What is SAP S/4HANA Stock Room Management?
With the launch of S/4HANA 1909 comes a new product to SAP’s supply chain portfolio: Stock Room Management.
This article will explain where Stock Room Management fits into the SAP landscape for S/4HANA and why this might be a viable option for some SAP customers.
Stock Room Management is based on the Logistics Execution (LE) to Warehouse Management (WM) structure and functionality, but is now held within the S/4HANA code base. It has become the replacement for LE to WM which SAP will stop supporting in 2025.
Stock Room Management offers a lot of the core functionality that comes with WM, but does not include extended functionality, such as:
- Task and Resource Management (WM – TRM)
- Warehouse Control Unit Interface (WM – LSR)
- Value Added Services (WM – VAS)
- Yard Management (WM – YM)
- Cross Docking (WM – CD)
- Wave Management (WM – TFM – CP)
- Decentral WM (WM – DWM)
Although Stock Room Management will be available beyond 2025, customers considering this as a potential option need to be aware that SAP does not plan on any future development to this product. This means that Fiori Apps or any of the other upgrade benefits that come with following the SAP supply chain roadmap will not be available. If these are required then opting for Extended Warehouse Management (EWM) may be the path to choose, as this remains SAP’s strategic roadmap.
Since the announcement of S/4HANA in 2015 and the introduction of the 2025 deadline for withdrawal of support for LE-WM and SCM EWM, SAP and SAP partners have been looking to define the best migration pathways for their customers.
Whilst EWM remains the strategic warehousing product offered by SAP, in order to help customers who either don’t have the appetite for a large implementation or don’t require the richer functionality available in EWM, SAP needed to do something that allowed their customers an opportunity to migrate the ERP landscape easily to S/4. Although EWM comes with the options of ‘Basic’ & ‘Advanced’ it can still be a sizeable investment for any business already undergoing such vast levels of change.
A decision by SAP to offer customers a non-EWM solution which is usable beyond 2025 but with enough restrictions to make sure that for most businesses EWM will still be the end result.
Stock Room Management is an ideal product for current SAP customers who have very light touch warehousing operations, and have no desire or need for new innovations.
Stock Room Management can also be a viable option for customers during their transition period from WM to EWM, and could be chosen as a more simplistic way to migrate businesses to S/4. By deploying Stock Room Management in those sites which can operate using basic functionality, and focusing the project time and effort on implementing EWM in sites with more complex requirements, this buys more time after 2025 to move the supply chain to EWM entirely.
As a cursory note, all SAP S/4 customers have the option to use Embedded EWM Basic which, alongside Stock Room Management, comes as part of the S/4 package with licencing included.
For any more information about your business' S/4HANA transformation journey, reach out to our team of experts at Rocket consulting.
