Evaluating a move to SAP Extended Warehouse Management (SAP EWM)? Ask your technical questions about implementing SAP EWM
in an exclusive, live Q&A with SCM expert Chris Moose

How does SAP EWM change current practices for labor management, wave picking, cross docking, and task and resource management? What are the pitfalls to avoid when planning a migration from your current SAP or third-party WM applications? 

To review the discussion in this Q&A, the full Q&A below, or read the edited transcript now available on Insider Learning Network. 

If you have additional SCM questions at any time, you're invited to post your SCM questions by creating a "New Thread" in the SCM Forum. 

If you have not yet registered for this October 4 Q&A, you can still register now and receive Chris's SCM 2011 presentation “How and Why One High-Volume Warehouse Moved from a Heterogeneous Environment to SAP EWM,” previously available only to conference attendees.

Note: To post a question and participate in this exclusive live Q&A you must be a member of Insider Learning Network - join today for free.

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Welcome to today's SCM Forum on warehouse management and SAP EWM.

We invite you to post your questions for IBM’s Chris Moose on Chris has worked with many early adopters of the SAP EWM software, and can give his advice on pitfalls to avoid, along with how to plan and evaluate your warehouse management needs, what differentiates SAP EWM from past SAP warehouse management processes, and how to prepare for migrating from legacy WM tools to SAP EWM.

Thank you, Chris, for joining us today and taking questions over this next hour.  Since there is a question already in the forum, I will let you start with that one.

Hello Chris,

I have the current situation in which a warehouse task is generated to  pick a certain HU in order for it to be transferred to the GI-ZONE. This  is due to a consumption in ERP. The issue is that I have a pallet in  which I have 200 of these HUs (all with the same batch number). The WT  suggests me a HU but it is rather difficult to send the picker to search  among the 200 HUs to find and confirm it in the RF environment. I would  like the system to let the picker choose his WO on which he is working  and allow him to scan a random HU and replace the one from the pick WT  (if of course is from the same batch). I know I can use Exception  handling but this might prove to be used a lot and so it is not an  exception anymore.

At the storage type level, from which I pick, I have put the Level of  Avail. Qty to value 1 - Storage Bin as the theory states but it doesn't  help. Have you got an idea of what should be done?

Thanks.

Hi Chris,

Question about serial numbers. Standard SAP ECC configuration support only 18 characters serial numbers. Looks like EWM support 30 characters serial numbers. How two systems will communicate if I need to use more than 18 character serials.  Can I maintain material master in SAP ECC and serial master in EWM systems?

Thank you,

Edward K

Oct 4, 2011 -- 12:35PM, Claudiu Maxim wrote:

Hello Chris,

I have the current situation in which a warehouse task is generated to  pick a certain HU in order for it to be transferred to the GI-ZONE. This  is due to a consumption in ERP. The issue is that I have a pallet in  which I have 200 of these HUs (all with the same batch number). The WT  suggests me a HU but it is rather difficult to send the picker to search  among the 200 HUs to find and confirm it in the RF environment. I would  like the system to let the picker choose his WO on which he is working  and allow him to scan a random HU and replace the one from the pick WT  (if of course is from the same batch). I know I can use Exception  handling but this might prove to be used a lot and so it is not an  exception anymore.

At the storage type level, from which I pick, I have put the Level of  Avail. Qty to value 1 - Storage Bin as the theory states but it doesn't  help. Have you got an idea of what should be done?

Thanks.

I understand your deliminator.  SAP WM had similar problems as you outline but in EWM there are some additional criteria you can use during the task creation that allow it to be neutral on the HU (a HU neutral task).  I agree that having a ton of pick exceptions is not the way to go as that would hamper subsequent analysis on why picks might not be performed as your planned.  So I think the task-creation process is where you should probe and I think it is possible to have it be neutral in the scenario you describe.