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Author's profile photo Mrinal Kanti Roy

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)

 

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      11 Comments
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      Author's profile photo girish nataraj
      girish nataraj

      Is it not that the baseline for decentral EWM on S.4 HANA is 9.5 version?

      Author's profile photo Mrinal Kanti Roy
      Mrinal Kanti Roy
      Blog Post Author

      Hi Girish,

      SAP has released a detailed note 2775345 stating the differences in decentral EWM based on S/4HANA 1809 FPS02 w.r.t EWM 9.5. Suggest you to refer that.

      Regards,

      Mrinal

      Author's profile photo Don Albrecht
      Don Albrecht

      Hi Mirinal,

      Thanks for the post. It was insightful and concise read.

      I have a query. While planning migration from classic ewm to decentral EWm on S/4 hana

      enterprise will need plan how to tackle the gap in functionality between classic decentral ewm and decentral ewm on s/4 hana like SCM route and firori app for returns for example. agree?

      How soon You think decentral EWM s/4 hana will have all the functionality  of classic decentral.

      Regards

      Manish

      Author's profile photo Mrinal Kanti Roy
      Mrinal Kanti Roy
      Blog Post Author

      Hi Don / Manish,

      As per SAP's roadmap, SCM Route and Fiori app ' Process E-commerce return' will be available in 1909 release .

      Regards,

      Mrinal

      Author's profile photo Markus Dannenhauer
      Markus Dannenhauer

      Hello Mrinal,

      is it possible to migrate from EWM Version 9.1 to decentral EWM on S/4HANA ?

      Regards Markus

      Author's profile photo Mrinal Kanti Roy
      Mrinal Kanti Roy
      Blog Post Author

      Hi Markus,

      Yes, EWM 9.1 can be migrated to decentral EWM on S/4HANA . In these cases,ECC / ERP version is relevant . Refer the note 2871189 for the compatible ECC version for decentral EWM on S/4HANA.

      Regards,

      Mrinal

      Author's profile photo AMAT SAP WM Support
      AMAT SAP WM Support

      Hi Mrinal,

      Thanks for post. Can we go direct from EWM 7.02 to S/4 decentral 1909. Is there any code check tool available to see custom code compatibility on S/4 decentral.

       

      Thanks

      Author's profile photo Anupam Sharma
      Anupam Sharma

      Hi Mrinal,

       

      You mentioned in your blog that there shall not be any open documents like WTs and WOs etc. however we got confirmation that even migration of open docs are now possible. You comments please!

       

      Regards,

      Anupam

      Author's profile photo Mrinal Kanti Roy
      Mrinal Kanti Roy
      Blog Post Author

      Hi Anupam,

      Please inform the source for the confirmation for the migration of open documents. Migration of open documents is still not feasible to the best of my knowledge.

      With regards,

      Mrinal

      Author's profile photo Piotr Pudelski
      Piotr Pudelski

      Dear Mrinal,

       

      I would like to confirm for 100% - Currently I have on a project 2 S4HANA 1909 installations (one acting as ERP and one as decentralized EWM) and I am trying to implement scenario with 2 EWM storage locations (one with RAW material and second as production one).

      Ideally that would be scenario R3:

      Unfortunately during MFBF posting there is an error as shown below:

      Does it mean that "Release Order Part" scenario works only with REM in embedded S4HANA 1909 and not in decentralized ? So the only scenario for me is to have RAW material in EWM and then material staging via EWM to IM production storage location ?

       

      Author's profile photo Radek Mechacek
      Radek Mechacek

      Hello Mrinal,

      very nice blog!

      We have Customer with SAP ERP 6.0 EHP6 NON-UNICODE system.

      Please, do you know, if it´s possible to integrate this system with Decentralized EWM?

       

      Thank you for your help!

      Radek