Applying Wave Management

Warehouse request items are grouped in a "wave" to be processed together at approximately the same time. The wave controls warehouse activities such as picking, stock transfers, and posting changes.

A fundamental goal of wave management is to create the warehouse tasks as early as necessary, but as late as possible. This is to achieve optimal efficiency and to ensure that the products to be delivered are available at the appropriate time in the goods issue zone.

Wave Items

The wave item information results from the outbound delivery item that is assigned.

A wave is created by combining warehouse request items from one or from different warehouse requests. The warehouse requests and the warehouse request items do not need to have anything in common or any relationship for this – but of course, the idea of the wave is to optimize and speed up the picking process, so certain fields, like the route, or the ship-to-party, are usually the same.

Note

The preceding paragraph describes warehouse requests and warehouse request items. Technically a wave can be created for outbound delivery orders, posting changes, or internal stock transfers. These are all "warehouse requests". But the use for outbound delivery orders is the most common case.

Warehouse request items are grouped into waves based on settings in the wave template.

The wave template is SAP EWM master data. It consists of attributes that define how warehouse request items are processed. With a wave template, you can reuse the same wave attribute for different warehouse request items that have the same conditions.

A wave template is made up of:

• Release method. Possible values are: Automatic, Immediate, and Manual.

• Wave type. Different wave types enable specific monitoring in the Warehouse Management Monitor.

• Wave category. You can use this as a filter for warehouse order creation rules.

• Date- and time-related fields. These are used to determine wave start and completion dates, and times, for example.

• Capacity profile. This is used for defining capacity limits.

• Calendar. This is used for defining workdays.

After a wave template is created, it can be applied manually during manual wave creation or it can be used automatically during warehouse request document processing.

You can create waves manually, but you can automate the assignment of warehouse request items to waves. SAP EWM uses the condition technique to determine wave templates. This enables SAP EWM to determine which wave template corresponds to data from the header, item, or split item of a warehouse request.

The system then uses the planned completion time of the warehouse request items to find the wave option with the fitting wave completion-time. The system creates a wave with the option that has a wave completion-time not later than the planned completion time of the warehouse request item.

Automatic wave assignment is triggered by a customizing setting in the warehouse process type. A warehouse process type is assigned to every warehouse request item.

Additionally you have the following options to create waves:

• Schedule the report /SCWM/R_WAVE_PLAN_BACKGROUND with predefined variants. In this case no condition records are required.
• You can manually or automatically create waves with reference to a transportation unit. This way you can create waves for items which are leaving the warehouse on the same truck.

After waves have been created, they can be processed in a number of ways:

• Waves can be locked or unlocked. This function allows you to block and unblock a wave from further processing.

• Waves can be merged.

• Waves can be released. This action creates warehouse tasks and subsequent warehouse orders for the warehouse request items in a wave.

• Waves can be deleted. This action removes all warehouse request items from a wave.

In addition to these activities, the data associated with wave management can be viewed in the Warehouse Management Monitor. All activities that can be started by wave processing can also be started from the Warehouse Management Monitor.

Another option is to simulate the wave release. This gives the warehouse manager a better understanding of the workload which will be created by the wave release. When it becomes clear that the warehouse tasks need to be processed soon, it is possible to release the wave directly from the simulation.