Professional Training on SAP MM (PTSMM), SAP MM – SAP Materials Management & SAP WM – SAP Warehouse Management.
SAP MM (Materials Management)
SAP MM (Materials Management) is a module in SAP ERP Central Component (ECC) that provides companies with materials, inventory and warehouse management capabilities. The primary goal of SAP MM is to make sure that materials are always kept in proper quantities and without shortages or gaps in the organization’s supply chain. It also helps supply chain professionals and other SAP users complete the purchasing of goods in a timely and cost-effective way and to be able to deal with day-to-day changes in these processes. One of the critical modules in SAP ECC, SAP MM is part of SAP ECC’s logistics function and plays a vital role in a manufacturer’s supply chain. It integrates with other ECC components like Production Planning (PP), Sales and Distribution (SD), Plant Maintenance (PM), Quality Management (QM), Finance and Controlling (FICO) and Human Capital Management (HCM). Support for SAP ECC is scheduled to stop in 2025, at which point it will be replaced by SAP S/4HANA. It’s not clear from SAP how the functions of MM will transition to S/4HANA, although the newer platform has components to address the core issues behind MM. SAP MM submodules SAP MM’s functions include material management, procurement process management, master data management (material and vendor master), inventory management, material requirements planning and invoice verification. All of these MM submodules have functions that perform specific business processes for those modules. These are executed through transactions, the method that SAP ECC uses to complete business processes. MM also supports other logistics functions that require materials information, such as plant maintenance and project management. Business benefits of SAP MM Everything in MM revolves around master data, which is stored and manipulated in centralized master-data tables. Master data types include materials master, work center, bill of materials and routing. The master data is used to create transactional data in SAP ECC. For example, when a production order is created in PP, it uses master data from MM about the raw materials needed to produce the finished product, which will subsequently be used to create a sales order in SD.
Warehouse Management System (WMS)
Purpose
The SAP Warehouse Management system (WMS) provides flexible, automated support in processing all goods movements and in managing stocks in your warehouse complex. The system supports scheduled and efficient processing of all logistics processes within your warehouse.
Implementation Considerations
If you manage your warehouse stocks with SAP Inventory Management (MM-IM), you manage the quantities and values of stocks in several storage locations.
In comparison, the WMS allows you to map your entire warehouse complex in detail to storage bin level. Not only do you gain an overview of the entire quantity of a material in the warehouse; you can also always determine exactly where a certain material currently is in your warehouse complex. With the WMS you can optimize the use of all of your storage bins and warehouse movements, and store material stocks from several plants together in warehouses with random storage.
Integration
The WMS is fully integrated into the SAP environment. Business processes, which you trigger in other application components, lead to physical goods movements in your warehouse. You organize, control, and monitor these goods movements with the WMS.
Storage Bin Management
You map your entire storage facilities in the Warehouse Management system. In doing so, you can set up various storage facilities such as automatic warehouse, high rack storage areas, bulk storage or fixed storage bins in various storage types, according to your needs.
You manage material stocks at storage bin level. You can define these storage bins according to your own requirements. Every storage bin in your warehouse is mapped in the system. This lets you monitor all warehouse movements at all times. You can follow where a certain material is in your warehouse.
SAP Inventory Management and the SAP Warehouse Management system are fully integrated. With its inventory procedure and recording of stock differences, the system ensures that the inventory balance in Inventory Management always corresponds to the warehouse stock in the WMS.
Goods Movements
You process all goods movements that affect your warehouse via the WMS. This includes goods receipts, goods issues, stock transfers, material staging for production, automatic replenishment, managing hazardous materials, and processing stock differences in your warehouse.
The WMS optimizes warehouse capacities and material flows using putaway and stock removal strategies, which you can adjust to suit your individual needs, or by using storage units.
Planning and Monitoring
The WMS offers you an overview of all goods issues and warehouse stocks. The system supports you in planning, monitoring, and optimizing work processes. For example, it gives you a foresighted view of the workload in the coming days or allows you to intervene in good time during critical warehouse processes, so that you can execute warehouse movements on time. Via the RF monitor, you get an up-to-date picture of all of the activities in the warehouse, which means that you can control the actual work in the warehouse using the RF monitor.
Radio Frequency Connection
In order to structure the work in the warehouse efficiently and cost-effectively, you control the warehouse workers’ work steps clearly and simply via mobile radio-frequency terminals.
Radio frequency connection (RF connection) to mobile date entry achieves quick and flawless data transfer. The RF machines receive data directly from the SAP system and transfer data back to the system. Using barcodes, you can record information to be recorded and verify it. This means that you ensure a high standard of quality in your warehouse.
Decentralized WMS
You can run the WMS as a standalone decentralized warehouse management system, independent of a central enterprise resource planning system (ERP system). For more information, see Decentralized Warehouse Management.
Warehouse Control
WMS also has an interface to external systems (warehouse control units), so that you can integrate automatic putaway, stock removal systems or fork lift control systems into the warehouse management system for all warehouse movements with the help of this ALE interface.
