Understanding SAP EWM Replenishment Strategy

 

In every DC (distribution Center), most of the internal stock movements are due to replenishment of stock from High or Reserve locations to pick locations. The efficient way of picking customer orders are important in a Warehouse. The Replenishment strategy depends on the type of business scenario and product/item flow in a warehouse. In general, there are two types of replenishment, one is order dependent replenishment and another one is planned replenishment. This blog post will explain fundamentals of SAP EWM Replenishment.

SAP EWM Replenishment Strategy: You can use one of the following strategies by activating storage type with any one of the below strategies in in Customizing under Extended Warehouse Management –> Internal Warehouse Processes–> Replenishment Control –>Activate Replenishment Strategies in Storage Types.

1 Planned replenishment: The system calculates the replenishment in accordance with the defined minimum quantity and maximum quantity. Replenishment control is triggered when the stock is less than the minimum quantity.

2 Automatic replenishment, that is a a replenishment during confirmation of a warehouse task. The system starts automatic replenishment in the background when you confirm a warehouse task. It calculates the replenishment in accordance with the maximum and minimum quantity. Replenishment control is triggered when the stock is less than the minimum quantity.

3 Order-related replenishment, that is a replenishment using open warehouse requests. The system calculates the replenishment in accordance with the quantity of the selected open warehouse requests. Replenishment control is triggered when the stock is less than the required quantity.

4 Direct replenishment, that is replenishment as a reaction to stock shortfalls during confirmation of warehouse tasks. Direct replenishment is only possible in fixed storage bin scenarios.

5 Crate part replenishment for Production related. This is related to production supply related warehouses.

Replenishment Level:

Specifies whether the replenishment in this storage type is requested at storage bin level (fixed bin storage only) or at storage type level, in Customizing under Extended Warehouse Management–> Master Data–> Define Storage Type. You have also defined the following:
If you want to work with replenishment at storage type level, you have defined the minimum quantity and the maximum quantity in the warehouse product master.
If you want to work with replenishment at fixed storage bin level, you have defined fixed storage bins for your products as well as a minimum and a maximum quantity for each bin in the master data for Extended Warehouse Management under Storage Bin  Maintain Fixed Storage Bin.
You use replenishment control to fill up a picking area in accordance with the demand for products that you pick in this area.

Below you can see example master data setup that is required to replenish any item with reference to a storage type.

We have one transaction code for SAP EWM Replenishment that can allow us to execute the replenishment

As you need to know that above is just the minimum configuration and master data related to replenishment but we also need to configure or check the available Warehouse process type, WOCR, AA and queue in order to create a warehouse task/WO to move stock from one location to another.

Here is a business scenario, The warehouse contains products in a bin always in a handling units and with different batches. So the replenishment qty is based on the pallet quantity. Normally the bins at the floor that had small capacity called pick face bins where product can be replenished based on the quantity  setup in the master data.

Let’s see the master data for the product

Master data in /scwm/mat1 and /scwm/binmat should be identical. The minimum Replenishment qty is 1 pallet (168 CS). The maximun qty to replen is 2 pallet (336 CS)

 

 

Binmat

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the packspec for the product has setup with 168 Cs as pallet qty

So based on the settings the replenishment creates WT’s with partial qty or partial batch qty. Business does not want to break the pallet. Always  create replen task equal to batch qty.

So below configuration setting required for storage type.

the above setting make sure always pallet qty does not break when replenishment task create. Also the Storage type had below mixed batch settings