Warehouse Management as an Important Part of the Supply Chain
Deliver the right goods at the right time – every time
Ensuring that the right number of materials are always available wherever and whenever they're needed is critical, whether it's for satisfying customer needs, supporting your own production, or in support of processes throughout a product's lifecycle. On the other hand, you want to avoid excessively increasing the safety stock levels, which leads to increasing storage costs. To find the optimum path between high availability and low total cost of ownership (TCO), a powerful warehouse management solution is required.
The warehouse management features included in SAP S/4HANA Cloud offer such a solution. Warehouse management enhances the scope of SAP S/4HANA Cloud's core business processes allowing a company to control and record all movements of goods in the warehouse within the context of related business processes. This increases visibility and control over this critical component of the supply chain. Since warehousing operations can no longer succeed as a functional silo it is critical to integrate all elements of material flow for faster order fulfillment and lower operational costs. As such, the warehouse management features built into SAP S/4HANA Cloud fit neatly into a comprehensive platform strategy for supply chain execution. It uses Artificial Intelligence (AI), the Internet of Things (IoT), and other technologies to digitalize the end-to-end process and optimize everything from warehousing to delivery.
The supply chain execution strategy at SAP helps you develop an all-in-one tech solution. This allows you to quickly notify planners about any disruptions and offers analytical tools for faster resolutions.
Using the warehouse features of SAP S/4HANA Cloud in the supply chain offers you the following advantages:
- Reduced warehouse costs - Maximizes the use of resources, such as equipment, space, time, and people to realize new savings.
- Improved service and retail process efficiency - Reduces the order cycle times and offers modern, value-added services to customers.
- Increased productivity and accuracy - Helps standardize processes and procedures, reducing error rates and increasing inventory accuracy.
- Enhanced flexibility and scalability - Makes processes more malleable
- Boosted transparency - Gains new visibility into stock, processes and other warehouse KPIs.
- Optimized warehouse operations - Packing using packaging specifications, handling of full and partial handling units
- Streamlined supply chain execution - Traces batches from end-to-end over multiple process steps and locations
The Scope of Warehouse Management in SAP S/4HANA Cloud
Warehouse management in SAP S/4HANA Cloud applies the central features of a standalone SAP Extended Warehouse Management (EWM) application directly in the core business application. This provides companies with small to medium-sized warehouse operations a comprehensive warehouse management solution directly within the cloud-based ERP. This allows for full transparency and flexible automation across end-to-end business processes, as well as reduced overhead related to the maintenance and hosting of separate software systems.
Warehouse Management in SAP S/4HANA Cloud offers:
- Inbound processing, internal processes, and outbound processing
- Handling units in warehouse management and batch management
- Data migration, master data maintenance, and output management
The preceding figure shows the high-level scope of our warehouse management functionality in SAP S/4HANA Cloud. In addition to the functional scope of the solution, we deliver a predefined warehouse structure to use as a template, which you can enhance and customize using a self-service configuration UI. Forms supporting common warehouse processes, such as various handling labels, pick lists, and so on, can be used as delivered, or customized to suit the needs of an individual business.
Also, SAP S/4HANA Cloud offers integration capabilities with various external Warehouse Management Systems (WMS) that may already be in place within your warehouse or added as your warehouse operation grows:
Warehouse Management Integrations
| Warehouse Management in SAP S/4HANA Cloud | Integration with SAP Extended Warehouse Management (EWM) | Integration with a Third-Party Warehouse Management System |
|---|---|---|
 |  |  |
| Warehouse management handled completely within SAP S/4HANA Cloud | Standalone SAP EWM system mapped to the S/4HANA Cloud ERP | Decentralized WM system (third-party or SAP) for self-operated warehouses communicating with SAP S/4HANA Cloud ERP |
| Self-contained | SAP2SAP Integration | Intracompany communication (B2B) via SOAP messages, can be mapped to EDI formats by SAP customer |
| For companies with less complex warehouses that need to use storage bins to show where stock is located | For companies who run complex and automated warehouses with high-volume operations | For companies who are using third-party WM systems or for other reasons run decentralized WM systems of varying complexity. (see cope item Logistics with Third-Party Warehouse Management (1QZ) in SAP Signavio Process Navigator for more information) |