What is that every business has in common? They all share one similar goal: to enhance their supply chain while facilitating fast and seamless delivery by ensuring that the right product reaches the right customers at the exact time and date as promised, if possible, even before that.
However, as we all know, achieving that goal does not come easy, and must carry out a series of business operations in perfect sync without any disruption.
The best way to achieve such accuracy and efficiency is SAP S/4 HANA. Why? Because the warehouse management aspect of SAP S/4 HANA is ideally designed to enable organizations to achieve such results.
Companies can leverage the solution to create their supply chain digitally. But obviously, that is not all. Therefore, continue reading to get the gist of what SAP S/4 HANA warehouse and logistics management can do for businesses.
Primary and Crucial Business Processes in Production
As we are all aware, three crucial business processes are common among every business involved in production. These processes are research and development, planning and manufacturing, transportation, and delivery. Therefore, let us get into the details without further ado.
1. Research and Development
Research and development is one of the most crucial stages in the production. In this stage, businesses have to determine the requirements, incorporate all the provisions in the product, and develop the ideal product for the customers.
However, all of that can be easily streamlined with SAP S/4 HANA as businesses can use it to create simulations in real-time, decide on the type of equipment needed, and even simplify all the other tasks associated with research and development.
In addition, the solution can also help businesses facilitate real-time communication between customers and suppliers. This can enable them to seamlessly share and receive documents, data, and even billing information.
Cost is also one of the influential factors, and businesses constantly strive to keep the cost at its minimum during production. After that, they weigh different factors in determining the price of the products.
This is where businesses can leverage the product lifecycle costing feature of the solution, let HANA do all the calculations, and develop the right selling price.
Research and development is a time-consuming stage that can often stretch upto a couple of years, and things tend to turn more complex when businesses have to deal with more than one product.
Therefore, companies also require enhanced resources to drive effective innovation, generate unique ideas, and transform the product while making it better for the customers. This is another purpose that can be served with the SAP S/4 HANA solution.
2. Planning and Manufacturing
Creating a digital supply chain can help businesses seamlessly provide the customers with the right products at the perfect time and charge the right price for the product. SAP S/4 HANA solution can help enterprises to facilitate seamless management of all the activities related to planning.
Further, the solution can be used to facilitate effective planning between different departments involved in warehouse management. Businesses can always benefit by leveraging the sales and operations functionality offered by SAP S/4 HANA to tally the profits, inventory, and levels of customer service.
Other functionalities offered by the solution can help businesses optimize the level of inventory and simplify the production processes to ensure that the company can achieve the expected outcomes.
In addition, a business can facilitate seamless and accurate forecasts and produce the product based on the forecasted demand. The entire process of forecasting is totally based on the statistical and analytical capabilities of the SAP S/4 HANA solution.
When it comes to manufacturing, the SAP S/4 HANA solution does not let down businesses as it enables them to digitize the processes involved in manufacturing. This helps business efficiency while simultaneously reducing the cost.
Furthermore, the solution leverages the Internet of Things (IoT) technology to provide businesses with real-time data. The data gathered using this IoT technology is then integrated with the cloud platform to provide enhanced analytics about the manufacturing processes.
3. Transportation and Delivery of Products
After the above business processes are dealt with, it is now the final stage where products are finally delivered to the customers, and this stage does not come without its own challenges.
This stage can be influenced by many factors that include the type of business and product, demand, customers, geography, network of distribution, and the transportation model adopted by the company.
However, the primary challenge remains to manage the operations involved in transportation and systemizing different products in the warehouse, and preparing them to be shipped effectively.
This is where the logistic solutions offered by SAP S/4 HANA come into use, as they can be used to facilitate seamless management of all the processes involved in the final stage of production.
The solution leverages the data collected through IoT technology and integrates all the processes to make it easier for the warehouse management department.
There are many other operations in the warehouse, such as packing products, managing racks, designing the packages to their specific loading spaces, and monitoring the loading operations.
All these operations can be easily managed with the extended warehouse management solution of SAP. Furthermore, SAP S/4 HANA can also manage and authorize the product return requests.
In addition to that, the solution also provides real-time information and enables business to enjoy enhanced visibility.
Bottom Line
Technology will get more and more advanced with time which will increase competition in the market. Further, technologies like this will gradually diminish the gap between the potential of a large enterprise and a medium to small enterprise.
Therefore, businesses must leverage technology and finalize the SAP S/4 HANA migration decision to ensure that the business survives in a highly competitive environment.
