With the introduction of cloud warehousing with the SAP S/4 HANA cloud (release 1811), a major milestone of putting the warehousing processes and capabilities on the cloud was achieved. With additions and innovations built with each subsequent release, the SAP S/4 HANA cloud warehouse supports the basic processes of warehousing and serves as a standalone warehousing solution for small warehouses with basic warehousing processes.
Integration remains a critical aspect for any cloud solution and SAP S/4 HANA cloud is no exception. More specifically talking about the SAP’s cloud warehouse, it does offer some integration capabilities of its own.
SAP S/4 HANA cloud offers different types of integration flavors from a warehousing perspective.
1 1) SAP EWM Integration
SAP S/4 HANA Cloud supports integration with the SAP Extended Warehouse Management (EWM) Solution. In such a scenario, the customer runs their ERP processes on the Cloud, while the warehouse processes are run on the on-premise SAP EWM solution. This means that while the customer benefits from the cloud ERP capabilities of the S/4 HANA Cloud, all the complex business processes in the warehouse can still be carried out in SAP EWM, which can run integrated with the S/4 HANA cloud.
SAP S/4 HANA cloud offers the following integration points (available as SAP best practice scope items) for integration with SAP EWM
a) Inbound processing from supplier (2VJ)
b) Outbound processing to customer (2VK)
c) Batch management (2VN)
d) Customer returns (2VO)
e) Delivery based production integration (2VM)
f) Stock transport orders (2VL)
g) Warehouse stock handling (2YL)
The integration steps that are relevant for all these scenarios are explained with the setup instructions in the scope item 2VJ. Once configured, these steps will be valid for the integration scenarios with other scope items listed above as well. The following link refers to the scope item 2VJ.
https://rapid.sap.com/bp/#/browse/scopeitems/2vj
2 2) API-based integration
In this approach, SAP S/4 HANA cloud warehouse exposes itself to the external world with whitelisted Application programming interfaces (APIs) which offer entry point into the system. This may be to read or write data from or into the S/4 HANA cloud system. With the use of these whitelisted APIs, customers can access data from the S/4 HANA cloud system into the other legacy systems in their landscape. Likewise, with the availability of a relevant API, data can also be posted from an external system into the S/4 HANA cloud system. Some of the available APIs from warehousing perspective are:
a) Warehouse tasks – Read / Update
b) Warehouse resource – Create/Read/Update/Delete
c) Warehouse stock transfer – Shipment and Receipt Advice
d) Warehouse shipping order
Refer to www.api.sap.com for all the available APIs for integration with S/4 HANA cloud.
3 3) CDS views-based integration
In addition to whitelisted APIs, SAP S/4 HANA cloud also offers some Core Data Services (CDS) Views to read data from S/4 HANA cloud. While there are some CDS views provided as standard views which are released by SAP, custom CDS views can be built on top of these views to alter/customize the data that can be retrieved from these views. Some of the standard released CDS views available from a warehousing perspective are:
a) I_EWM_OutbDelivOrdNoParamC - Warehouse ODO No Mandatory Param Cube
b) I_EWM_WarehouseProcessCategory – Warehouse process categories
c) C_EWM_WarehouseOrderLeanQ - Warehouse order Query Lean
d) I_EWM_WhseTaskItemCube - Cube view of Warehouse Task Item
e) I_EWM_WhseOrderCube - Cube view of Warehouse Order
f) C_EWM_OutbDelivOrdQ - EWM Outbound Delivery Order Query
A complete list of the available views in the system can be referred in the “View Browser” app in the S/4 HANA Cloud system. The EWM-specific views are under the application component “SCM-EWM*”.
4 4) Third-party warehouse integration (1ZQ)
S/4 HANA cloud offers integration possibilities with third party decentralized warehouse management systems as well. In such scenarios, all processes related to the warehouse level run on this decentralized WMS system (it may be an on-premise SAP system or a third-party warehousing system).
The scope item 1ZQ details out the integration setup for this purpose. In most cases, the process initiates in the S/4 HANA cloud system with delivery creation (inbound or outbound) and this delivery is then distributed to the connected WMS system for further processing. Upon completion of the delivery, it is confirmed and returned to the S/4 HANA Cloud system.
Please refer to the following link for scope item 1ZQ for details on process flows and setup instructions.
https://rapid.sap.com/bp/#/browse/scopeitems/1zq
5 5) Production order processing with third-party warehouse management (2RU)
This is yet another integration scenario offered by S/4 HANA cloud which covers the production processes. The production processes as such are carried out in the S/4 HANA cloud system, which includes the creation/confirmation of production orders and process orders. The subsequent movements of products in the plants are done in the connected decentralized WMS system (SAP or non-SAP). It covers material staging, which ensures component availability for production, as well as goods receipt of finished goods after production. The setup instructions might be similar to that of the third-party integration (scenario 4 above) and is documented in the following link for scope item 2RU
https://rapid.sap.com/bp/#/browse/scopeitems/2ru
It may be noted that the purpose of this blog is to try and bring together the integration possibilities and scenarios available in S/4 HANA cloud from a warehouse perspective only. There are other scenarios and possibilities available with other systems and processes as well. The above links refer only to the details w.r.t. the integration with different systems as applicable (EWM/Decentralized WM/Third party WMS etc). The set up of the relevant processes, such as the warehouse processes as such need to be set up in the relevant warehousing systems and are not covered in the links/scope items shared above. Please refer to the documentation for the relevant systems for details on setting up these processes.
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