Stockroom management in S/4HANA – Advantages and Limitations

SAP informed in initial releases of S/4HANA that existing ECC customers will lose their user rights for Warehouse management (LE-WM) & Transportation (LE-TRA) under Logistics execution (LE) of SAP at the end of December 2025 (now extended to 2027) and recommended to migrate to Extended warehouse management (EWM) and Transportation management ( TM ) respectively. Many customers have done custom developments on LE-WM to meet their specific business requirements like barcode scanning etc. It is quite an uphill task for many customers to move to EWM while migrating from ECC to S/4HANA and hence SAP came out with Stockroom management (StRM) . My present blog is to discuss on advantages and limitations of StRM.

Advantages

StRM is a new name for LE-WM for S/4HANA. If the customers do not have any business drivers to move from LE-WM to EWM, then they can continue (i.e no need for any kind of migration) using LE-WM if they do not need any functionalities as listed for limitations in SAP Note 2881166 or later in this blog.

Limitations

• Limited functionalities w.r.t LE-WM : StRM does not cover all functionalities of LE-WM . SAP Note 2881166 states

“ Functionalities that were available in Warehouse Management but are not part of Stock Room Management include Task & Resource Management (LE-TRM), Value Added Service (LE-WM-VAS), Yard Management (LE-YM), Cross-Docking (LE-WM-CD), Wave Management (LE-WM-TFM-CP), Decentral Warehouse Management (LE-WM-DWM) and Warehouse Control Unit Interface (LSR)”.

Hence, customers not using above functionalities in their existing LE-WM can use StRM and if the customers needs any of the above functionalities, then the recommendation is to migrate to EWM

• Integration with LE-TRA or Transportation management ( TM )

Most of the warehouses use shipments to combine multiple deliveries for transportation of goods. In ECC , LE-WM could be interfaced / connected with LE-TRA for shipments. If a customer uses LE-TRA for shipments , then they have to migrate to Transportation management ( TM ) in S/4HANA as is evident from the ‘Supported integration ‘ as in below image (copy of attachment in SAP note 2813859).

As I understand , StRM can not be interfaced / connected with TM . Hence, in my view , warehouses using both LE-WM and LE-TRA will not be able to use StRM for their warehouse operations as they have to move to TM from LE-TRA. So, StRM will be useful only for customers not using shipments or transportation.

Please note that “ StRM can not be interfaced / connected with TM” is my personal understanding and it may be incorrect . Hence, request you to check with SAP for confirmation / discussion with customer . I also request SAP to clarify whether “ StRM can not be interfaced / connected with TM” is correct or not and update the above ‘Supported integration’ for TM in SAP Note 2813859 accordinlgly.

Update on 25th Feb’2021 : SAP has stated in a webinar today that StRM can be connected with TM.