Merchandise Distribution: Product-Driven Flow-Through

When you receive goods, it can be the case that you are unable to send the goods to a final ship-to party completely. If you receive whole handling units, in other words, the products are delivered to you in a packed state, you can move the goods to a cross-docking storage type, which you are using as a repacking area, and perform merchandise distribution. If you received unpacked goods, you first have to pack these. You can then move the goods to a cross-docking storage type that you are using as a repacking area, and perform merchandise distribution.

If you repack the goods in the cross-docking storage type, the workflows are different for recipient-driven flow-through and product-driven flow-through.

In product-driven flow-through, you distribute the contents of the incoming handling units to customer-specific pick handling units. As a picker, you pick up the delivered handling unit, and go to the pick handling units into which you have to distribute the products. You therefore perform deconsolidation, and fill the pick handling units. You then perform picking, and take the completely packed pick handling units to goods issue.

Prerequisites

If you want to perform a customer-specific quantity adjustment on the outbound delivery order quantities in the flow-through process, you can use Business Add-In (BAdI)/SCWM/EX_MEDI_AQTY BAdI: Quantity Adjustment. For more information, see the BAdI documenation in Customizing for Extended Warehouse Management (EWM) under Business Add-Ins (BAdIs) for Extended Warehouse Management Cross-Process Settings Cross-Docking (CD) Planned Cross-Docking Merchandise Distribution .
If you want to unpack the outer handling unit at the pick point work center automatically, you can use BAdI /SCWM/EX_CORE_CO_UNP_OUTHU BAdI: Unpack Higher-Level HU During Warehouse Task Confirmation. For more information, see the BAdI documentation in Customizing for EWM under Business Add-Ins (BAdIs) for Extended Warehouse Management Cross-Process Settings Warehouse Task Confirmation of Warehouse Task .
You have defined the determination for the cross-docking work center. On the SAP Easy Access screen, choose Master Data Work Center Define Work Center for Cross-Docking .
In process-oriented storage control you have defined an external step that contains an internal step CD for cross-docking. For more information, see Customizing for EWM under Cross-Process Settings Warehouse Task Define Process-Oriented Storage Control .

For more information about prerequisites, see Merchandise Distribution in the "Prerequisites" section.

Process

You can use process-oriented storage control to perform different variants of the warehouse-internal process flow for a merchandise distribution using product-driven flow-through.

Note Note

You can only use process-oriented storage control with handling units. If you receive unpacked products and still want to use process-oriented storage control, you must generate handling units in EWM and pack the products.

End of the note.

The following figure shows you an example of a warehouse-internal process flow using product-driven flow-through.

This graphic is explained in the accompanying text.

Example of Merchandise Distribution Using Product-Driven Flow-Through

SAP ERP sends all relevant inbound and outbound delivery documents to EWM and triggers push or pull.
- If SAP ERP generates collective orders due to stock transport orders or sales orders, it updates the merchandise distribution data (pull).
- If SAP ERP generates vendor orders and stock transport orders using an allocation table, it also updates the merchandise distribution data. (push).
SAP ERP then generates inbound and outbound delivery documents and sends these to EWM. EWM generates relevant inbound deliveries and outbound delivery orders.
You receive an inbound delivery with handling units that all contain the same product, namely homogeneous handling units, and post goods receipt.
SAP ERP updates the inbound delivery document and posts goods receipt.

You can already perform a quantity adjustment of the outbound delivery orders at this point. On the SAP Easy Access screen, choose Delivery Processing Inbound Delivery Merchandise Distribution: Maintain Quantity Adjustment (Flow-Through) .
You first generate unloading warehouse tasks for the goods receipt, and confirm these manually or automatically.
Additional warehouse tasks are generated for the pick point work center that is located in the cross-docking storage type. Prerequiste for this is that you have correspondingly defined process-oriented storage control and determination of a cross-docking work center.
You move the putaway-handling units to the pick point work center, and confirm the warehouse tasks.
Since the quantity adjustment is to be performed before the pick warehouse tasks are created, this is the latest point at which you can perform the quantity adjustment of the outbound delivery orders.
You generate pick warehouse tasks, for example by releasing a wave, and deconsolidate the products. For this, you removed products from the delivered handling units and distribute them to the available pick handling units for one customer at a time.
You confirm the pick warehouse tasks. When you finish the pick handling units, EWM generates new warehouse tasks for staging for goods issue.
You move the handling units to goods issue and confirm the pick warehouse tasks. EWM generates warehouse tasks for loading.
You load the handling units and confirm the loading warehouse tasks. EWM posts goods issue and updates the outbound delivery order. SAP ERP also posts goods issue and updates the outbound delivery document.