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Interesting topic for a post isn’t it? What all these have to do in the context of SAP. OK we will go little deeper into this. SAP is a giant software which can cater to any clients need regardless of their industry, size or the power to purchase. But always there are some requirements which will be better fulfilled by doing some adjustments to the software. These adjustments can come in two ways. This can be a configuration change or a development. In an industry which has many influential factors and has lesser predictability there are more chances for continuous changes. Most of the times although the conceptual business models remain the same, application will vary. This might trigger different way of capturing data or reporting for an example. Apparel and Footwear Industry is certainly one of these kinds.

You might have seen in my profile I introduce myself as a lean thinker. So I am very interested in lean and its applications. One of such applications is in software industry. Especially when it comes to SAP developments people have the experiences of long timelines and complex developments. But is this the actual fact, or is it the approach we take to develop the programs. If I go through many of the developments I think which were failures they had one or more of the below features;

Give all the requirements before the development start approach. – This will put the customer in discomfort. He knows if he misses something it can backfire at him. So the normal customer behavior is to add all the possibilities to their requirements without checking the necessity for it. So the development gets complex. It gets costly. Data entry and maintenance going to be very difficult even if the development comes through at all. Most of the times this approach takes months of development time, huge amount of testing time and implementing time. But after some time people give it up making the effort a failure.

We have planned; no changes can be accepted approach – This is the next level of the above approach. People will refine their requirements based on the experiences with the time. More time between the requirement capture and delivery, more chances for the change requests. If we are not in a mood to listen to these requirements which often are very important for the successful operation of the software, the end result would be a failure in operation.

People oriented development requirements – People give their requirements and when the person responsible changes the requirement will also be changed. This problem is very prominent for the developments which will take long time.

Having many unfinished developments or an inventory of developments – This will frustrated the customer since they do not see any output for longer time periods. On the other hand we waste actual implementation and on the field testing time of the software.

Lean concepts can be applied in this software development context to avoid most of these problems. This requires a huge shift in thinking patterns and the processes associated. Some times your bellowed documentation steps in the development cycle will be minimized for an example.

Easiest way to overcome most of these problems is to deliver the developments in small and incremental steps continuously. I call this as the “Just In Time software development approach”. Since this will reduce the time taken to in the development cycle, user gets what he wants quicker. On the other hand there is no need for him to give all the requirements at once. This will reduce the complexity involved in development and greatly reduce the combinations in testing. So development will be much more effective and efficient, testing will be very accurate and the implementation will happen in shorter period. Developments will be tested in actual scenarios and hence incremental changes can take place subsequently. End users will be familiar with the developments and change management will be much easier.

In an apparel and footwear scenario changes happen very frequently in the business. So SAP AFS consultants should be able to keep the phase up with these changes and need to figure out the ways in delivering the developments quicker, simpler ways. Lean concepts can help in achieving this objective. In my future posts I will discuss how you can use these concepts in many other areas including reduction of project cycle time.

Sometime back I wrote about special feature in AFS, which is the Grid option. Generally apparel and footwear products contain sizes. This is where SAP uses grids extensively in its industry specific solution. For an example if you buy a garment you will look for the correct size even when all the other qualities like color and fabrication are met. Even for the manufacturer or the retailer it is important to know the size of the product they manufacture or sell.

But SAP AFS grids can be used very creatively in many other ways other than using it just to specify the size. Actually GRID option in AFS can be used with three variables. So it forms a 3D grid. This 3D grid can be used to reduce the number of master data created, complexity of the manufacturing and make the data entry simple.

In the 3D grid you can maintain three important variables of your business. For an example you can maintain size, color and the country of the order. Or you may maintain the size, customer and quality grade of the garment you require. In the case of first example your grid may look like “S_RED_US”. When you create your material masters for the finish good and the RM you can create one material code for a particular style for an example, since you have all the critical variables in your grids you can use it with freedom over and over again. For an example if you have a single dimension grid with the Size as the only variable you will have to create two materials to for RED and BLUE. If you want to differentiate them according to the country, you will have to create two for each of the color to say each material is specific for two countries. So if you have two colors and two countries each you will have to create four materials and possibly four BOM to replicate the scenario. Below is the summery of the example.

MAT_RED_US
MAT_RED_GB
MAT_BLUE_US
MAT_BLUE_GB

But if you have a 3D grid as per the earlier example you need to create only one material. So you can just imagine the time saving with this option. It will also reduce the data load in the system and will make it easy to maintain the system.

Having said that there are some limitations to usage of the 3D grid. Only 8 characters are permitted to be used altogether. That is all the three variables together can not go beyond 8 characters in length. This will limit you from using meaningful grid values in the system. Most of the times it will be required to code the variables used. For an example you may use 01 to indicate size S, 0002 to indicate color Red and 01 to indicate Country US in the above example. So you will enter “01000201” instead of “S_RED_US”. As you can see code is not meaningful to the reader. But standardizing will help to accommodate the longer descriptions to the grid. For an example you will use a four digit number to indicate the color “Dark Blue” in the system which is not usable in the system as it is.

Maintaining the grids also will be slightly harder if the changes happen frequently. But this would not be a problem after a while when all the possible combinations are captured in the system.

It is a tradeoff actually. But I think by using grids effectively you will be able to make the life very easy in terms of data entry to the system. But you will require longer time to familiarize with the usage especially if you have many changes within a shorter time period. Anyway I am still very exited about the concept and think 3D grids have not being explored by many organizations effectively. So if you are interested in SAP AFS explore it, it will be interesting hopefully you will save lot of time and effort.

There are two types of users of SAP AFS can be identified. One is the brand owners who have built their brand and now basically into selling than manufacturing. Others are the manufacturers of products. This post is based on the business model of an apparel manufacturer.

SAP is a great tool to define the processes of an organization and collect and analyze data. To make strategic decisions with the data collected it is required to collect data at least for three four years.

On the other hand apparel or footwear industries are very dynamic by their nature. Their products and the way they do manufacturing can change quickly. In fact any low tech industry can change the method they do their business easily. There are no massive changes to be carried out.

Most of the apparel manufacturers do not own their own retailing or brands hence are completely dependent on the brand owners. So they have to change according to the requirements of the brand owners.

These are too many factors of change for an industry. A tool like SAP can be very effective if it has the provisions to change with the possible changes of the industry. SAP AFS has covered almost all of the business requirements into its software. Therefore implementation phase and the requirement capturing phases become very important for the effective use of SAP AFS.

People who convey the requirements should be in a position to foresee the changes to the industry at least in coming four to five years. This dose not mean that they should come out with all the scenarios on earth to over complicate the requirement. They should be able to analyze the current requirements and also should be able to see the changes which might take place in the future.

SAP implementations on the other hand should happen quicker compared with the other industries. Shorter implementation lead times will facilitate the organization to accommodate the changes in the business to the system subsequently (Based on the nature of the change). This will make sure people use the system longer than they prepare for it.

So remember it is the balance between collecting the correct requirement and implementing the solutions efficiently will make SAP AFS implementations successful.

It is well known that SAP had an integrated single solution to offer to all industries prior to the SAPPHIRE in 1994/95; it was during this event that SAP realized the importance of catering to each industry individually as all of them had their own unique way of doing business.

This brought into existence solutions that cater to 21 Industries, and one of its latest additions being the SAP Apparel & Footwear Sector Industry Solution. This solution caters not only to the Apparel and footwear but also to home furnishing, product allocation and contract manufacturing.

Given the nature of this industry where trends are created overnight SAP had to design the right solution that would take into account at most the various process complexities that are associated with this industry whilst still maintaining integration across all functional areas of the solutions.

Let’s look at a few things that SAP AFS IS has to offer:

SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT

As most often that not, SCM is at the spotlight again, proving its prominence in the manufacturing environment. With the SAP AFS solution you can maintain and keep track of the entire supply chain from procurement of raw materials to delivery of the final product.

A counter argument to this would be that, this is somewhat of a general comment and all other ERPs also would give you this trackability, however in SAP AFS with the use of specific Material Management Features such as “Source Allocation”, “Quota Check” and” Factory Status” helps with the operations involved in the procurement of raw materials.

Other features such as “Route Determination” and “Subcontracting” contribute with keeping track of operations related to deliveries and subcontracting respectively. Another feature designed specially in the SAP AFS Solution is the ability to use season logic in order processing with the use of basic data such as season indicator, season table etc.

CUSTOMER MANAGEMENT

This term is more affiliated with the service industry environment and given that customers in this industry are among the most demanding, its only natural that there is a lot of attention given to activities contributing to generating customer satisfaction.

SAP AFS provides special features when it comes to back order processing and automatic order scheduling. The other flexible options such as AFS Standard Sale price, factor price and 2 date pricing cater to the complexities of pricing methods followed in the AFS Environment.

MASS DATA PROCESSING

Given the nature of the AFS industry and all the operations that goes into converting a plain roll of fabric into a sexy lingerie that would be worn by the next super model, it is only obvious that the amount of data to be maintained in the system would be overwhelming.

SAP AFS takes this aspect into account by providing a flexible master data structure and helps to simplify the time-consuming mass data change that would take place in this industry.

There are lot more features such as the ability of E-Business models and Enterprise Portal to help with specific operations in the AFS Industry and the importance of Corporate Performance Management Information and how the AFS Solutions caters to this need.

In my future posts I shall discuss the above in more details and other specific features that SAP AFS IS has to offer.

Hope you found this post informative.

Have a nice day. Feel free to contact me on ssurenlk@msn.com

S.Suren

I recommend that you also visit: http://help.sap.com/saphelp_afs50/helpdata/en/b2/53ae56cda511d2aca20000e829fbfe/frameset.htm for more information on SAP AFS IS details.

SAP AFS offers many special features to its customers. One of them is the ability handle its functionalities according to the sizes. Apparel and footwear trade is based on the size of the product. For an example if we are making a shirt some of its properties will differ according to the collar size of the shirt to be produced. For an example the cuff size of the shirt, sometimes the consumptions of fabric can vary according to the size of the shirt to be manufactured. This is same in the footwear industry as well. So without sizes it is almost useless to have a solution to the apparel and footwear industry.

SAP grids are ideal way to handle the products with size dependencies. Even when the styles, color combinations remain the same size requirement can vary in this industry. For an example size Extra Small (XS) will have a lesser demand than the size Medium (M) in the market. So the demand must have a variation based on the size while all the other features of the product are the same. So all the dependent subsequent activities will depend on the sizes. In the other words procurement, manufacturing and deliveries will happen according to the size wise requirements.

Sizes are important in some industries outside apparel and footwear trade as well. For an example Tyre manufacturing has a size reference. So SAP apparel and footwear solutions have found its place in many other industries where size is a key differentiator.

There are many other ways size grid functionality can be used in SAP AFS. I will discuss this in the future posts.