By Samuel

In the beginning of this year one my clients had a go-live in her pilot site where an SAP EWM template was built for that site and all other sites for subsequent roll outs. We were all happy and proud because we had a successful go-live with little or no issues.

Along the line in the preparation for subsequent roll outs we faced a warehouse-specific requirement: the configuration of two warehouse resources, seemingly identical in the system, but different in reality. It was our challenge to adapt and configure these correctly without impacting the daily operations.

We needed to fit these resources into the existing template and preferably without any system changes. Since this is an inevitable requirement with high business impact due to the warehouse set-up if not solved, we were granted the permission to deviate from the template, however with restricted and minimum system changes.

The challenge we faced was that our client has two similar resources belonging to the same resource type and resource group but resource X cannot access some certain locations resource Y can. So now the question is how to solve this as they are having the same physical and technical characteristics. Moreover we needed to restrain resource X from getting tasks only resource Y can execute.

We have designed two possible ways to solve this challenge with both having their advantages and disadvantages. Following knowledge sharing can help you to overcome similar issues in your warehouse environment.

1. By creating a different activity area for the locations resource Y can access, a different queue can be derived

Advantages of having a different queue

• Queue is linked with resource group of resource Y
• You determine the queue sequence as desired
• Warehouse tasks in the activity area gets assigned only to resource Y
• In scope of the EWM template
• Easy monitoring
• Business can assign qualified operator to the resource/queue

Disadvantages of having a different queue

• Additional activity area within same storage type
• Leads to multiplication of queues in the system

2. By defining Bin Access Type which is introducing new process into our EWM template

What is required for Bin Access Type to work

• Configuration – Define Bin Access Type, Resource type and assign the resource type to the Bin Access Type
• Master Data – Assign Bin Access Type to all locations resource Y may access.

Advantages of Bin Access Type

• No separate activity area for resource Y
• No queues multiplication

Disadvantages of Bin Access Type

• Difficult traceability/monitoring
• Difficult workload overview
• Process is out scope for the EWM template
• Every resource type/bin in the warehouse requires a Bin Access Type
• Huge master data maintenance

We finally decided to go for option 1 which is creating a new activity area and queues in order to ensure warehouse activities can be well monitored and also envisage transparent workload overview. Besides that activity areas and queues are known terms to our client in contrary to option 2 which is the introduction of Bin Access Type. It also perfectly meets their requirement without having to introduce new process or make some system changes because it’s in scope with the EWM template.