SAP has recently launched the new product SAP Digital Vehicle Hub.

This blog post is part of a blog series. The initial blog post comprises a general introduction to SAP Digital Vehicle Hub and an overview about the other topics of this blog series.

In this blog post we will focus on the integration of SAP Digital Vehicle Hub with SAP S/4HANA Vehicle Management System.

This blog post briefly covers the content and scope of the integration, explains the integration steps, and illustrates the data replication to SAP Digital Vehicle Hub on the example of the Rinspeed MetroSnap model.

Concept & Scope of Integration

SAP S/4HANA Vehicle Management System (VMS) is a central solution for managing vehicles, processing transactions and capturing information in a database along the vehicle lifecycle. It is completely integrated with the SAP S/4HANA standard components MM (Materials Management), SD (Sales and Distribution), CS (Customer Service) and FI/CO (Financial Accounting and Controlling) and supports business processes that vehicle importers require when dealing with OEMs and dealers in new and used vehicle sales. The main business capabilities include vehicle configuration, sales and procurement, tracking and routing, rework, trade-in and service processing. For more information, see SAP Help Portal for VMS.

SAP Digital Vehicle Hub represents the central vehicle repository along the automotive value chain, based on SAP Cloud Platform (SCP), and manages all types of vehicle-related data. Since vehicle-related data is usually generated and stored in the backend system, SAP provides the capability to integrate SAP Digital Vehicle Hub and SAP S/4HANA VMS via SAP Cloud Platform Integration.

System Landscape

As the below screenshots depicts, the scope of integration covers:

• Transfer of vehicle model and object with configuration
• Transfer of transactional data (Vehicle status, location, sales order, purchase order, incoming and outgoing invoices)
• Configuration in SAP S/4HANA for mapping of material, classification, characteristics and VLCVEHICLE to corresponding SAP Digital Vehicle Hub objects

Scope of Integration

The integration flows are as follows:

• Replicate vehicle(s) from SAP S/4HANA VMS to SAP Cloud Platform Integration JMS Queue
• Transfer vehicle(s) from SAP Cloud Platform Integration JMS Queue to SAP Digital Vehicle Hub

To enable the SAP S/4HANA VMS integration, the following system requirements must be fulfilled:

• SAP S/4HANA on-premise 2020 system or higher
• You have implemented the following SAP Notes: 2949130, 2958457, 2957704

Integration Steps in SAP Cloud Platform

Setting up the SAP Cloud Platform Integration requires some prerequisites to be met:

1. You have access to the SAP Cloud Platform Integration Web UI account. This is indispensable for the deployment of the integration content (package ‘SAP S/4HANA Integration with SAP Digital Vehicle Hub 2010’) and for the maintenance of user credentials.
2. You have the CONFIGURATION_DELETE or CONFIGURATION_EDIT roles assigned to your user ID.
3. You have the link to access the Integration Flow in order to configure key parameters and to deploy them so that vehicles can be replicated from SAP S/4HANA to SAP Digital Vehicle Hub.

For a detailed description of the integration steps, please refer to the SAP Digital Vehicle Hub Integration Guide Release 1.0, chapter 3.2.

Integration Steps in SAP S/4 HANA

During the initial setup of the integration, several steps in SAP S/4HANA must be completed. As already mentioned, this involves the configuration for mapping SAP S/4HANA VMS objects to SAP Digital Vehicle Hub objects amongst others.

1. Here, the first step is to define the Vehicle Model Mapping. To do so, navigate to SPRO –> Logistic Execution –> Vehicle Management System –> Integration with Digital Vehicle Hub –> Vehicle Transfer –> Maintain Vehicle Model to Digital Vehicle Hub Model Mapping and enter the SAP Digital Vehicle Hub model associated to the SAP S/4HANA VMS model.
2. In the second step, the SAP S/4HANA VMS model must furthermore be mapped to a target Equipment Template from SAP Digital Vehicle Hub.
3. Lastly, the source attributes from SAP S/4HANA VMS must be assigned to the target Attribute Groups and Attributes from SAP Digital Vehicle Hub. These two transactions –> Maintain Vehicle Model to Digital Vehicle Hub Equipment Template Mapping and –> Maintain Vehicle Model to Digital Vehicle Hub Attribute Mapping can be found under the same path as above.

In the current release, the mapping must be completed manually. With the next release (1.1) there will be some automation built in, e.g. automatic transfer of meta data like templates, attribute groups, attributes. Additionally, fetching existing meta data from SAP Asset Intelligence Network (AIN) in the F4 Help will assist with SAP S/4HANA configuration mapping. In the current release the assumption is to have all meta data created on the SAP AIN / SAP Digital Vehicle Hub side manually.

Maintenance of Model Mapping

Maintenance of Equipment Template Mapping

Maintenance of Attribute Groups & Attribute Mapping

After having completed the customizing, an initial bulk upload of vehicle objects and related data to SAP Digital Vehicle Hub is executed via an upload report with selection criteria in SAP S/4HANA (e.g. Internal vehicle number, vehicle model, status etc.).

All subsequent data transfer from SAP S/4HANA VMS to SAP Digital Vehicle Hub is synchronized with the action execution in the central VELO transaction (Vehicle Manager). Thus, whenever a new vehicle is created or an existing vehicle is changed, the information is reflected in SAP Digital Vehicle Hub. Prerequisite is that an action has been marked as an integration-relevant action so that the creation or update of a vehicle via actions is replicated. To configure these settings, navigate to SPRO –> Logistic Execution –> Vehicle Management System –> Integration with Digital Vehicle Hub –> General Settings –> Maintain Integration-relevant Actions.

Maintenance of Integration-relevant Actions

Vehicle Master in SAP S/4HANA VMS & Data Replication to SAP Digital Vehicle Hub

The first step in any SAP S/4HANA VMS business process is the creation of the vehicle object. Executing this action adds a new record to the VLCVEHICLE table. Enabled by the SAP S/4HANA VMS integration, a corresponding record is added to the vehicle repository in SAP Digital Vehicle Hub, too. Every record has a unique internal and external number assigned to it. For data sharing purposes, the external vehicle number is used as unique identifier. Hence, in SAP Digital Vehicle Hub a vehicle record is referenced by its External Equipment ID. The counterpart to that is the VGUID in SAP S/4HANA VMS. This identifier can be retrieved from the VLCVEHICLE table by searching for the record with the internal number.

Example of the VLCVEHICLE table

In the context of creating a new vehicle, the user is also asked to maintain the configuration details of this record via SAP Variant Configurator (VC). This data, too, is copied to SAP Digital Vehicle Hub as illustrated in the screenshot below.

Replication of Vehicle Configuration

The replication of transactional data functions in an analogous manner (synchronized with VELO action execution). On the ‘Vehicle Information’ tab in SAP Digital Vehicle Hub for example, key details of purchase and sales orders are listed with a reference to the document (via the ID). As of now, the source document can only be viewed in the SAP S/4HANA VMS or the SD module. However, the capability to navigate from SAP Digital Vehicle Hub to the source document in the backend will be provided in the next release (1.1).

Replication of Purchase Orders

Replication of Sales Orders

Details of invoices that have been received or sent via SAP S/4HANA VMS are shown under the ‘Invoice’ tab in SAP Digital Vehicle Hub and, accordingly to the previous example, the associated source document is only accessible in the backend system.

Replication of Invoices

Another important operational parameter in SAP S/4HANA VMS is the so-called Primary and Secondary Vehicle Status. Usually, the Primary Status refers to purchase-related actions, whereas the Secondary Status refers to sales-related actions. This information is mirrored in SAP Digital Vehicle Hub, too, and can be accessed via the ‘Source System Status’ tab.

Replication of Primary and Secondary Vehicle Status

More Information

SAP Digital Vehicle Hub Product homepage: SAP Digital Vehicle Hub .

SAP Digital Vehicle Hub Help Portal: https://help.sap.com/viewer/product/SAP_DIGITAL_VEHICLE_HUB

SAP Digital Vehicle Hub Integration Guide Release 1.0: https://help.sap.com/doc/1d80e1707a474b67b89724eb470e8e97/DVH.1.0/en-US/Integration%20Guide.pdf

SAP S/4HANA VMS Help Portal: https://help.sap.com/viewer/15f6005df5a343d096f63b554e47e14a/6.18.15/en-US/60dcc353b677b44ce10000000a174cb4.html

In the next blog post, the SAP Digital Vehicle Hub API is covered, which is used to create or update vehicle objects.