Picking Materials for Outbound Deliveries

Waves are groupings of warehouse request items to control warehouse activities such as picking or posting changes.

The first and foremost function of a wave is to optimize the creation of warehouse tasks and warehouse orders. This can be done manually or by the system at a defined point in time (called the release time of the wave).

Usually a warehouse request item has a point in time when it is supposed to leave the warehouse (the goods issue time). In wave management, this time is considered as the time the wave has to be finished. The system plans the release time so that the processes in the warehouse are finished before that end time.

As stated, one way of creating waves, is to manually select warehouse request items and assign them to a wave.

Another way to create waves is the automatic creation of the waves using wave templates and condition records for the determination of these wave templates. In this determination process, information can be used from within the warehouse requests and the items to determine the proper wave template and to combine the items in the desired way.

Processing Waves:

Processing steps for waves can be several things - for example, a wave can blocked. It can also be split into several individual waves. It is possible to add items to a wave or remove items from a wave. A wave can also be released manually, even if an automatic release is planned for the wave.

Creating Waves after Transportation Planning:

Besides the creation of waves as explained before, waves can also be created after transportation planning has been executed. In this case, the transportation unit is the object which is used to trigger wave creation. Again, this process can be triggered manually or automatically.

Similar to the process for an inbound delivery, the physical movement of a material in an outbound process is also controlled with a warehouse task. The details concerning the creation of a warehouse task for picking though, are very different from the details concerning the creation of a warehouse task for putaway. While during putaway, the system tries to find the best bin for the material to be stored, during picking the system tries to find the best quant based on what is requested in the outbound delivery order.

When you create a warehouse task with reference to an outbound delivery order, the system considers two things when trying to find the right stock to pick:

• The storage type sequence:

  This sequence contains the sequence of storage types that the system should follow when trying to find a bin. The system checks the first storage type of the sequence, and if no stock can be found that fits all requirements, the system checks the next storage type, and so on.

  For picking, the storage type search sequence can also contain a storage type group. A group is used to consider quants from different storage types simultaneously and to use criteria from the so-called stock removal rule for the quant determination (see below: stringent FIFO).

• The stock removal rule:

  The stock removal rule (or picking strategy) can be assigned to a storage type, but can also be determined in general in combination with the storage type search sequence. This is especially fitting if you have rules like FIFO (first in, first out), which looks for the oldest quant in your storage types in a defined sequence; or stringent FIFO, which uses a storage type group to do the same but then across several storage types.

Warehouse Orders:

Warehouse tasks for outbound delivery orders are grouped into warehouse orders similar to what was discussed for inbound deliveries and their warehouse tasks. While the process is generally the same, the process is often more complex when dealing with outbound processing. Maybe complete pallets with one material on it, are usually putaway. During picking however, small quantities of various materials often need to be picked together. This of course depends on the warehouse and the materials that are bought and sold (among other things).

Warehouse Order Creation Rules

During the grouping of warehouse tasks into warehouse orders, SAP EWM can use one directly assigned warehouse order creation rule, or it uses a search sequence for several warehouse order creation rules (for example, rule A, then rule B, then rule C). The sequence is defined and assigned to the so-called activity area to which the selected storage bin for picking belongs. Customizing controls which storage bins (and thus which activity areas) are being considered during picking.

• Filter and Limit Values:

  These control which warehouse tasks, and how many warehouse tasks, SAP EWM groups into a warehouse order.

• Sort Rules:

  When SAP EWM applies a warehouse order creation rule, it sorts the warehouse tasks according to the sort rule. Individual warehouse order creation rules can contain their own sort rules.

In addition to the sort rules and filter and limit values, warehouse order creation rules can also contain parameters for packing and consolidation groups. The consolidation group determines the warehouse tasks that are permitted to be packed together.

In SAP S/4HANA, it is possible to generate pick Handling Units (pick-HUs) into which materials are packed during picking. A pick-HU is assigned to a warehouse order. You can then use the pick-HU for shipping or repack the material at a work center. You can either further pack the HU into another packaging material (and thus creating a nested Handling Unit structure), or you can move the material from one HU into another HU.

A user can create a pick-HU manually using the dialog screen on the mobile device that the user uses: the user chooses the packaging material and creates the HU. Using packaging specifications, it is possible to propose the required packaging material(s) based on selected fields during the set-up for the determination of the packaging specifications. With the correct set-up of the system, pick-HUs can also be created fully automatically. That is of course something that then only happens in the system: the physical packing activities must still be executed by a user, but this user can simply trigger the printing of the needed label(s) with a push of a button on their mobile device based on the automatically generated packing structure.

During the everyday operation of a warehouse, things can go wrong. An example is as follows: a picker cannot find all of the materials they need to pick in a specific bin. Alternatively, a scanner (which is part of the Material Flow System (MFS) of the warehouse) cannot read a HU label. Alternatively, a bin that is supposed to be empty is actually not empty. Alternatively, when putting away a pallet, the material quantity on the pallet is smaller than the quantity that should be on the pallet.

Whenever an exceptional situation arises in the warehouse, an exception code is needed to describe in the system what the reason or cause for the exception is. A follow-up action can then also be triggered. Such an action can be highly automated; a delivery can be changed or a physical inventory document can be created automatically. The follow-up action can also be very basic; someone is informed that the exceptional situation occurred for example.

Exceptions can be entered by a user using his/her mobile device. They can also be entered using desktop transactions. Another way of creating exceptions is by triggering them through communication with automated devices in the warehouse or by SAP EWM itself.