In today’s world of fast-paced operations and on-demand distribution, warehouse management teams need a solution that allows them to keep up with the industry and respond quickly and efficiently to changing industry conditions.
The solution? SAP Extended Warehouse Management.
SAP Extended Warehouse Management (EWM) helps warehouse management teams like yours manage the inbound and outbound movement of goods, fulfill customer orders, and distribute such goods more effectively.
Read on to learn how SAP’s extended enterprise warehouse management solution can optimize storage bin management and improve the efficiency of high-volume warehouse operations and where our team of expert SAP consultants can help.
What is SAP EWM?
SAP Extended Warehouse Management (EWM) is a module within the SAP ERP system intended to simplify warehouse management processes, efficiently manage inventory, and control the inbound and outbound movement of goods through the organization.
Understanding EWM in the SAP Landscape
SAP EWM is a part of SAP Supply Chain Management (SCM), offers automated support for your warehouse management processes, and includes key resources that help manage inventory, system logistics, and distribution processes more effectively and efficiently.
SAP Extended Warehouse Management enables users to:
- Optimize and control warehouse processes for the movement and storage of goods
- Improve speed and adaptability of inbound and outbound processing operations
- Automate warehouse and inventory management functions
- Leverage intelligent S/4HANA solutions to reduce total cost of ownership (TOC) and provide quicker time to value
- Deploy a comprehensive warehousing solution on-premise or in the cloud to meet individual business needs and requirements
- Improve warehousing accuracy and agility and enhance employee productivity and flexibility
- Ensure compliance requirements are met (i.e., international trade and sustainability regulations)
SAP EWM .vs. WM.. What’s the Difference?
While Warehouse Management (WM) and its counterpart Extended Warehouse Management operate within the Supply Chain Management (SCM) area of SAP, SAP EWM offers a few more advanced features extending its value in a company’s warehouse processes than SAP WM’s basic functions.
EWM not only offers better functionality, but it also gives employees more features to help optimize their business processes from the warehouse.
Here are a few of the main features SAP EWM offers that SAP WM does not:
- Configurable RF framework to build a stronger warehouse structure
- Dynamic cross-docking and cycle counting functions
- Integration with the SAP Transportation Management System (TMS)
- Standard integration with weighing scales
- Cross-functional dock appointment scheduling and labor management
- Inbound and outbound processing management
Increased Functionality with SAP EWM
With extended warehouse management software like SAP EWM, your supply chain employees and executives can also create new elements within the system to better understand complex supply chain logistics and optimize warehouse functions — at the same time.
SAP EWM allows users to create elements, like work centers, resources, and activity areas, which were previously unavailable in the SAP WM system. As an extension of your entire supply chain, the SAP EWM module makes managing logistics processes, keeping track of inbound and outbound deliveries, and optimizing your SAP system a little easier.
Key Features of SAP Extended Warehouse Management
SAP EWM offers more controlled movement of goods and provides the right tools to manage warehouse activities. Here are a few of the solution’s main features and advantages to your SAP Warehouse Management teams.
1) Movement of Goods
SAP EWM helps optimize your warehouse functions by managing all your goods movement activities, including receipts, stock transfers, and automatic goods replenishment, in one system. The movement of goods is an important part of your supply chain, so ensuring you have a system that can keep up and adjust to your system’s needs is essential to your success.
2) Physical Inventory
SAP EWM gives users a better way to manage and compare physical inventory against the inventory data stored in your inventory management system. Physical inventory counts can be completed based on individual products or storage bins in your system, and these counts are done at the Warehouse Management level. Radiofrequency functions and handling units are fully integrated into the EWM system, making critical resource management tasks easier to track and manage.
3) Warehouse Control
EWM offers greater warehouse control with its built-in interfacing capabilities. The system contains the Application Link Enabling (ALE) interface that allows users to connect their SAP Warehouse Management system with other external systems. This way, essential processes like automated putaway of goods and stock removal can be integrated with no added headaches.
4) Management and Optimization of Storage Bins
With the SAP ERP EWM system, all of your company’s storage facilities and bins are mapped and managed within a single system, connecting your warehouse management systems and tracking all stock movements. And, the EWM module and your inventory management system are fully integrated, so ensuring that your EWM stock matches up with the book inventory balance is made more accessible.
5) Planning and Monitoring
Extended monitoring functions and advanced features support your planning and monitoring systems and help optimize your overall warehouse processes. The individual monitoring function also helps users control work within the warehouse and stay on track with stock movements and other critical warehouse operations. With SAP EWM, your warehouse planning and monitoring processes will never skip a beat.
6) Functional Work Center
In SAP EWM, a work center is essentially a physical unit in the warehouse where activities like packing or distribution can be completed. Work centers help map these physical units, and each unit can be customized for each user so they only see the fields and data needed to do their job.
7) RF Connection
SAP EWM provides a radio frequency (RF) framework to help structure warehouse work more efficiently while keeping everything on time and within budget. RF connection ensures higher quality of master data in SAP EWM and outlines the steps of warehouse tasks more effectively with the mobile radio-frequency terminals in the EWM solution.
Interested in learning more about SAP Supply Chain Management solutions, click here.
Main Benefits of EWM in SAP
SAP EWM enables warehouse management teams to do their jobs more effectively and efficiently with its advanced capabilities and features.
Here are a few of the key benefits the solution provides:
- Improved accuracy and productivity
- Reduced warehouse costs (including inventory and labor management)
- Enhanced transparency of labor, stock, and total warehouse automation processes
- Increased speed of supply chain processes
- Optimized warehouse operations with comprehensive, end-to-end logistics
- Improved international compliance for trade and sustainability standards
- Increased flexibility and scalability for key resource management tasks
Integration with other Systems
Now, more than ever, your company’s systems need to integrate with each other. SAP understands that today’s ever-changing supply chain landscape requires improved integration functionality — that’s why SAP EWM provides built-in integration tools to connect your SAP SCM system with other SAP apps or even other external tools.
And, as is the case with most SAP modules, SAP Extended Warehouse Management comes with pre-built integration capabilities to connect critical resource management tasks with essential business processes in other modules, applications, or areas of the organization.
The SAP EWM end-to-end process is completely integrated with SAP Inventory Management and SAP Delivery Processing, and it also offers key integrations with the SAP ERP Central Component (ECC).
These integration capabilities ensure that inventory counts match material goods data and improve the connection between key organizational elements and operations like plant location, inbound/outbound production, and more.
Inventory Management and Delivery Processing Integration
The SAP EWM end-to-end process is completely integrated with both the Inventory Management and Delivery Processing systems within SAP. EWM allows you to monitor and control the movement of goods through your system and manage warehouse functions involved with the movement of physical goods. With this built-in integration capability, your inventory counts will match up with the material goods data stored in your SAP system.
SAP ECC and EWM Integration
SAP ECC is the ERP Central Component of the SAP Business Suite, and it helps integrate critical business processes throughout your organization. Integration between these systems allows for improved interaction within your ERP and EWM systems and, thus, the increased connection between essential elements of organizational structure (i.e., plant and warehouse location) and key business processes (i.e., inbound and outbound production).
Partnering with the Best
Digital supply chain transformation with a new SAP EWM system can seem a little overwhelming, especially if your team doesn’t have the right personnel or resources to do the job. Luckily for you, our team of senior-level SAP consultants has seen it all and is here to help you.
Need an extra hand managing your SAP EWM implementation process? We have the right people for the job. Just need some additional support regarding monitoring the integration between different SAP solutions? Our consultants have you covered there, too.
How Can We Help?
Whether you’re considering implementing SAP’s flexible warehouse management system in your existing ERP landscape, planning to transform your SCM environment with advanced warehouse and distribution processes, or completing any other SAP-related projects, Surety Systems is here to help.
Even better, we’ve included a snapshot of one of our top-notch SAP EWM consultants to give you an idea of what to expect when partnering with us:
Surety Senior SAP EWM Consultant
- US Citizen
- 22+ years of SAP EWM, DWM, LE, TM, and MM experience
- Maintains Dual Platinum-level Techno-Functional SAP EWM/SCM skillset
- In-depth functional configuration and technical development expertise covering all SAP EWM functional areas
- Completed multiple End-to-End Global and Localized SAP EWM rollouts
- Extensive SAP EWM experience in S/4HANA
Contact us today to get started on an implementation or optimization project with our team!
