Decentral Extended Warehouse Management (EWM) on S/4HANA – Features , deployment options and migration

New Extended warehouse management (EWM) on S/4HANA platform is being released by SAP in May’2019.This blog is to highlight the features of this Decentral EWM on S/4HANA along with its deployment options and migration.

Features of Decentral EWM on S/4HANA

• Existing Decentral EWM applications are built either on on NetWeaver or SCM stack with any database. New decentral EWM is the same / existing EWM application, but built on S/4HANA platform with HANA database
• It is the same S/4HANA Enterprise management 1809 FPS02 in its initial release, but only EWM application can be run on a client level (Components other than EWM are deactivated)
• Decentral EWM (as of initial release of May’2019) will have the EWM functionalities of embedded EWM (as of 1809 release FPS02) and hence Decentral EWM will not have the functionalities which are not in embedded EWM like SCM Route, Fiori App ‘Process E-commerce returns etc . These gaps are expected to be closed in future releases.
• Decentral EWM on S/4HANA is starting with EWM functionalities of embedded EWM, but SAP’s vision is that it will have a feature parity with the classic Decentral EWM (on present NW or SCM stack). Like Quality inspection engine (QIE) is not present in embedded EWM , however QIE will be added to decentral EWM in future release
• Also some of the embedded EWM functionalities like Reuse of LE delivery number , transparency of ERP storage location , new / enhanced Fiori apps , Change log of storage bins etc) will be available in Decentral EWM on S/4HANA , but these functionalities are not present in classic decentral EWM (Refer my blog for features of embedded EWM of 1809 release in link https://blogs.sap.com/2019/03/19/new-features-in-embedded-ewm-extended-warehouse-management-of-s4hana-1809-release/)
• CIF (Core interface) will not be used for transfer of material , batch etc for Decentral EWM on S/4HANA. Master data from ERP will be transferred through ALE / IDOC interface. However, the same queued RFC (as used in classic decentral EWM) will be used for bi-directional transfer of transaction objects in Decentral EWM on S/4HANA
• All future developments of Decentral EWM will be on Decentral EWM on S/4HANA and as per present plan of SAP , the present classic decentral EWM (on NetWeaver or SCM stack) will have its end of life in December’2025

Deployment options

Decentral EWM on S/4HANA can be deployed on a specific storage location along with the other warehouse management options as shown in below image i.e a particular storage location can be on IM (Inventory management) level and another storage location in same plant can be on decentral EWM on S/4HANA. So, the existing business parameters for warehouse management solutions are still applicable for new decentral EWM on S/4HANA. However, if there will a new decentral SAP EWM in a warehouse, then ideally it shall be a decentral EWM on S/4HANA.

Migration from Classic decentral EWM to new decentral EWM on S/4HANA

As of SAP’s present plan (with disclaimer), classic decentral EWM will have its end of life in December ‘ 2025 similar to ERP ECC . Hence, existing classic decentral SAP EWM should be planned to be migrated to Decentral EWM on S/4HANA. Following points need to be considered for migration.

• This migration can be considered to be more of a technical migration as the application itself remains same, only its technical platform will change i.e there will not be any major change from warehouse process perspective
• There shall be no open documents like warehouse requests, warehouse orders, tasks etc, all these documents need to be closed.
• SAP plans to provide a migration tool in future release (expected in 1909 release) with below features
  • Technical readiness check for custom code with SAP HANA
  • Check of custom BADI for non-supported functionalities like Freight order management (FOM)
  • ABAP transport of configurations and custom codes
  • Initial upload of central master data (like material, batch , customer / vendor / business partner etc) and local master data (like stock , bin , warehouse product , condition record for printing , wave etc)
• A system back up of old EWM system shall be taken if previous EWM documents are required for audit or legal reasons

So, initially HANA database was used mainly in BW system , then it became the mandatory database for S/4HANA Enterprise application . Now, this S/4HANA platform is also being extended to other application like EWM . We need to wait and watch whether other applications like Transportation management etc also will be on new S/4HANA stack in near future.

This blog is based on a recent webinar by SAP and my personal understanding . Will appreciate your feedback & views.

Update on 10th May : SAP has

• Released a note 2775345 for the features and limitations for Decentral EWM on S/4HANA
• updated the deployment options for EWM in note 1606493 and has stated ” EWM based on SAP S/4HANA is the successor product of Business Suite SAP EWM . … and to be “considered as the standard deployment option for new EWM installations”.
• SAP has stated End of Life for Classic Decentral EWM as December’2025 in its PAM (Product availability matrix)