Blog Series about the Material Flow System Component of SAP Extended Warehouse Management

Motivation

Today’s world gets more complex and connected at the same time. Be it global supply chains or – most recently – challenges due to disruptions caused by COVID-19. Uncertainty is a given. Thus, supply chains and their warehouses must react. Warehouse automation can be one measure to gain flexibility.

With this blog we want to start a series of blogs putting  the material flow system (MFS) component of SAP Extended Warehouse Management (EWM) into the focus. The objective for the series is to provide a quick introduction to the topic as such as well as to address experienced professionals. The blogs deal with different aspects of MFS. They explain standard settings along with enhancement possibilities. Moreover, recommendations as well as do’s and don’ts are covered. Please note that these blogs are not intended to replace a classical training or experienced consultants by any means. By being published as blogs it is up to the reader to decide where to start studying and where to take a deep dive.

Overview

Already with version 5.1 SAP EWM offered an integration for automated warehouses. Programmable logic controllers (PLCs) orchestrating conveyor belts, rack feeders, lifts, and many more could be connected to EWM. Since then several releases of EWM added substantial scope and functionality to the MFS component.

A direct connection from EWM to the PLCs is established with TCP/IP socket communication. MFS offers a rich set of configurations, standard functionality as well as enhancement possibilities. It can be seen as a framework to address green field as well as brown field installations.

The blog series covers various topics. As a beginner it makes sense to consume them in sequence. For professionals a quick pick of a focus topic is possible, too.

Available MFS topics are:

• Communication to PLCs
• Customizing and master data related to communications
• Receiving and processing of telegrams
• Sending telegrams
• Reliable communication

Expect the list to grow over time, and the links to each topic to be added soon. To make sure you are notified of new parts of this blog series, please follow our assigned tag, SAP Extended Warehouse Management and see an overview of all related blog posts published for this series here.

For a high level description of SAP Material Flow System, its capabilities and some select customer examples, please check out the following document >>>

For more information about SAP Extended Warehouse Management, please follow us on social media, our YouTube channel or our community pages:

SAP EWM Community:

https://www.sap.com/community/topics/extended-warehouse-management.html

SAP Digital Supply Chain Channel:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCELmE2CEAkcwqpBLnuZHufA

EWM LinkedIn Community:

https://www.linkedin.com/groups/1952257/

For a complete list of Q&A from the EWM community, please access this link:
https://answers.sap.com/tags/01200615320800000705

In case you do not find your specific question there, feel free to post your question via the following form:
https://answers.sap.com/questions/ask.html?primaryTagId=01200615320800000705