What is Warehouse?
- A Warehouse is a building for storing goods. Warehouses are used by manufacturers, importers, exporters, wholesalers, transport, customs etc. they are usually large plain buildings in industrial parks on the outskirts of cities, town, villages.
- A large, small or medium size buildings for storing things before they sold, used or sent out to shops.
- A warehouse is a commercial building generally used for storage goods warehousing is the process of proper storage and handling of goods and cargo using scientific methods in warehouse and making them available easily and smoothly when needed.
Types of Warehouse
- Simple inventory warehouse
In this warehouse process is simple inventory maintain
Store is in house facility to help manufacturing activities. Such as incoming and in some cases outgoing also stored in stores, for example, raw Material store, electrical items stores, mechanical items and machine part stores, Finished goods stores etc.
- Raw material stores
- Electrical Parts Store
- Machine Parts Stores
- Finished goods stores
Distribution center for a set of products is a warehouse or other specialized building with refrigeration or air conditioning which is stocked.
- Pick, Pack and Ship Warehouse
- Cold Storage
- ON-Demand storage
- Bonded Warehouse
- Smart Warehouse
Classification of Warehouse
From process point of view warehouse can be classified as
Basic Warehouse
- Simple inbound outbound of goods
Big Warehouse
- Multiple truck coming with multiple products in the warehouse
- Multiple truck loading and unloading every day in warehouse.
- The material storing and high rack storage, rack storage and open storage
- Need appropriate put-away to store the materials in respective storage bins
- Need appropriate picking strategy to pick the material to load the truck to deliver the customer
- Multiple resources and manpower are involve to in warehouse activities like unloading the truck and keep in respective storage bin, and pick the delivery quantity and load in to truck for outbound delivery.
- Need to manage inventory of incoming and outgoing materials, and available stock of materials in warehouse.
- Maintain right product deliver to the customer right time.
Complex Warehouse
Why do we required IT & Software solution for Warehouse Management
- Inventory Management incoming, outgoing, and stocks of products with in warehouse
- Receiving of goods and put away of goods in dedicated place (storage bin) to store within warehouse
- Sorting process to optimize warehouse
- Loading in time the outbound deliveries goods
- Movement and storage of goods in warehouse
- Location management
- Picking strategy to for customer delivery order
- Packing of goods for customer delivery order
- Invoicing and dispatch activities
- Inventory reconciliation
- An effective and right solution for a warehouse depends upon business requirement, and volume, and number of process going on in the warehouse.
- Right solution need to suggest to the business fulfill their requirements for smooth operation of their warehouses.
Most Important Warehouse Processes
- Goods Receiving
- Put-away of goods
- Picking
- Packing
- Dispatching
- Shipping
- Kitting and de-kitting
- Inventory tracking
- FIFO/LIFO/FEFO picking strategies
- Value added services
- Goods returns from customers
- Reporting and analytics
What Solution SAP Has?
SAP Inventory management use
- Manage stocks of merchandise on a quantity and value basis
- Plan, enter and provide evidence of all goods movements
In SAP Inventory Management mange stocks on a site and storage location level, and can assign each site a number of storage location, can link warehouse management to inventory management.
- Inventory management enables you to have an overview of your current stock status all time.
- A material document created for every transaction
- Complete audit trail for all goods movements
- Goods movements are valuated automatically and results updates on the financial accounting stock accounts.
SAP Warehouse Management
The SAP Warehouse management application is fully integrated into SAP R/3 system.
- Integrated with Material Management
- Integrated with Sales & distribution
- Integrated with Quality Management
- The material document created for the material movement generated either in MM, SD, or QM modules. For all Goods receipt (GR), from other vendors and plants, document generated in MM module. For Goods Issue (GI) for either to production, others plants, will be generated in MM module.
- As quality management is active in the organization, all materials will pass the quality inspection process during GR and GI and post change document will be generated during put away or stock removal of material in warehouse.
- Warehouse Management (WM) helps to identify stock status of materials at bin level. It is tool to assist in processing all goods movements and maintaining inventories.
WM Process flow
- Define and manage complex warehouse structure
- Optimize material flow using advanced put-away and picking techniques.
- Process, goods receipts, goods issues, and stock transfers quickly and easily.
SAP Extended Warehouse Management
SAP Extended Warehouse Management is a part of SAP Supply chain management like warehoused management system, but it provides more robust and advanced features to manage key activities in a warehouse.
- SAP EWM is used to efficiently manage inventory in a warehouse and for supporting processing of goods movement. It allows any company to control their warehouse’s inbound and outbound processes and movement of goods in the warehouse.
- SAP EWM is similar to warehouse management system but it provides more features like picking, put away, RF framework, Warehouse Structure and more flexible options to manage warehouse functions.
- You can create new elements like activity area, resources, labor management and work centers in SAP EWM which were not available in WM.
- SAP EWM provides more a robust solution to manage warehouse functions in an organization.
Key Features Comparison SAP IM/WM/EWM Solutions
Functionality |
Inventory Management |
Warehouse Management |
Extended Warehouse Management |
Management Stock and Storage location |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
Storage Bin Management |
No |
Yes |
Yes |
Stock Put away Strategies |
No |
Yes |
Yes |
Stock Removal Strategies |
No |
Yes |
Yes |
Pick Logic |
No |
Yes |
Yes |
Replenishment |
No |
Yes |
Yes |
Standard mobile RF Technology |
No |
Yes |
Yes |
Handling/ Storage Unit Management |
No |
Yes |
Yes |
Yard Management |
No |
Yes |
Yes |
Enhanced Configurable RF technology |
No |
No |
Yes |
Tasks and Resource management |
No |
No |
Yes |
Expected Goods Receipt |
No |
No |
Yes |
Value Added Services |
No |
No |
Yes |
Opportunistic Cross Docking |
No |
No |
Yes |
Dynamic Cycle Counting |
No |
No |
Yes |
Unloading of Transport Unit |
No |
No |
Yes |
Deconsolidation |
No |
No |
Yes |
Slotting Rearrangement |
No |
No |
Yes |
Labor Management |
No |
No |
Yes |
What we can adopt in S/4HANA
- SAP Inventory Management (IM)
- SAP Warehouse Management (WM) (sunset by 2025/2027
- SAP S/4HANA Embedded Extended Warehouse Management (Centralized EWM)
- Basic Embedded Extended Warehouse Management
- Advanced Embedded Extended Warehouse Management
Functionality |
Warehouse Management |
Extended Warehouse Management |
Inbound Process |
Yes |
Yes |
Outbound Process |
Yes |
Yes |
Internal Warehouse Process |
Yes |
Yes |
Process oriented Storage Control |
Yes |
Yes |
Layout Oriented Storage Control |
Yes |
Yes |
Physical Inventory Process |
Yes |
Yes |
Handling unit Management |
Yes |
Yes |
Reporting |
Yes |
Yes |
Stock Inventory & Control |
Yes |
Yes |
Resource Management |
Yes |
Yes |
Material Flow System |
No |
Yes |
Wave Management |
No |
Yes |
Yard Management |
No |
Yes |
Labor Management |
No |
Yes |
Deconsolidation and Re Packing |
No |
Yes |
Kitting Process |
No |
Yes |
Value Added Services |
No |
Yes |
Dock Appointment Scheduling |
No |
Yes |
Slotting and Rearrangement |
No |
Yes |
Warehouse Billing |
No |
Yes |
License Fee Required |
No |
Yes |
- Decentralized EWM SCM EWM or S/4HANA EWM
SAP ERP ECC System separate Set of Box, SCM EWM or S/4HANA EWM on separate set of box
Advantage of SAP S/4HANA Embedded EWM
- Simplified system land scape. An embedded EWM solution drastically simplifies the IT landscape
- Seamless Integration
- Accelerated implementation
- Flexible licenses
- Real-time insights
- Less data duplication
Limitation of SAP S/4HANA Embedded EWM
- With Embedded EWM it is not possible to integrate with storage locations in other SAP ERP system
- The embedded EWM solution is not adaptable with multiple warehouse pr with large material flow system traffic.
- It cannot keep operational in case of ERP system down.
Conclusion:
key take away from blogs,
1. From this blogs you can get the knowledge about Extended Warehouse Management how help full to warehouse management solution.
2. types of warehouse
3. Advantages and limitations of Embedded EWM
4. Difference between SAP ERP warehouse solution SAP S/4HANA EWM WMS.
