Using SAP? Need a VMI solution? Surely SAP’s VMI product is the natural answer, or is it?
Whether you’re buying a new laptop, a VMI solution or your weekly shopping, it can be hard to see the wood for the trees and often you are left trying to compare apples with pears.
Information is given in such different ways that you really have to dig deep to find out whether one product suits your needs better than another. Well, help is at hand.
Recently, a long-standing customer of Waer’s, who has SAP as their ERP was looking for a VMI solution. The natural choice would be to go to SAP – they have a warehouse management provision after all – however, the obvious solution is not always the best one.
For this customer’s needs, the SAP solution fell short, and the table below shows just how many advantages our VMI offering has, over SAP’s for this customer:
| Consignment / VMI Using SAP | Consignment / VMI Using WAERlinx |
|---|---|
| Customer and supplier would not be able to use one system. They would each use their own, separate ERP systems, requiring EDI or XML data transfer between the two. | Customer and supplier will be using one system, making things far simpler for training and for everyday use. |
| SAP ideally requires the customer and supplier to be using the same Material Master records. | The customer and supplier don’tneed to use the same Material Master records; the Alias feature provides the cross-reference. |
| The forecast that is output for the supplier is based on customer sales. | Usage data is based on manufacturing consumption. |
| Supplier and customer both need to be using SAP. (Otherwise, the data exchange becomes a lot more complex.) | There are no prerequisites over which ERP system is used. |
| Significant manual input to record material movements. | Barcode scanning is used to record material movements. |
| The concept of ownership does not seem to exist. | Ownership is clearly tracked, at all times. |
| Uses stock and sales data as the raw planning data. | Uses stock and actual consumption in manufacturing. |
| Stock visibility is not real time. (Needs a scheduled data transfer.) | Real time visibility. |
In short, SAP Consignment/VMI doesn’t exist as a single, modular entity in the way that it does on WAERlinx. Rather, SAP requires the customer to go through a convoluted process of using pieces of functionality that are distributed across several SAP modules, before they can say that they are doing Consignment/VMI on SAP.
For a refreshingly different approach to supply chain software, ring David Snelson on 01293 768036 or email dsnelson@waersystems.com.