Knowledge Management

Question:
How do I actually manage a physical Warehouse in which all materials in this Warehouse are to be shared with many plants.
Riano
Answer:
Dear Raino:
Its simple really. Since release 4.6, you can link multiple plants (and storage locations within Plants) to one Warehouse within SAP WM.
To transfer between the plants within the same company, you can perform a 301 Movement Type. If cross-company transactions are involved, the best recommendation is to use the STO (Stock Transfer Order Inter-Company) process.
The ownership data of all materials is stored at the Quant level, and so you can even have materials on the same pallet which are owned by different Plants (Companies).
I hope that this helps.
_________________
Ciao,
Sackman
SAP Consultant
Answer:
Hi Sapfans,
Is it possible to actually me getting white paper abt centralised Warehouse Managament that manages many plant and slocs ?
Thanks you in advance for your help
Raino
Answer:
Hi Raino:
Go to http://service.sap.com
and log-in and look for the SCM area.
There are lots of documents about WM there.
As far as a white paper, there is nothing really special in customizing to do, except to define the Warehouse the way that is required, and then assign as many storage locations as you want to the same warehouse.
I quote the following from the latest functions by release:
Several Storage Locations for Warehouse Number:
Up to Release 3.1, you could only manage the stock of one storage location within a warehouse
number for each plant. With Release 4.0, this limitation has been removed because the business
implications of the organizational unit storage location have increased, and, increasingly, more than
one storage location per plant is to be defined: either to represent the ownership status of companies,
or to be able to make important planning decisions at this level. If the stock of these storage locations
is to be stored and managed in one and the same warehouse, this can be represented –(as of
Release 4.0) through the assignment of any number of storage locations of a plant to the same
warehouse number.
For customers who only wish to manage stocks of a storage location per plant in the WM warehouse,
as they have been doing so far, the system procedure remains the same. No further Customizing
settings are required. Through the unique assignment of plant / storage location, the respective
storage location can, if required, be derived without any problem.
In scenarios where several storage locations are assigned to a warehouse in order to display the
ownership status of the companies on the goods stored, and in scenarios where goods movements
between storage locations are initiated solely via postings in IM, no further Customizing settings are
required, except for the assignment of the storage locations to the respective warehouse.
Its that simple.
_________________
Ciao,
Sackman
SAP Consultant
Answer:
further to this i have a question, is it possible to use the material stored in one warehouse which is attached to multiple plants through storage locations attached to those plants with out having to carry out the transfer postings and stock transfers in between the plants?
thanks
Answer:
Hi SRS GS:
The answer to your question, is "of course not."
The Warehouse is a stand alone entitiy, with its definition according to the Physical attributes of the Warehouse Facility, and to the business processes being performed within.
Above this, you have your IM Level (Plant / Storage Location). Ownership of material is usually defined at Plant Level. This translates into WM, through the Quant (Material/Bin Definition), where inside each Quant, you see which plant that it is owned by.
Therefore, the IM Process of transferring material from one plant to another plant, is always required, to transfer the "ownership" of the material from one plant to another. This is always required, even in the cases where the pallet never moves, but you are performing an ownership change.
I hope that this helps.
_________________
Ciao,
Sackman
SAP Consultant
Answer:
Hi Sackman,
Thanks for the reply.
Is it possible to configure any automatic transfer of ownership in between plants in the back ground while picking the material from a warehouse. For example, in plant A there is a stock of 100 MT which is in warehouse in a particular storage type. When i pick this material from plant B, is it possible to transfer ownership for that quantity which i had picked...automatically without doing a transfer posting?...
thanks
Answer:
Hi SRS GS:
Why would you want to do that? The availability check is at plant level. If you are trying to ship from a Shipping Point assigned to Plant B, the material won't even be assigned to your Delivery (via the standard SAP ATP Process), until the material has been transferred to Plant B.
It is really hard to give clear responses to your specific business requirement, until you have explained the complete business requirement.
The simplest way to transfer ownership is via MB1B (301 Posting). This assumes that Plant A & B are linked to the same company code. Otherwise, you would also have to address inter-company Billing issues.
_________________
Ciao,
Sackman
SAP Consultant
Answer:
Hi Sackman,
Sorry for the confusion. The requirement is quite simple here. we are in the intial phases of implementation. To decide the org structure, there will be multiple plants(production units at present). Actually they have one storage area where they store all the materials. they dont want to do any transfer postings in between plants. just they want to take the materials into all plants from the same stores with out doing any mb1b or STOs. The users also are not very smart they can understand any complex movements of materials. what could be the simplest solution that mm could offer?
your help is appreciated
thanks
Answer:
Hi SRS GS:
As a consultant, you have to guide the solution to fit the business needs, and also to be able to be managed by the users.
My first question is why do you need so many plants, if the same material is being commonly used within the same production areas of the same warehouse facility? Are the production units owned by the same company? Is the material owned by the same company? If the answers to both of those questions are yes, then set-up only one plant, and simplify everyone's life.
You can manage the distribution of materials to the different production units via the Standard PP-WM interface, where you could set up different Storage Types for each of the physical Production Areas (Units).
This is a general observation, without knowing all of the business requirements, and you have not yet stated why you need so many plants. The decisions about how to set up the organization hierarchy within SAP are always critical, and can have major consequences later, if they are not well thought out.
_________________
Ciao,
Sackman
SAP Consultant