SAP Blog

How to write an InfoSet Query

17 Jan, 2008 5 Comments

As I promised last time, I am going to teach all of you about writing queries. There are three main types of SAP queries. They are;

SAP Standard query
SAP InfoSet Query
SAP Quick Viewer Query

For this exercise I am going to create an InfoSet query. We will be pulling data about purchasing which are in three tables using this query. Every step is explained with a screenshot. So I do not think anyone will have a problem in following the example.

When I started taking the steps down and attaching the screen shots to the document, it became too large to be published on my website. So I compiled the data into a PDF document. This is the link to download the ebook.

If you have any question about SAP queries leave a comment or contact me.

Some interesting special features of SAP AFS

15 Dec, 2007 2 Comments

At last found some time to write about SAP and SAP AFS. I was little busy last few days. I have been doing some experiments with SAP and AFS special features. I had few fundamental questions to answer for some time. I tried answering them for past few weeks.

In the apparel industry one of the main raw materials is the fabric. Fabrics are characterized with many subjective parameters like color, color shading and the types of fabric faults. On the other hand when it comes to storing of these fabrics we store them in rolls, while all the other transactions like purchasing and payments happens in length(M, Yd) or in weight(Kg, pound) units. Also we have an interesting question in classification of these materials.

I was working on warehouse management module of AFS. And found a simple and creative way of answering one of my questions listed above. In WM I was able to configure the roll level stock handling capability using Storage Unit management functionality. So there is no requirement to have one to one relationship between the roll and the length it contains. We can manage them separately.

It is not possible to have AFS special features enabled in quality management for the AFS versions before 6.0. But the basic quality allocation and releasing and blocking can be made available using simple IM functionality. Although very simple technically this is a very important functional step for the business.

On top of all these I was invited by ITToolBox to start an AFS blog there. So you can read my blog posts on ITToolBox by visiting this link ( The SAP AFS Blog ).

So some thoughts about the future posts. Most of my friends have asked me how they can write a query in SAP. So I though of publishing my next few posts on the topic how to write a SAP query. See you with interesting blog posts in near future.

Another SAP AFS Special feature: AFS Categories

24 Nov, 2007 2 Comments

In apparel and footwear industry it is very important to categorize materials based on various common features. For an example if you manufacturer a shirt, it can be categorized into high quality and low quality based on the quality of the product. If you manufacturer the same product for two or three countries the common industry practice is to have the same style, color and construction but the languages on the label, or packing items might vary according to the country the product is shipped. In this case the products are categorized by country.

It is very important to differentiate the different categories of products within the same product range. This is achieved with the usage of categories in SAP AFS. Basically categories can be used to group any set of data which have common features. For an example Quality and Country of shipment are features that can be used to categorize the product manufactured in above examples.

Categories need to be configured in the IMG. Then category indicators need to be assigned to the materials in order to make the materials category relevant. When this is done, the stock keeping strategy for these materials will change. Your stock will be categorized with the category it is assigned to. In other words there will be an additional level in defining stock. For an example if you had a finish good stock in batch “XS”, Special Stock “E” for the order “23000” in storage location “1100” of Plant “1000” with the introduction of categories you can further classify your stock to “Quality A” and “Quality B” for an example.

On the other hand the requirement calculation in MRP will also be based on the category. You can define requirement fulfillment strategy in customizing. For an example you can ask your MRP to fill the requirement with “Quality A” goods and then with “Quality B” goods in customizing.

Category is a functionality which can be used very creatively based on the requirement. On the other hand usage of categories must be evaluated very carefully. This change the stock and requirement creation strategy for the category enabled materials. On the other hand there are some limitations to the category enabled materials. Customizing of categories involved many steps. I will discuss this in my future posts.

If you have any problems you can email me on the email address shown in the introduction. Or leave your question as a comment to this post.

SAP Industry Solutions

13 Nov, 2007 No Comment

By S.Suren

It is a known fact that SAP caters to different industry verticals by providing industry specific solutions. In this post I would like to give you an insight into how these industry specific solutions are developed for the different product offerings SAP have.

For instance when it comes to SAP Business One solution, when there is a need to cater to the requirements of a particular industry vertical, the separate add on for this vertical needs to be purchased by the customer. This add on is often a separate development of one of SAP’s Development Partner who have been doing SAP Consulting for the industry clients. This add on developed by the partner is later sent for approval to SAP AG where the solution is tried and tested before being available as a genuine SAP Add on for the particular industry vertical.

For SAP All in One solutions, that is for the higher end of the medium sized companies, the requirements (best in class practices) of the particular vertical is also preconfigured into the solution. This preconfiguration is submitted to SAP AG by the relevant development and/or channel partner and a certificate is obtained from SAP AG, certifying that this preconfigured solution is accepted to cater to the best in class practices of the proposed industry vertical.

As for R/3, the industry solutions are seamlessly integrated with the standard SAP components. This is then configured based on the requirements of the particular client. Therefore the client when purchasing SAP will be buying the relevant SAP Industry Solution suite.

Hope this post provided you with an insight into how SAP IS works.

Send in your comments and suggestions at ssurenlk@msn.com.

Have a nice day!!

S.Suren

Grid value conversion facility in SAP AFS

10 Nov, 2007 2 Comments

This is another AFS Special article in the series on Grids. I have already introduced you to the grid functionality and usage of 3D Grids. There is another special functionality in AFS which solves a unique problem to the apparel and footwear industry.

Apparel is a global industry. Orders comes from one part of the world, manufacturing of raw material happens in some other place and garment manufacturing will happen in another part of the world. Some buyers refer their product sizes as “Small (Size S), Medium (Size M),…” and so on. Some refer their sizes as “10, 12,…). On the other hand some suppliers of raw materials will call Size S as 14” depending on the product you order and the place from which the supplier operates. So every apparel manufacturer faces the problem of communicating with external parties in the same language they do.

AFS has adopted a creative method of solving this problem. This is by using grid conversions. We will maintain grids internally as we identify them. But displayed grid values will differ based on the Customer, Supplier or Material. For an example supplier will refer the product size as 14” and customer will see their document as Size S while we maintain it as ST internally for manufacturing purposes.

This requires maintaining the grid conversion in the customizing. Here in customizing all the conversions will be maintained for Customer, Vendor and Material. Then we have to make the conversions available for particular customer, supplier and material in master data maintenance. If all three are maintained system will take the Customer as the first preference then the vendor and material in last and grids will be displayed accordingly.

I find this function really useful in operation. But again I do not think this functionality is used for its fullest potential. If you are using it and if you have any comments leave it here by adding a comment to this post.

I will show you how to configure this functionality in my future posts. If you have any questions or suggestions pleas contact me on the email in the introduction above.

Birth of SAP AFS

29 Oct, 2007 1 Comment

By S.Suren

Many people wonder how SAP AFS IS was conceptualized. There needed to be some sort of an activity that spurred the development of the SAP AFS Industry Solution.

This initiation was taken by Dr.Peter Zencke in January 1996. Dr. Peter Zencke, a mathematician and economist, joined SAP in 1984. As a member of the Executive Board of SAP AG since 1993, he has led major development areas for SAP R/3 and SAP industry solutions.

In January 1996, he called on the SAP Munich development group to develop an industry solution to cater to the needs of the apparel and footwear industries and this was to be delivered by December 1997 and voila the SAP Apparel and Footwear Solution was born.

The new solution was developed in conjunction with such industry leaders as Reebok International Ltd and VF Corp and today this solution is being used by more than 60+ SAP AFS Customers worldwide.

There you go, thanks to initiatives taken by people like Dr.Peter Zencke that SAP Continues to dominate in the world of ERPs and consistently spring out solutions for emerging industries.

Hope this has given you an insight into the how SAP AFS came to be, I shall update more on the future of SAP AFS very soon.

Have a nice day!!

S.Suren

ssurenlk@msn.com

SAP AFS enhancements in SAP R/3 Standard

28 Oct, 2007 No Comment

For any new comer to an SAP AFS Environment, the first question that would pop up, is “What are the new enhancements in SAP R/3 that caters to the AFS Industry?”, in this post, I intend to provide a brief overview of the new AFS enhancements in the SAP Standard R/3 functionalities and thereby help to answer the above.

In IS AFS 5.0, the specific functionalities that have been included in the SAP R/3 are:

In AFS Master Data:

Material Grids (refer to the earlier post on “Using 3D Options in SAP AFS”, by Azwath for more information on this enhancement)

Categories - AFS materials are based on a large volume of data. To order this data volume, AFS uses categories. Categories are used to logically segment materials. You can enter a specific schedule line for a material per grid value. You can distinguish a material by color and size, for example. Using categories you can also order the grid values at different quality levels, customer segments, and countries of origin

Seasons - In the fashion industry, seasons are an integral part of the business processes. Previously, seasons were only available in Sales and Distribution (SD). In SAP AFS, you can have a season at the stock side. It has been enhanced so that it can also be used for Material Management (MM), Production Planning (PP), and Inventory Management (IM).

In Sales & Distribution

Value Added Services – Some of your customers might request that you add customer-specific services to the goods they ordered before they are delivered. Customers frequently request special labels, packing according to certain criteria, or other special services for their goods.

Depending on what kind of service and how complicated it is, you will need materials, know-how and/or more personnel to provide the service. An added service that you provide upon customer demand is therefore not free of charge, but rather it increases the value of the goods that you will deliver. You can calculate price markups that your customer has to pay, to reimburse you for your resources and materials.

You can map these requirements including their costs as value-added services in the AFS system.

Multi-store orders – The multi-store order (MSO) facilitates the mapping of business processes in which a corporation requires goods from you for any number of stores You can process all stores in one single order.

You explode the MSO document in the following process steps. The system creates individual sales documents.

This allows you to make specific and clear changes to the order quantity for certain stores.

Available to Promise (ATP) – The AFS availability check is carried out in the order entry to see whether the desired AFS material is available for the requested delivery date in, for example, the selected color or size. During the order entry you check if there is enough stock to fulfill the order at the requested delivery date. If the order cannot be delivered immediately, the ATP specifies when enough goods are available and confirms this date as the delivery date.

Allocation Run – The special situation of the apparel and footwear industry requires an optimization of the assignment of existing stock to open requirements. If a stock shortage occurs, the allocation run ensures an optimal assignment of stock to the open requirements. The allocation run distributes the currently available stock to due sales orders according to certain calculation logics at a specific time. If the ordered quantities are larger than the actually available stock, you can use the allocation run to reach the best customer satisfaction under the given circumstances in your business.

In Production

Markers Production Lots

Combined Orders – With this function you can group several production orders. The combined production orders can use the same component or have the same operation in the routing.

The functions you can execute for combined production orders include:

releasing combined production orders at the same time
posting the goods issues for all component quantities from the combined orders at the same time
confirming operations at the same time that are carried out for the combined orders

For more information on these features, I urge you to visit http://help.sap.com/saphelp_afs50/helpdata/en/b2/53ae56cda511d2aca20000e829fbfe/frameset.htm

Hope you found this post useful, feel free to send me your comments and suggestions to ssurenlk@msn.com

Have a nice day !!

S.Suren

AFS, is it a Industry specific product by SAP?

26 Oct, 2007 No Comment

Above is an interesting question I have been asked by many people. It is very annoying when someone ask me this simply because I know it is a IS product by SAP. People ask this question since they do not find AFS in the standard IS list from SAP on their site. Actually I faced the same problem when I was doing a research on apparel and footwear solution. With the number of quarries going high thought give you a complete and edited list of SAP industry Specific solutions. I think this will help you, and importantly will reduce the number of quarries from my users. AFS Users we are here…. Hooray…

Banking
Defense & Security
Healthcare
- Healthcare Providers
Higher Education & Research
Insurance
Public Sector
- Public Security
Aerospace & Defense
- Aerospace and Defense Manufacturers
- MRO/M&E Service Providers
Automotive
- Automotive OEMs
- Sales and Service Organizations
- Automotive Suppliers
Chemicals
Consumer Products
- Food
  Beverage
- Home and Personal Care
- Consumer Durables and Home Appliances
- Apparel and Footwear
Engineering, Construction & Operations
- Homebuilding
  Construction
- Engineering & Design
- Shipbuilding
- Commercial Real Estate
- Facilities Management
High Tech

Business, Medical, and Consumer OEMs
EMS Providers
Semiconductor and Component Manufacturers
Software Providers

Industrial Machinery & Components
- Construction and Mining Machinery
- Electrical Equipment, Appliances, and Components
- Engine, Turbine, Pump, and Compressor Machinery
- Industrial Machinery and Equipment
- Heating, Ventilation, Air Conditioning, and Plumbing Equipment
- Industrial Tools and Metalworking Machinery
- Lifting, Material Handling, and Railroad Equipment
- Measuring and Controlling Devices
- Motion and Fluid Control Equipment
- Oil and Gas Machinery
- Semiconductor and Electronic Measurement Equipment
- Textile, Paper, Printing, and Packaging Machinery
Life Sciences
- Pharmaceuticals
- Biotechnology/Biopharmaceuticals
- Medical Device/Scientific Instruments
Mill Products
- Building Materials
- Fabricated Metal Products
- Furniture
- Packaging
- Plastics
- Primary Metals
- Pulp and Paper
- Textile
- Timberlands and Solid Wood
Mining
Oil & Gas
- Upstream
- Supply, transmission, and trading
- Refining and manufacturing Instruments
- Downstream marketing and retail
Retail
Telecommunications
Travel & Logistics Services
- Logistics Services
- Postal Services
- Railways
- Airlines
Utilities
- Generation
- Retail
- Transmission and Distribution
- Water
- Wholesale Distribution
Media
- Broadcasting
- Entertainment
- Newspapers and Magazines
- Premium Content Publishers
Professional Services
- Consulting and Audit & Tax
- IT and BPO Services
- Commercial Real Estate
- Business Services
- Legal Services
- Staffing
- Facilities Management

For more information visit:
http://www.sap.com/industries/index.epx

3 Important Settings in SAP AFS Production Planning.

24 Oct, 2007 1 Comment

1. Expand Scope of Check for AFS

IMG Path: Production -> Shop Floor Control -> Operations -> Availability Check -> Expand Scope Check at AFS

Activity Importance : Critical Activity

Here you can make additional settings for the control of the availability check (ATP). You can make AFS-specific settings for each combination of check group and checking rule within the ATP.

Checking rule for the availability check

Use 1:

This rule defines the checking procedure to be used for the availability check (or in Inventory Management, the missing parts check) in individual applications.

Use 2:

It defines, together with the checking group, the different MRP elements that make up this key figure in Flexible Planning.

Brief Explanation…

The whole purpose of this settings is to determine the type of availability check that the system needs to carry out and based on what criteria, if for example is we are to do an availability check for receipts of materials, then we can define the settings such that the system checks if the availability of the material comes from production orders or from purchase order, and as for issues, when checking the availability we can define if for example the sales order and dependant requirements are taken into account during the check.

2. Define General AFS Specific Control Parameters

IMG Path: Production – > Material Requirement planning -> Plant Parameters -> Define General AFS Specific Control Parameters

Activity Importance : Critical Activity

In this section you can carry out general, MRP-relevant settings for a plant.

Activities to be done:

Restrict the number ranges for planned orders, purchase requisitions, and planned independent requirements. Specify the SKU horizon and determine the pegging logic.

Brief Explanation…

Once the MRP is run, this creates purchase requisitions or planned orders for the planned order requirements, and the number ranges for planned orders, purchase requisitions, and planned independent requirements can be setup in this setting.

3. Define MRP Modules to Control Category Assignment (AFS)

IMG Path: Production – > Material Requirement Planning -> Planning -> Define MRP Modules to Control Category Assignment (AFS)

Activity Importance : Critical Activity

In this section you define the MRP modules you use in maintaining the category assignment during the planning run. The MRP module is used for the assignment of stock categories to requirements categories.

Example

Module M1 means that the entire stock, all purchase requisitions, and purchase orders that are available for the customer’s requested delivery date, are used to satisfy the existing requirements (FIFO – first in first out).

In the configuration you would need to setup the MRP Module and the relevant function module for this.

Brief Explanation….

The MRP module controls the assignment of the requirement categories to the stock categories. Module M1 uses a strategy where all batches of stock, purchase requisitions and purchase orders which are available on the requested delivery date (sales order) and assigned to the stock category, will be used to satisfy the requirement.

It is important that you have a clear idea of the function module in order to specify the setting for this MRP Module.

Hope you found the above post useful. I shall update more posts such as this in the future.

Have a nice day.

S.Suren

ssurenlk@msn.com

SAP, AFS, Developments and lean manufacturing

20 Oct, 2007 No Comment

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.

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