Case study: Using non moved materials from stocks in Warehouse using SAP mobile solution

Business Challenge:

Power tools division of Bosch India Limited has 17 warehouses across different regions in India. The back office is located in the Bangalore which is the headquarters for Power tools division.

The sales representatives from different regions collect the sales orders and book the orders in the system. The planning team sitting in the headquarters process these sales orders and place productions orders if stocks are not available. If the stocks are available then the sales team confirms the order and initiates outbound process.

The challenge was that in each warehouse there was a huge non moved material which is not used for delivery though sales orders are available in other region. For example there is a material X available in A warehouse in North region which has a shelf life period of 10 days and the same material is available in B warehouse in North region which has a shelf life period of 20 days. The sales order is for the customer located to B warehouse. If the material from A warehouse is not used as it has a less shelf life period compared to B warehouse then it may happen that the material in A warehouse might lead to scrap. This leads to huge inventory loss and cost.

The solution:

The non-movable material list has to be available to the warehouse managers in all the warehouses before they start planning for the delivery. Though details are available in ERP system the warehouse managers has to log on to SAP system to take decision.

The SAP mobile solution improved the situation by providing the information at any time, at anywhere where the warehouse managers takes decision at right time. This saves huge inventory costs.

Results:

With high competitive environment from the competitors and the target from the management to reduce inventory costs and to use the non-moved materials from warehouse the SAP mobile solution gives a real time information at any place, at any time, where the warehouse mangers takes decision quickly and reacts quickly.

Case study: Effective methodology for master data migration in SAP rollout

Business challenge:

The success of a SAP roll-out is dependent on the success of the data preparation, data quality and data upload. The data preparation needs thorough understanding of data from legacy system and the good understanding on the data structure in new system. The mapping rules have to be properly defined so that the data inconsistencies will be avoided.

With huge volume of data from material master, customer master, vendor master along with transaction data from open purchase orders, open sales orders and open production orders the challenge was how effectively and efficiently to migrate these data with high accuracy with the available resources and the agreed time line.

Approach:

Comprehensive and Integrated approach was adopted to migrate the master data and transaction data into SAP system with high data accuracy.

§  Single point of contact in user department: One person should be identified from the user department who will coordinate with other user departments to identify and collect the master data details.

§  Sharing the details of master data views: The rollout team or the data migration team must explain in details about each of the fields in the master data to the user department. This makes good understanding of each fields of master data preparation.

§ Excel templates: The excel templates must have clear details on each of the mandatory fields. The formatting of each field should be checked before uploading. This avoids data formatting errors while uploading. Many times the upload program fails due to missing excel formats.

§  Tools for migration: LSMW programs are used to upload data from legacy system to SAP. These smart programs and validates basic checks while uploading. These programs can be executed either in the background of foreground.

§ Smart way for data verification: Once the data is uploaded the uploaded data must be verified to ensure that the master data is uploaded without any errors. The smart way is to download the data from SAP into an excel file and do a vlookup in excel which eliminates the mistakes or list the mistakes.

Results:

With this effective approach, it ensures that the data accuracy will be high and the transactions happens smooth after Go Live or in other words the high productivity after Go Live.

Case study: Improve customer service with SAP Mobile Warehouse Management Solution

Business challenge:

To keep pace with growing customer demand, Swisslog a leading global provider of automated logistics solutions in hospitals and distribution centers operating more than 50 countries has been forced to consistently expand its customer service network.

With this continued growth, a few key challenges have been encountered, including labor intensive paper work, lack of visibility of tasks for their daily operations, lack of technology, and lack of process harmonization across the locations

To support the growth, top management needed a solution that real time visibility to inventory and material movements, while enabling warehouse operations to a mobile automated, proactive environment.

The solution:

Comprehensive warehouse management solution was offered where it integrates all business functions (Procurement, Sales, Finance and Production) and addressed key business challenges.

The SAP mobile solution improved critical business processes by introducing and enhancing the following functionality:

§  Inbound process: Support for warehouse management, putaway and stock removal strategies, goods receipt, cross docking, push deployment, transportation cross docking, value added services and quality management

§  Outbound process: Replenishment processing

§  Storage: Bin management and optimization, manage handling units, physical inventory

§  Distribution center processes: Enabling planning and monitoring, radio frequency support, labour management, resource management, and material flow systems

Results:

The solution offered enabled the company to provide superior customer service while realizing several key benefits. Using mobile functionality, personnel can monitor and react to real time inventory changes across warehouses business processes and have been able to standardize the processes.

With mobile functionality they have a greater visibility to what is happening in the warehouse, when it is happening, who is responsible allowing for quick resolution for issues. By leveraging SAP stock movement strategies and mobility across all warehouses operations, they have reduced paper output from all warehouse operations from all warehouse business operations.