Multi-Step Replenishment: Inventory Management Types 

Use

When using the Multi-Step Replenishment application component, you can manage inventory in one of two ways:

·        Materials Management-based Inventory Management

In this case Replenishment is based on the Inventory Management data from Materials Management of the ERP system. Each goods movement is recorded in a document. You should use this type of Inventory Management as much as possible. It can, however, only be used for Replenishment if you manage stocks on an exact article basis (not on a merchandise category basis).

·        Replenishment-based Inventory Management

You can also use Replenishment-based Inventory Management with Multi-Step Replenishment. You activate replenishment-based Inventory Management by selecting the indicator in the replenishment article data for the article destined for the relevant store. Note that you can only use multi-step replenishment for stores.

Replenishment-based Inventory Management allows you to replenish stocks of articles managed in MM-based Inventory Management on a merchandise category basis (value-only article).

In Inventory Management with Multi-Step Replenishment, inventory is managed in a much simpler way than in Materials Management. The only figure relevant to Replenishment for a particular article at a particular store is the stock on-hand. No goods movements documents are kept.

The following transactions/events can change replenishment stock:

¡        Posting aggregated business volume data (message category WPUUMS) or non-aggregated sales documents (message category WPUBON) at POS inbound.

¡        Generating follow-on documents in a replenishment run and the correction of replenishment stocks using document quantities. You can activate corrections using document quantities in the replenishment article master data.

¡        You can make manual corrections to the replenishment stock using the parameter overview in Replenishment.

The following table illustrates the differences between the two types of Inventory Management for Multi-Step Replenishment:

Characteristics	MM-based Inventory Management	Replenishment-based Inventory Management
Number of stock types managed	high	only one
Materials movements documents	created	Not available
Calculation of planned issues and receipts using ATP (Available-to-Promise)	possible	not possible
Article-based stock data for value-only based Inventory Management	not supported	supported