SAP Vehicle Management System – An Industry Specific SAP Application for Automotive Industry
This blog will cover following aspects of SAP VMS
Abbreviations |
Overview |
Business Needs |
SAP VMS Full Life Cycle |
Master Data |
VMS Tables and their linkages |
How to Set Up System |
ABBREVIATIONS
Short name | Description |
VMS | Vehicle Management System |
T-codes | Transaction Codes |
VGUID | Vehicle GUID |
Int Veh No | Internal Vehicle Number |
DP | Dealer Portal |
AVC | Advanced Variant Configuration |
OVERVIEW
The Vehicle Management System (VMS) is SAP application for the Automotive industry. The business scenario when using VMS consists of procurement and sale of vehicles. As car sellers, companies procure vehicles/ parts (to assemble) from one or more vendors and sell cars to dealers or directly to large end customers. VMS serves as a central tool for managing, procuring, sales/distribution and tracking vehicles.
VMS is integrated into the SAP application components MM, SD, and FI/CO. Vehicle Management System (VMS) is also integrated with advanced variant configuration (AVC). The below note provides details to achieve this functionality.
https://me.sap.com/notes/3033874 (3033874 - AVC: Passing Data to AVC)
BUSINESS NEEDS
SAP Vehicle Management System (VMS): A Game Changer for fleet and process in Automotive Industry.
The broad benefits of SAP VMS are highlighted below.
SAP VMS Full Life Cycle
- Usually, for automotive sales, the end customer tries to purchase a vehicle with specific features from car manufacturer authorized dealers.
- The dealer searches in stock via Dealer Portal (maybe in Fiori) if an appropriate vehicle already exists.
- If yes, the dealer enters additional characteristics for the vehicle which the end customer has desired for like installing a radio, different tires etc. and determines the price for the desired configuration and creates a sales order in system for this vehicle (scenario: make-to-stock production).
- If the configuration does not match, the dealer creates a sales order, but not for an existing vehicle. He creates a sales order for the customer’s dream car. The car manufacturer triggers production for this vehicle (scenario: make-to-order production).
- The dealer gets up-to-date information on the status of the vehicle in DP.
- VMS supports vehicle procurement and sales, including all the postings involved and oversees the entire business process until the time when dealer delivers the desired car to the end customer.
Master Data – SAP VMS
Each vehicle model managed with the VMS is described using a configurable material and the corresponding class. The characteristics, classes, variant conditions, object dependencies, and material masters are to be defined.
Basic master data of VMS are classified as below.
1. Vehicle model with material master and configuration - Vehicle models are created as configurable materials.
Material Type VEHI - Configurable Vehicle.
Item category group VMS0 -Vehicle VMS
Item category VTAC
Requirement type 041 (order/delivery requirement)
Requirements class 041
Batch management is active.
2. Supplier and Customer
The customer is the business partner to whom the vehicle is to be sold. (dealers).
The vendor is the business partner from whom the vehicle/ vehicle part is procured (supplier).
3. End customer is dealer's customer - The end customer is the customer of the dealer who wants to buy car. Business partner role VLC001 End Customer is used for creating end customers and managed under dealer partner ID.
4. VMS role - A VMS role serves as a central control element in VMS.
There are three types of roles:
i) Organizational Role
This is a role to which organizational data is assigned. Organizational data are like plant, sales organization, distribution channel, division, customer).
ii) Vehicle Model Role
This is the role to which vehicle models are assigned. This role determines which vehicles the system displays to the dealer in the vehicle model list.
iii) Configuration role
This is a role that is assigned to a configuration change profile.
Depending on the vehicle model, the configuration role specifies which vehicle characteristics the system should make visible for the user, and which changes the user is allowed to make to the vehicle characteristics.
Activities to be performed for setting up VMS roles.
A. Assign vehicle models to the vehicle model roles (transaction VELORM).
B. Assign organizational data to the organizational roles (transaction VELORO).
C. Assign roles to the users (transaction VELORU).
If a dealer wants to create a sales order in DP, the fields in the sales order are filled with the appropriate organizational data. The dealer cannot change this data.
5) Action Control for mapping business processes – Actions are performed for a vehicle within VMS. By an action the different business process can be performed like create or change vehicle, create purchase order to vendor, create sales order/delivery/outgoing invoice (for dealer) and post goods receipt/goods issue. Vehicle status, availability and location can be changed with these actions.
The posting documents that are created by these actions are stored in the application components MM, SD, FI/CO in the SAP system.
There is an emergency report with transaction VELOE. User can use this report to change the status of vehicles without the action controls being checked in need.
Important Tables and their Linkages – SAP VMS
A vehicle exists when the user creates a vehicle in the VMS for a vehicle model using a create action. The VMS uses vehicles as a central object. When a vehicle is created, it receives an internal vehicle number. This number is also the batch number and valuation type number. This vehicle with batch can be viewed as the valuated stock using transaction MMBE Stock Overview.
SAP VMS comprises of multiple Tables for vehicle data storage. The primary table is VLCVEHICLE - VELO: Vehicle.
It will store multiple data of the vehicle like, Internal Vehicle Number, Vehicle GUID, Vehicle identification number VIN (17-character number that identifies a vehicle and is created when the vehicle is assembled, the VIN is an international standard), Configuration, Customer, End Customer, Plant, Storage Location etc.
There are some other tables as well, which are listed as below.
VLCHISTORY - VELO: Vehicle History
VLCCUORDER - VELO: Sales Order
VLCDELIVERY - VELO: Delivery
VLCGISSUE - VELO: Goods Issue
VLCINVOICE - VELO: Billing Document
The Vehicle Manager (transaction VELO) is the central transaction in the Vehicle Management System and contains all the most important functions in a concise form.
This is a VELO screen with Internal Vehicle Number.
This Int. Veh. No will be passed in Table – VLCVEHICLE and retrieve Vehicle GUID.
Set Up VMS System
The Basic Configuration of SAP VMS are listed below.
1) SPRO Path for VMS – VMS can be located under the following path if VMS is already installed.
2. Number ranges for Vehicle ID
3. Actions (transaction OVELO1)
Action Control
The primary action control usually represents the procurement process, and the secondary action controls the sales process.
After action control definition, the system requires for determining action control, using transaction VELOS.
4. Vehicle availability (transaction OVELO13)
5. Vehicle status (transaction OVELO12)
The action can be performed after they are set up by programmer. Programmer needs to build and assign program and screen in Action configuration to make it functional.
The note describes how custom actions can be defined.
https://me.sap.com/notes/2505774
Here I have tried to capture all basic information related to SAP VMS which can act as an "One Place Documentation to cater all basic SAP VMS needs. Hope this will be helpful for all my global colleagues.
Thanks.
Nabanita
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