possible to run SAP EWM in a centralised mode within SAP ECC 6.0 (SAP ERP Central Component). A limitation with this deployment option is that SAP EWM installed on SAP ERP only works with storage locations within the same client that the warehouse is running. An SAP S/4HANA system can be connected to an SAP EWM system that runs on an SAP SCM server or standalone. With embedded EWM, available with SAP S/4HANA 1610, another option exists.

Integration
SAP EWM is a self-contained application; it requires integration with an SAP ERP system to access master & transaction data. Use of some functions in SAP EWM, Example : entitlement slotting & availability-checking may also require an interface with SAP applications and systems such as Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Global Available to Promise (Global ATP) in APO, and Service Parts Planning in APO.

Some functions that were introduced with the different SAP EWM releases, such as batch selection, kit-to-stock, and production integration, require SAP ECC 6.0 with a certain EHP. It is ideal to read the EWM release notes to determine the functions that require an EHP.

Communication:
Two kinds of data need to be transferred between the SAP ERP and the SAP EWM system — master data and transactional data. The use of CIF is not required in an SAP S/4HANA embedded EWM. For transactional data a separate distribution model is used. Technically, both the CIF and the transactional data distribution model are based on qRFC. For earlier SAP ERP versions, IDocs are also supported.

The main process areas in SAP EWM are inbound processing, storage and operations, and outbound processing

Inbound Processes
• The following are the inbound processes:
• Transportation unit processing
• Goods receipt, management, and optimization
• Inbound quality management
• Internal routing

Storage and Operations
Storage and operations comprise the following:
Physical inventory
The types of physical inventory procedures are as follows:
• Periodic physical inventory
• Continuous physical inventory
• Cycle counting
Replenishment/Rearrangement
Kit-to-stock management

Outbound Processes
The following are the outbound processes:
• Outbound planning (route, wave, bin)
• Picking optimisation, packing, staging, and load management

Simplify your Journey to SAP EWM

In February 2020, SAP announced an extension of the mainstream maintenance for SAP Business Suite 7 core applications including SAP ERP 6.0, SAP Customer Relationship Management 7.0, SAP Supply Chain Management 7.0, SAP Supplier Relationship Management 7.0 and corresponding enhancement packages as well as SAP Business Suite powered by SAP HANA, from the end of December 2025 to end of December 2027. See the SAP Release Brochure
(https://support.sap.com/content/dam/support/en_us/library/ssp/release-upgrade-maintenance/maintenance-strategy/sap-release-and-maintenance-strategy-new.pdf) for more details.

In addition, SAP offered extended maintenance until end of December of 2030.
See SAP note 2881788 (https://launchpad.support.sap.com/#/notes/2881788) for the offered maintenance phases for Business Suite 7. This gives SAP customers long-term predictability and planning security.

After 2025, SAP will provide support for the latest three Enhancement Packages only. For Complete information, refer SAP Note 1648480

EWM will probably be set up as a complete new solution, as it offers very vast functionality than WM. For example, EWM includes information about warehouse structures that were not available in WM (like co-ordinates of a bin). Customers can look into the enhancements or modifications they have done in WM and redesign their processes. As a result, more complex warehouses can be completely defined anew to leverage the advanced features of EWM.

WM Customers can enable a quick migration to EWM

Many of the customers using WM might be interested to move quickly & easily to take over the existing structures and settings into EWM.

As a first step in the warehouse number migration, it is necessary to integrate the EPR warehouse number to an EWM warehouse number. You can set up the integration manually, but SAP EWM also offers a tool to automatize this integration on the EWM side.

When migrating an existing warehouse number to EWM, a plant and a storage location, which is connected to a warehouse number in ERP. For this warehouse number, we need a warehouse number in EWM. This can be the same key, but the keys in ERP and EWM can be different. The storage location needs to be assigned to an availability group and some other assignments are necessary for the integration as well.

For each plant for which the stock is stored in an EWM warehouse number, we need a vendor number and a customer number in the ERP system. This is necessary because when a stock movement is triggered from ERP an inbound or an outbound delivery is created. The vendor and customer are transferred to EWM via the core interface (CIF) through which business partners are created.

We can manually set up the warehouse integration in SPRO path to customise and the master data settings, but SAP EWM also includes a tool that automatically makes numerous settings. The advantage of the tool is that it also creates additionally required customising entries with the help of BC sets. You can also select to create the default number ranges and even to create the standard warehouse layout (in case of a new warehouse number).

An overview on SAP Warehouse Management to SAP Extended Warehouse Management

Migrate a Warehouse
• Migrate from SAP WM to SAP EWM
• Migration Process

Migrate warehouse layout
• Migrate warehouse layout
• Migrating storage types
• Migrating storage sections
• Migrate bin types
• Migrate doors and staging areas
• Migrate picking areas

Migrate Cross Process Settings
• Migrate queues and movement types

Migrate strategy settings
• Migrate strategy settings
• Migrate put away strategies
• Migrate stock removal settings
• Migrate replenishment strategies

Migrate Master Data and Stock Data
i. Migrate Master Data and Stock Data
ii. Storage Bin Migration
iii. Warehouse Product Migration
iv. Stock Migration (Migrating stock from WM to EWM)

General Information

We can use tools and transactions to move settings and data from ERP WM to EWM.

Generally, warehouse migration process will be done in two steps. The selected data will be downloaded from ERP and saved either as a local file or a logical file, and then uploaded to EWM. The standard file type is CSV.

For most objects, the transaction requires the selection of a folder for each object. These folders should be created as a first step.

Required folders
• Storage types
• Storage sections
• Bin types/SU types
• Doors/staging areas
• Picking area
• Queues
• Movement types
• Putaway strategies

Migrate Warehouse Layout

Migrate Warehouse Layout:
It is possible to take the structures from the ERP warehouse number and create the corresponding EWM objects.

Migrate bin types:
It is also necessary to define a mapping of ERP storage unit types to EWM handing unit types, as these are transferred at the same time

Migrate doors and staging areas:
Doors and staging areas are subjects that are not very commonly used in an ERP warehouse number. So the transfer has some limitations and also some default values

Migrate picking areas:
Picking areas can be used to create activity areas, which will usually require some additional work.

About the Author:
Dr. Ravi Surya Subrahmanyam is a technical and Financials writer with a background in SAP Financial Accounting, Funds Management, Group Reporting, Financial Supply Chain Management, Cash Management & in-house cash, SAP S/4 HANA Finance. He has been working as a Director for the SAP Practice for The Hackett group India Ltd, (Answerthink Company). He completed his Master’s degree in Finance from Central University, Master of Commerce from Osmania University, Master of Commerce from Andhra University, and Ph.D.in Finance from one of the best universities in India. His research Papers have been published in National and International magazines. He has been a Visiting Instructor for SAP India Education and SAP Indonesia – Education. He has been working on Conversion and Upgradation projects. He is a Certified Solution Architect for SAP S/4 HANA and an SAP S/4 HANA Certified Professional. He can be reached at sravi@answerthink.com or fico_rss@yahoo.com

Co-Author
Ravi Shankar Bhograju has been working as Director SAP Practice and working on various WM, MM, EWM projects for The Hackett Group India Ltd. He can be reached at rbhogaraju@answerthink.com. 

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Source: https://eursap.eu/2021/05/06/blog-migrating-from-sap-wm-to-sap-ewm/

Prefixes and suffixes when creating locations in SAP TM

 When you use SAP Transportation Management in SAP S/4HANA, you will surely use locations, e.g. for transportation planning. There are various options how locations are created. You can for instance replicate them from another system (which is worth some more blog posts).  Another option is to use report /SAPAPO/CREATE_LOCATIONS for creating locations to a reference object such as plant, shipping point or business partner.

In that case, the basic question is, how the names of the created locations are chosen by system. As you would expect, the default name is the name of the reference object. But sometimes you might have been surprised why the name has been enhanced with a prefix or suffix, as in this example:

Or sometimes you might even have the requirement, to change the name to your one choice. In the following you will see when and how the system adapts the name of a location and what options you have.

• Locations representing shipping points:

Let’s assume you have a shipping point like this one (transaction EC21):

You then use report /SAPAPO/CREATE_LOCATIONS (in transaction SE38) to create a respective location in the following way:

And as a result, the following location of type 1003 has been created (transaction /SCMTMS/LOC3):

You easily see what happened…the name of the location in that case is always the name of the shipping point with the prefix ‘SP_’, thereby indicating clearly that it’s a location for a shipping point. This surely helps you when you have shipping points named identical to their assigned plants, which is not too unusual.

• Location name is already existing:

For that case, let’s take the previous shipping point again to make an example. As you can see, it has a transportation zone with the same name ‘ZMHA’ assigned in its address data. When you create the location for the shipping point, the location for the transportation zone is always created as well, in this case with the transportation zone’s name ‘ZMHA’ (transaction /SCMTMS/ZONE):

(In the lower part of the screen shot, the shipping point ‘SP_ZMHA’ is shown as the location to which the transportation zone is assigned to.)

Let’s now furtherly assume, the shipping point is assigned to a plant which has also the same name. This might be silly, providing the same name for plant, shipping point and transportation zone. But maybe this is the requirement for a smaller enterprise and at least the example serves to explain this case.

If you now create the location for the plant, it will look like this (transaction /SCMTMS/LOC3):

You see, a suffix ‘_01’ has been added to the name of the plant, making it the name of the location.

And this is how it happens with duplicate location names…whenever the system recognizes that the name of a location to be created is already existing (in that case the transportation zone’s location has already the default name of the plant’s location ‘ZMHA’), this type of suffix is added. Meaning, the first double occurrence is enhanced by ‘_01’, the second ‘_02’ and so on.

Question for the experts…what is the maximum number of double location names you can create in an SAP S/4HANA system?

• Adjust location names:

Apart from adjustments to the name which the system executes, you can also change the name by your choice during creation.

For that matter, the following BAdI is in place:

Here, you can i.e. add further prefixes, let’s say ‘PL_’ for plants, or whatever your requirement is.

I kindly ask for your understanding that I will not go further into details regarding the implementation of the BAdI. If you do implement the BADI, you definitely need to have some knowledge and technical background about locations. You need to know exactly which data to change. Otherwise you can do serious harm to your location master data, i.e. producing inconsistencies which lead to severe issues or even make data unusable.

But basically, there is the option for adjusting names to your requirements.

So, this was an overview how the names of the locations are derived during creation per report. You have seen, that the name is not necessarily straight forward the name of the reference object and that you have options to adjust them.

For any comments, please feel free to add them, I appreciate!

Source: https://blogs.sap.com/2021/04/29/prefixes-and-suffixes-when-creating-locations-in-sap-tm/

Updates from the SAP EWM Ecosystem: Introducing the SAP EWM UI5 Converter

 Today, I would like to highlight a solution that our partners HPC from Germany and trimaster from Switzerland have developed together. The UI5 Converter is a simple tool to convert your existing SAP EWM Radio Frequency User Interfaces with three parameters and one click into a ready to run UI5 App with responsive layouts.

Motivation and Scope

In the field of mobile solutions, SAP has been using the ITSmobile framework to convert simple screens into HTML pages. The ITSmobile framework connects mobile devices to a SAP system in order to run applications based on the widely used Web Dynpro programming model which is a UI technology used for SAP GUI programming since 1992. However, this outdated technology has several disadvantages:

• The user interface is out of date and unintuitive compared to modern mobile device screens
• Scaling to multiple device types (i.e. the use of different end devices) is not possible without additional development effort
• The performance can sometimes lag due to the high volume of data required for the display in modern warehouses.
• Layout and design cannot be enhanced (e.g. bigger buttons and different colors)

An example of the old ITSmobile screens

For these reasons, HPC and trimaster have developed the UI5 converter, which automatically converts your SAP standard screens for mobile applications from the outdated, device-specific layout (ITSmobile), into a modern, “responsive” UI5 design. The conversion into the new SAP Fiori design takes less than 10 minutes without any development effort. Customers will profit from significantly better performance and user experience on all end devices.

Functionality

As mentioned previously, the Converter is a simple and intuitive tool to use. It converts all RF transactions from the old ITSmobile interface into the new UI5 interface with one simple click. SAPUI5 is the key UI technology behind the SAP Fiori UX Strategy and used by many stakeholders inside and outside SAP to create SAP Fiori applications. This solution does not require any proprietary components, nor any specific client software, as it all works in SAP standard.

The converter itself only makes UI changes, without changing anything in the code line. Furthermore, it leaves the ability to further enhance your RF and add mobile z-transactions. Once the changes to the RF are made, simply run the converter again and the enhancements will be reflected in the new UI.

The UI5 Converter

Key Benefits

The UI5 Converter seamlessly integrates to the SAP EWM system as a certified SAP add-on. After some simple configuration steps, the new functionality can be access via a SAP Fiori tile in the launchpad.

• Faster work and onboarding experience
• Enabling of functionalities and processes (e.g. use of the camera from the device) that complement SAP technology
• Fast implementation, with little to no development effort required
• Cost savings
• Responsive design for multiple mobile devices
• Direct integration of single RF transactions in the SAP Fiori launchpad

Example of the UI5 screen responsiveness

Administration can be done directly in your SAP Fiori launchpad.

The UI5 converter in Fiori Launchpad

Service Outlook

• The solution is already available to all SAP EWM customers with EWM 9.5 and any EWM on SAP S/4HANA systems.
• Generated UI5 screens can be enhanced with all SAP UI5 elements (e.g. maps, charts, …) and modification will be available with SAP Business Application Studio
• New functionality like the UI5 converter for any ITsmobile screens (not only EWM) will be added in fall 2021.

FIND OUT MORE!

If you have more questions regarding this topic, please visit: https://ui5converter.com/en/.

For a quick overview of the functionality and benefits of using the UI5 Converter, check out the following videos:

For a more detailed look of the converter, please check the UI5 Converter overview provided by our partners.

For more information about SAP Extended Warehouse Management, please follow us on social media, our YouTube channel or our community pages:

SAP Community

SAP Digital Supply Chain Channel

EWM LinkedIn Community

For a complete list of Q&A from the EWM community, please access this link:
https://answers.sap.com/tags/01200615320800000705

In case you do not find your specific question there, feel free to post your question via the following form:
https://answers.sap.com/questions/ask.html?primaryTagId=01200615320800000705

Source: https://blogs.sap.com/2021/04/20/updates-from-the-sap-ewm-ecosystem-introducing-the-sap-ewm-ui5-converter/

Synchronous Goods Receipt for Kanban: Kanban for in-house production strategies ‘working with production orders’ in S/4 HANA 2020 Embedded EWM

 

Synchronous Goods Receipt for Kanban:-

With this feature,  synchronous goods receipt with the Kanban replenishment strategy In-House can be posted with Production using the control type ”Working with Production Orders for goods receipt from discrete manufacturing directly to the bin of the production supply area (PSA).

Diagram from SAP document to understand synchronous goods movement.

 

Synchronous goods movements are also supported for the following Kanban strategies:

• Summarized JIT call (Kanban) with goods receipt from vendor directly to PSA bin.

• Kanban replenishment strategy In-House Production using the control type Processing with Planned Orders and Cost Collector for goods receipt from repetitive manufacturing directly to the PSA bin

For this blog, Kanban Inhouse ‘0006’ Replenishment strategy has been taken.

 

Step 1:Kanban to empty →creation of production order

System will create a Production order emptying Kanban Card,

Configure all PP production order process for Auto Order release, synchronous goods posting from production scheduling profile and control cycle. Use SAP standard order type for Kanban PPK1 with Forward scheduling.

 

Step 2: Confirmation and GR of prod. order →Kanban to full

On successful Kanban confirmation, Card signal changes from Empty to Full.

System created a material document associated with Production order.

Production Order Completed.

 

Stock Updated.

Warehouse Task created & Confirmed automatically.

 

Customization Involved.

Effects on Existing Data

The system determines the goods receipt bin from the Kanban control cycle.

Effects on Customizing

 Activate synchronous goods receipt in the production scheduling profile assigned to the Kanban material:

• In Customizing for Production under Shop Floor Control  Master Data  Define Production Scheduling Profile for Discrete Manufacturing

• Set up several options for control of ‘Automatic Warehouse Task Creation” at storage type level or WPT level. Also determination of WPT with synchronous posting without document type and Item type

 

Thanks for reading through, I would write more stuff on EWM Manufacturing integration on S/4 HANA 2020 Embedded EWM.

Reference:https://help.sap.com/doc/474a13c5e9964c849c3a14d6c04339b5/100/en-US/363e55b4cd0a400b86f994b282cd4f7f.html

Source: https://blogs.sap.com/2021/04/23/synchronous-goods-receipt-for-kanban-kanban-for-in-house-production-strategies-working-with-production-orders-in-s-4-hana-2020-embedded-ewm/