SAP Inventory Management

Supply Chain Management: SAP Inventory Management

Inventory is a fundamental part of your business. Without proper inventory management, the organization can suffer inefficiencies, profit decline, and sustainability impacts.

What is Inventory Management?

Inventory Management is the practice of controlling inventory flow for maximum organizational efficiency. It is suitable for businesses of any size and focuses on organizing and streamlining product storage and fulfillment. The management of stock can be done on a quantity or value basis. Inventory management in SAP is an important component of the Material Management (MM) module, it deals with stocks and goods movement.

With SAP, many companies have real-time data on inventories, which is vital for capacity management and expansion of complex supply chains. The application provides several management tools to help users create an organized warehousing space while uncovering valuable operational data. A couple of examples include the following.

Supply Chain Management: SAP Inventory Management

Inventory is a fundamental part of your business. Without proper inventory management, the organization can suffer inefficiencies, profit decline, and sustainability impacts.

What is Inventory Management?

Inventory Management is the practice of controlling inventory flow for maximum organizational efficiency. It is suitable for businesses of any size and focuses on organizing and streamlining product storage and fulfillment. The management of stock can be done on a quantity or value basis. Inventory management in SAP is an important component of the Material Management (MM) module, it deals with stocks and goods movement.

With SAP, many companies have real-time data on inventories, which is vital for capacity management and expansion of complex supply chains. The application provides several management tools to help users create an organized warehousing space while uncovering valuable operational data. A couple of examples include the following.

Physical locations or organizational levels:

1. Plant: A high-level physical location to which the materials are assigned.
2. Storage Location: A specific area within the plant where the material is stored.

Four primary movement of goods are:

1. Goods Receipt: Inventory can be approved for immediate use or be checked in.
2. Goods Issue: A company may choose to process inventories for production or to sell to customers.
3. Return Delivery: When materials are being returned from a customer or vendor.
4. Internal Movements: When inventory is transferred internally from one location to another.

Most importantly, proper inventory management allows you to move goods with as little wasted time and money as possible. It can help you to optimize demand fulfillment for e-commerce, which is quickly becoming the norm in business to business today.

Benefits of SAP inventory management are:

• Accuracy and timeliness
• Realistic production schedule
• Quality checking
• Inventory analysis
• Proper reporting.

Technical resource partners for consideration might be –Movilitas, Opsveda, SAP.

Further insights for SAPinsiders around SAP Inventory Management

• Real Time Inventory and Order Visibility: Key for Successful Supply Chain Management. Probodh Chiplunkar from Ithena Technologies, outlines how real-time inventory transparency within a technological landscape affects business operations.
• Pick and Choose: How Kingston General Hospital Manages its Inventory with SAP. Author Davin Wilfrid interviews Derrick Morey at Kingston General Hospital (KGH), about the complex network of systems and people managing all the tubes, bandages, needles, and other medical supplies distributed throughout KGH. As an early adopter of SAP ERP technology, the hospital adopted a centralized inventory management system to track supplies for better accuracy.
• Next-Generation Inventory Management. Tom Chason addresses questions about the SAP Enterprise Inventory and Service-Level Optimization and SmartOps solutions. See how an integrated approach offers a powerful way to meet all these requirements for modern supply chains.