The Warehouse Management (WM) application component is interfaced to the Production Planning Shop Floor Control (PP-SFC) application component to assist in providing materials to supply areas in production. The significant advantage for customers using this WM-PP interface is that it provides pinpoint accuracy in timing the supply of materials to production storage bins in production supply areas.

The basic concept is for workers in production to be able to order needed materials themselves, which, in turn initiates the creation of transfer requirements in WM. Warehouse Management component, then, is responsible for supplying needed materials to the storage bins in production. It does so by creating a transfer order for each respective transfer requirement. This is part of the standard WM procedure.

The subsequent goods issue posting reduces the stock quantity of materials that have been removed from "production" storage bins and no additional activities are required in WM.

For each material and production supply area in a plant, you must clearly define the storage bins to which the necessary materials will be supplied and the type of material staging that will be implemented. This is known as a control cycle.

The system supports the following types of material staging:

You can request material staging in advance so that the required materials are supplied using WM (transfer requirement / transfer order) at the correct time. Also, no further activity is required for the consumption posting.

The following changes in the production order affect the WM-PP interface:

• Changes in product quantities

• Changes in assembly part quantities

• Material changes

• Changes in work center

• Technical completion of production order

• Canceling technical completion

• Change in storage location or plant

• Batch changes (see below)

Whatever the case, the bin coordinates listed in the production order for the consumption posting are updated. Also, any existing superfluous transfer requirements for pick parts are canceled and missing quantities are requested, if necessary (only in the case of automatic requests). If a transfer order has already been created for a material supply request, it cannot be canceled. However, the additional/new material requirement is issued.

The return confirmation of batches issued in WM for a production order can only take place for pick parts. When dynamic production storage bins are used, this confirmation takes place automatically since in this case the system carries out the assignment of batches and production orders. If pick parts are supplied to a fixed production storage bin that was defined in the control cycle during WM staging, there is no definitive assignment between the production order and the batches that are found because such bins are used for several production orders. In this case, if a notification is to take place, it must be explicitly configured as such in Customizing. (See the WM Customizing documentation under Interfaces ? Define production.)

When you create transfer orders for transfer requirements that include the picking requirements for a production order, the quantity can reduced if you determine that there is a surplus quantity (available stock) in the storage bin.

The reserved quantity is the quantity that was requested in orders for a particular production storage bin, minus the quantities already removed from this bin. The system only calculates positive quantities.

The reserved quantity is deducted from the total of the available stock and stock to be placed into the bin as well as the open transfer requirement quantities. The positive difference is the available stock that is deducted from the transfer order quantity with respect to the transfer requirement quantity.

This means that the individual tasks are clearly defined. In the production department, the WM material staging process is initiated for all released orders and the warehouse is responsible for processing all open transfer orders. During TO creation, only those quantities are transferred that have not been moved to production for other reasons.