Processes in Supply Chain Event Management 

Purpose

The main areas of supply chain event management (SCEM) are:

·        Determining the SCEM relevance of an application object and transferring the SCEM-relevant data to SAP Event Management (SAP EM)

·        Reporting events and triggering follow-up activities

·        Monitoring and evaluating processes

·        Evaluating in a data warehouse system

Determining the SCEM relevance and creating SCEM data

You are processing a business transaction (for example, creating a sales document) in the application system. At the same time, the system uses the condition or conditions that have been defined for SCEM relevance to check if SAP EM is to manage this business process (see Business Process Type).

If the business process is SCEM-relevant, information is transferred from the application system (for example, from shipments, manufacturing orders, or service orders) to SAP EM.

SAP EM uses this data to:

·        Create an object that represents the application object (event handler)

·        Create additional information (for example, parameters or expected events) that is relevant to processing in SAP EM. Examples of this information include dates, material descriptions, or customer addresses.

SAP EM can use this information to compare expected events with actual events or to notify those involved in the supply chain, for example.

SAP EM can also transfer this information to back end systems (for example, a data warehouse system).

See also: Application Object Type, Data Transfer from the Application System, and Event Handler Creation.

Reporting events and triggering follow-up activities

When you report events to SAP EM, it processes the data that has been transferred:

·        It compares the data reported (for example, time, quantity, and location) with the expected events (for example, Arrival at Customer, Departure from Warehouse A). SAP EM can trigger follow-up activities in critical situations (for example, notify a partner).

·        SAP EM updates the data of the event handlers belonging to the relevant event message to ensure that it displays the current process progress in response to your event handler queries.

·        SAP EM uses a rule set to trigger a follow-up activity in response to an event message. This rule set contains the expected events, the trigger for activities (for example, an e-mail notification or triggering follow-up activities in an application system), and the query authorizations, for example.

You report events to SAP EM in various ways (for example, in the Internet or using EDI).

SAP EM uses the tracking ID to assign the event message to the relevant event handler.

See also: Event Reporting, Evaluation in the Rule Set, and Reactions to Events.

Monitoring and evaluating processes

SAP EM offers various options for monitoring and evaluating process flows. These allow you to recognize critical situations more rapidly and to react accordingly. In this way, you can prevent delays to deliveries or production downtime, for example.

·        In SAP EM you can monitor and evaluate business processes and processing within the company and are therefore informed when problems occur in the process flow.

·        You can make external queries to SAP EM in the Internet. You provide all those involved in the supply chain, including external partners and customers, with the current status of the business processes at any time.

Extensive authorization and layout concepts ensure that data in the Internet is clear and can be entered or selected safely.

See also: Process Monitoring and Evaluation, Reports for Internal Monitoring and Evaluation of Processes, and Connection to the Computing Center Management System.

Evaluating in a data warehouse system

You can also execute additional evaluations and valuations after the business process has been completed.  To do this, you connect SAP EM to a data warehouse system, (for example, SAP Business Information Warehouse) and you make analytical queries. This allows you, for example, to evaluate and valuate the quality of performance using key figures.

The system uses standard extractors to select the information from SAP EM that is relevant to the data warehouse system. The system updates existing key figures or provides new ones.