SAPtipsJournal April/ May 2008 Volume VI Issue 2
Unlocking the Value of your SAP® Investment
Undocumented Features…Timesaving Solutions…Best Practices Journal |
Training |
Consulting |
COVER STORY 8 u MM
Demand Planning in SAP: Dynamic Safety Stock, by Adam Tysman, SAP Value and Effectiveness Specialist.
You’ve heard it said that too much of a good thing can be bad. In fact, with enterprise material stock levels, you’re walking a fine line between too much and too little. Adam Tysman shows you how to implement and tweak the Dynamic Safety Stock feature in Demand Planning for that “just right” level that even Goldilocks could love.
HR 17 u
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Document Library | Tip of the Month
C ool CATS: Simple Configuration of SAP’s Cross Application Time Sheet, by Satish Badgi, SAP HR Consultant.
The point of ERP software is to take advantage of shared data across the enterprise. Satish Badgi shows you how to set up and use CATS (Cross Application Time Sheets) to capture and utilize employee time data across the enterprise.
LOGISTICS 24 u MM
Overview of the Logistics Information System, by Jocelyn Hayes, SAPtips Director of Consulting and Training. Sometimes you need a tool
than can not only pull data from the logistics modules, but actually crunch it and report it. Jocelyn Hayes introduces you to the little-known
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and underutilized Logistics Information System.
30 u
P M Should Reliability Engineers Be Active in SAP?, by Warren Bell, Olivet Inc. Need to get more out of your
plant data by involving engineers? Warren Bell confesses that he too was once a reluctant engineer, and gives you the keys for promoting staff involvement.
Cheryl A. Cave, Managing Editor
From the Managing Editor Is it possible that we are already on the cusp of this year’s ASUG/ Sapphire conference? If you are planning to attend, you know it’s countdown time. Have you built your agenda, booked your hotel, and reserved your flight? If you answered yes to those questions, you’re almost ready. Next you’ll want to brush up on your SAPspeak before boarding that flight to Orlando. Whatever you need to know, you’ll find most of it in this issue (and our Document Library).
FINANCIALS 39 u
Parallel Currencies in SAP – Part I: Supporting Local Legal Financial Reporting, by Dimitris Langas, SAP Consultant.
You’ve got to read and report on financial data from branches in seven countries in the Corporate Office’s local currency. Problem is, each branch has to report in their local currency to their government. Find out how to support multi-country financial reporting using parallel currencies in SAP.
From the Editor continued on page 2
DEPARTMENTS 3 u View from the Trenches 5 u SAPtips Training and Consulting 7 u User News from ASUG 76 u Software Solutions 77 u SAPtips Associate Editors
BI 48 u Backend Performance Improvement Measures: Make Your BI Queries Soar, by Anurag Barua, Director, EDC Consulting.
As your data grows, it becomes more useful; but not if it slows BI query performance to a crawl. Let Anurag Barua teach you performance improvement measures to make your queries soar. Table of Contents continued on page 2
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Publisher: Andy Klee Director of Publications: Laura Donovan Managing Editor: Cheryl A. Cave Editors: Emil Marx Colleen Low Larkin Graphic Designer: Mark Hunter Klee Associates, Inc. SAPtips © 2008 Klee Associates, Inc.
April/ May 2008 Volume VI Issue 2
BASIS
CIO Corner
54 u Configuring SAP’s Maintenance 68 u IT Spending in an Uncertain Optimizer in Solution Manager, by Eric Walter, SAP Consultant.
The new SAP – mandated method for obtaining your patches is through the use of the Solution Manager Maintenance Optimizer. Eric Walter shows you how to set up the Maintenance Optimizer so that you’re ready when the next patch arrives.
ABAP/J2EE 60 u A Tour of the New Business
Add-Ins (BAdIs): A Guide for SAP Developers and Consultants, by Rehan Zaidi, Siemens Pakistan.
Discover BAdI building strategies to put real muscle in your ABAP routines.
Economy, by CJ Rhoads.
This is a tough economy. CJ Rhodes shows you how to weather the budget cuts without losing your technical edge.
Humor 71 u Say What?, A Guide to the SAP®
Terms You Need to Know for ASUG 2008 and Beyond, by Jon Reed, JonERP.com There is no faster way to lose your street cred with the SAP crowd than to refer to the wrong version, or worse, use an outdated acronym when schmoozing with colleagues. Jon Reed helps you fine tune your SAP-ese before heading for Sapphire.
SAPtips ONLINE Be sure to visit the SAPtips Document Library to download these new white papers. On MM Materials Management – Master the Best Practices Part III: Purchasing Best Practices By Jocelyn Hayes, SAPtips Director of Training and Consulting
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If you can read only one paper on the MM Procure-to-Pay process, this is the one. A veteran of numerous implementations, Jocelyn Hayes has both the perspective and the solid experience required to be able to drill down to the best practices for each part of the process. In this paper she covers master data, document types, field selection, release strategies, and condition types. We suspect copies of this will be laminated and posted on office walls. Jocelyn is, after all, among America’s most wanted (in SAP).
On ABAP SAP Graphics Function Module Primer: A Guide for SAP Developers and Consultants By Rehan Zaidi, Siemens Pakistan
A picture tells a thousand words, or so the saying goes. And a graph is the perfect visual for expressing key company data. After all, what’s easier to understand when analyzing data: a spreadsheet of numbers and formulas or a colorful pie chart or bar graph that highlights the important facts? The good news: you can insert graphs into SAP programs using ABAP. Rehan Zaidi demonstrates how to employ SAP Graphical Framework.
From the Editor continued from page 1
Need to build your skills in Logistics? Adam Tysman leads the issue with his cover story (page 8) on using Dynamic Safety Stock in Demand Planning. Adam says when used correctly, this method is probably the best fit for most companies. Or if you’re having difficulty getting the engineers in your company to take advantage of what SAP offers for Plant Maintenance, have them read Warren Bell’s article on page 30. Want more from your logistics investment? Jocelyn Hayes shows you how to use the Logistics Information System (page 24) to crunch and report logistics data and create planning data. SAPtips is all about optimization in this issue. Eric Walter shows you how to configure the Maintenance Optimizer in Solutions Manager (page 54), and Anurag Barua offers tips to optimize BI query performance (page 48). Nothing says “rookie” like using the wrong product and version names… always a challenge with SAP. Jon Reed’s humor column “Say What? A Guide to the SAP Terms You Need to Know for ASUG 2008 and Beyond” on page 71 is like CliffsNotes for SAP jargon. SAPtips’ spring training is almost over. If you missed it, remember we can bring our on-site training to you. Otherwise, you’ll have to wait for our fall classes. We are offering new courses that you’ll want to check out on page 6, or contact Jocelyn Hayes at
[email protected] to determine the best plan for your training and consulting needs. Look for Jocelyn and me in Orlando in May. We’re hoping to get to meet you, and learn more about your business.
Cheryl A. Cave,
Managing Editor, SAPtips
[email protected]
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White Papers continued on page 3
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April/ May 2008 Volume VI Issue 2
White Papers continued from previous page
On ABAP Upload Data from a Legacy System Using ABAP: Say No to Java & .NET Connectors By Usman Malik, Siemens, Pakistan
It’s the age old problem, moving data from the legacy system into SAP. Admittedly, there is no silver bullet…no quick or simple solution for this process. However, it doesn’t necessarily have to be a big project involving Java and .Net techies. It is possible to sort, clean, and arrange the data for transfer with some basic ABAP code.
Jocelyn Hayes’ View from the Trenches Well, spring has sprung and a lot is still happening with SAP and SAPtips.
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We are just wrapping our spring classes with one more left to “execute” (love using those SAP-centric terms). Our upcoming NEW ABAP class promises to deliver quality content and learning to its participants with the focus on beginner to intermediate ABAP developers, or even functional folks wanting to learn what their wonderful ABAP developers do day in and day out. As a functional person myself, I have always wanted to learn just enough ABAP to be able to debug and review code and be able to understand the different development options available to the developers. This class is currently open for registration and will be held in Dallas, May 19-23. Around the corner, the week of May 3rd is SAP’s Annual SAPPHIRE conference, again being co-hosted with the America’s SAP User Group in sunny Orlando, FL. If you are planning to attend and want to meet me or our SAPtips Managing Editor, Cheryl Cave, drop us a line at
[email protected] and we’ll set something up.
SAPtips is planning some more new classes this fall. Keep your eye on our schedule and course descriptions... SAPtips.com/WorkshopPublic.asp. And remember, you can also have our Mastery Consultants bring our training to you and your team at your site. I attended a Business Objects overview seminar in Denver recently where I learned a little more about the BO offerings. It is still not completely clear to me which is the “better” solution – BO or SAP BI for folks running SAP, or the long-term best choice. Will SAP eventually merge these products? To me, it seems strange to continue to develop two products in parallel that essentially offer the same functionality. By no means am I a Business Intelligence expert, so take my comments with a “grain of salt”. My hope for SAP is that at some point, they figure out a way to easily “merge” the products into one to make the transition as painless as possible, and continue to offer a Best of Breed BI solution that is both simple to support and implement, and comes with rich business content and intuitive end-user interfaces.
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Jocelyn Hayes
Until the next issue… Have a lovely Spring!
Jocelyn Hayes
SAPtips, Director of Training and Consulting
[email protected]
SAPtips © 2008 Klee Associates, Inc.
April/ May 2008 Volume VI Issue 2
ASUG/SAPPHIRE 2008 is right around the corner… Have you brushed up on your SAP® knowledge? SAPtips Document Library is your one-stop spot for the latest information on the hottest topics sure to be discussed at the conference, including: • Enterprise SOA • FI/CO • NetWeaver™ BI • Human Resource Management • WebDynpro • CRM • And much, much, more… It’s easy to use. Just go to www.SAPtips.com and look for this box in the lower left corner of our home page:
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Type in the topic you wish to learn more about and, before you know it, you’ll have a wealth of information at your finger tips, ready to be downloaded. Want to browse an entire category? That’s a snap! Go to:
www.SAPtips.com/AccessDocumentCategories.asp.
Over 500 topics, 32 categories…
So, what are you waiting for? SAPtips.com
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April/ May 2008 Volume VI Issue 2
We’ll be there.
• Onsite Training www.SAPtips.com/OnsiteTraining.asp • SAPtips University www.SAPtips.com/WorkshopSchedule.asp • Mastery-Level Consulting Services www.SAPtips.com/Consulting.asp
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SAPtips Training and Consulting
Contact Jocelyn Hayes Director, SAP® Consulting and Training, at
[email protected] or 1.877.832.2594 ext 122.
Discover how far you can go with your SAP system! Mastery Level Knowledge
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April/ May 2008 Volume VI Issue 2
Stay tuned for more information on SAPtips University’s Fall 2008 session. On the schedule for October and November in Dallas, TX: • ABAP Programming • Basis and Security • Business Warehouse • Materials Management • Sales and Distribution • Pricing Dates will be announced soon!
www.SAPtips.com/WorkshopSchedule.asp Go to www.SAPtips.com/WorkshopPublic.asp to view detailed course descriptions, including objectives, prerequisites, who should attend, CPE credit, and continuing education credit information. Workshops offered are subject to change. To register or view our pricing, registration, and cancellation policy, go to www.SAPtips.com/WorkshopRegistrationPub.asp
Ask about our TrainingPak! 15 student/days of training for $7,495. That’s a savings of $1130, or 13% off of our regular prices. That pays for 3 students to attend a 5 day class, or 1 student to attend 3 classes, or … well, you get the idea! We offer public classes every six months and Training Paks never expire.
Yes, it’s time to get excited about SAPtips University! Here’s what Spring 2008 attendees had to say:
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“Instructor was knowledgeable; good presentation.” “Excellent, very in-depth and hands on training.” “Allowed sufficient time on each topic and addressed all questions.” “Addressed areas that other training classes don’t touch on.” “Will take more SAPtips classes in the future!” Klee Associates, Inc. is registered with the National Association of State Boards of Accountancy (NASBA) as a sponsor of continuing professional education on the National Registry of CPE Sponsors. State boards of accountancy have final authority on the acceptance of individual courses for CPE credit. Complaints regarding registered sponsors may be addressed to the National Registry of CPE Sponsors, 150 Fourth Avenue North, Suite 700, Nashville, TN, 37219-2417. Web site: www.nasba.org.
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April/ May 2008 Volume VI Issue 2
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SAPtips is not formally affiliated with ASUG, but we share important ASUG news and events with our friends and partners.
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April/ May 2008 Volume VI Issue 2
Demand Planning in SAP : Dynamic Safety Stock ®
By Adam Tysman, SAP Value and Effectiveness Specialist
Editor’s Note: If you’re involved with material stock, you know how tough it is to keep the right amount on hand. If you order too much, too soon, you end up with a surplus. This ties up the company’s resources both in terms of capital and storage. However, if you don’t order enough, and at the right time, you could come up short, slowing production and distribution. MRP is a great tool, but unless you are feeding it the right data, it could be more of a nightmare than a dream. That’s why Adam Tysman decided to present this guide to configuring Dynamic Safety Stock in SAP’s Demand Planning module. Adam teaches you to understand the early results, and how to tweak the settings to tighten the gaps, for a more reliable safety stock level.
Every other strategy depends on manual, periodic reevaluation of the efficacy of said strategy. This can be a very time consuming and ultimately inaccurate exercise involving manually trawling through and collating all the various sources of consumption data, performing stock analytics on historical inventory levels/values, and reaching informed but, realistically, somewhat arbitrary new re-order level values. If not performed however, restocking levels will remain unchanged, regardless of the usage and demand for the material over long periods of ever-changing demand. Even if this arduous process is carried out, can you be sure that you are performing it at a frequency that really reflects fluctuations in demand?
Introduction
The purpose of Demand Planning is to ensure an optimum supply on hand at all times. Inventory must be high enough to ensure customer service levels are met, yet low enough to avoid excessive storage overheads and capital tie ups. Although inventory excesses can result from many factors, most common is the incorrect evaluation (and subsequent setting) of parameters governing reordering.
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SAPtips Cover Story
The SAPtips article “Forecast Accuracy vs. Safety Stock Levels: What You Need to Know” (February/March 2008 Volume VI Issue 1) examined and explained the relationships between forecast accuracy and systematically proposed safety stock levels. This article explores a different philosophy of safety stock level determination – that of Dynamic Safety Stock (DSS). This exigency planning method is named for the fact that the average consumption on which it is based changes constantly and is consequently recalculated every time MRP is run. This article also explores the means by which the results of these settings can be monitored and evaluated. This main difference between Dynamic Safety Stock and other strategies that you might consider to achieve the same purpose (for example, replenish to a maximum stock level, forecast, or manually determined safety stock levels or re-order points, etc.) is that DSS is not static.
Dynamic Safety Stock takes demand fluctuations into account as often as you run MRP.
Dynamic Safety Stock takes demand fluctuations into account as often as you run MRP. This allows you to move away from a rigid, sporadic, manual assessment of your requirements and move to an adaptive, flexible strategy based on actual consumption/requirements (incorporating values from your material forecast, where this is available). This article is based on a material example from R/3, 4.6C screen; the information applies to any R/3 or ECC system. The material is set with an MRP type configured to consider forecast values but NOT to automatically calculate Safety Stock. The Settings on the MRP1 subscreen for this material are shown in Figure 1. Here, the Range of Coverage profile, the key element in Dynamic Safety Stock calculations, is specified.
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April/ May 2008 Volume VI Issue 2 Figure 1: MRP Settings Including Range of Coverage Profile (usually on MRP2 view)
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You will notice that the Service level (%) and the Safety In Figure 2, we see the forecast values for this material. stock fields in the Net requirements calculation subForecast demand is constant at 10 units every period. screen do not have values. Service level percentage is Nothing changes, and the forecast is 100% accurate. used in the forecast-based systematic determination of This is a truly optimal and indeed most unlikely situasafety stock levels, and plays no part in the dynamic tion to find in reality. However, this simplified forecast Safety Stock calculations. The Safety Stock value is blank on purpose. A potential usage in conjunction with Dynamic Safety Stock is dealt with at the very end of this article. Suffice it to say for now that when using Dynamic Safety Stock, this field should NOT contain any value. Please note that the Rounding value is set to 1 (no rounding of order quantities will take place), and the lot size is “Lotfor-lot”, again ensuring that any quantities deemed required by MRP are the exact quantities procured. Figure 2: Forecast Values Showing Predicted Constant Future Demand
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will facilitate explaining the calculations and resultant stock levels we will discuss later in the article. In Figure 3 we see the consumption values for this material. Demand is constant at 10 units every period. No corrected consumption values have been entered. Again, this straightforward consumption history will facilitate explaining the calculations and resultant stock levels we will explain later in the article.
Range of Coverage Profile
The Range of Coverage Profile is a configured value assigned in the material master (reference MARC_ RWPRO).
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Figure 3: Consumption Values
Each of these three character/digit codes specify, for each plant (they are plant specific), criteria by which you wish to determine what constitutes average consumption, and what number of periods (multiple) at that systematically determined value you wish to always have in inventory. This ensures a constant minimum stock level, dynamically adjusted when MRP is run, relative to your actual and forecast demand.
quantities are within the set range, and if not, will generate an order to make or purchase the requisite amount. Figure 4 shows the initial Range of Coverage creation screen.
The IMG path concerned is SPRO‡Materials Management‡ConsumptionBased Planning‡Planning‡ MRP Calculation‡Define Range of Coverage Profiles (Dynamic Safety Stock). Notice that this configuration is classified by SAP as part of the MRP calculation itself. Each and every time MRP runs, the system calculates whether the current on-hand
Figure 4: Initial Range of Coverage
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lated by dividing the existing requirements (including forecast demand, if available) by the number of days in 1 week. To reiterate, we are specifying how many of those periods specified in Period Ind, (months, weeks, etc.) you want to use in the calculations to determine the requirements. In my experience, this has generally been set to 1, although it is possible to specify any integer below 100.
Figure 5: Range of Coverage Profile Settings
Once the profile is named, the actual methodology to be employed by the profile must be detailed. The screenprint in Figure 5 details an example of the settings that might be made in creating a Range of Coverage Profile. To successfully create a Range of Coverage Profile, the following process must be completed:
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STEP 1: Determine range of coverage: Period Ind = The period of time on which you want the average consumption calculation to be based. This value indicates the type of period that will form the basis for calculating the average daily requirements. Months, Weeks, and Production planning calendar periods are available for consideration. The number of days in this length of time will form the basis of the average requirement calculation. STEP 2: Determine average requirements: Number of periods = How many of the periods specified in Step 1 do you want to consider in the average requirements calculation? If we were to put 1 here, we are saying; “How many days are there in 1 of the periods (week or month, etc.) specified in Step 1?” If we were to put a 2 here, we are saying “How many days are there in 2 of the periods (week or month, etc.) specified in Step 1?”, and so on. EXAMPLE: So, if we had selected “Weeks” in Step 1, and “1” in Step 2, we are telling the system that we wish to have our average daily requirements calcu-
Say we had selected 1 week. How many days are there in 1 week? Seem obvious? Perhaps not so much so when we consider whether we mean “how many calendar days?” or “how many workdays?” This question brings us to Step 3, where we specify what type (and therefore what number of days) we wish the total number of days in the number of periods specified to be divided by, to gain an average value. STEP 3: Type of per length: Average per what divisor of the periods specified in the Period Ind field. Here you specify whether you want the average to be determined in Workdays (1) or Calendar Days (2) or Standard Days (3). Selecting Standard Days requires that the number of these days is to be used as the basis for the average consumption calculation specified in the field “Days per Period”, adjacent to the “Type of per length” field. Workdays are delineated in the planning calendar for the plant for which the profile is being created. In Figure 5, average daily requirements are calculated by dividing the requirements for the material by the number of days in 1 month. By choosing workdays, we are saying divide this by 6 (the number of workdays specified per week in our planning calendar for this plant). EXAMPLE: If Period indicator = W; Number of periods = 2; and Type = 1; when MRP runs, it would look ahead 2 weeks and divide 2 weeks of requirements by workdays.
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Once completed, you have specified what the system needs to know; that is, the type of period you want to consider when the average is calculated (weeks, months), how many of them, and then what type of day (calendar days, work days, etc.) is to be the divisor.
Once you have established your daily average, you can instruct the system to keep a multiple of that daily average, always in stock. Once these values are defined, you have the opportunity to define up to three periods of Minimum, Target, and Maximum Range of Coverage that the system will ensure is always available to you. Once you have established your daily average, you can instruct the system to keep a multiple of that daily average, always in stock. These settings are made in Step 4.
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STEP 4: Target, Minimum and Maximum Ranges of Coverage: These represent respectively, the Minimum, Target, and Maximum number of days’ worth of inventory, at the determined average rate of consumption, that the system will ensure is available. The underlying calculations are carried out each and every time MRP is run. STEP 5: Range of Coverage in the first, second (etc.) Periods: (Optional) Identifies the Minimum, Maximum, and Target number of days (work or calendar) worth of inventory, at the average daily rate of forecast consumption determined by the settings in the previous steps, is to be kept, as well as the number of periods you want to be considered. For example, for the next 10 periods you want to keep
a Target of 10 days of product, but you never want to keep less than 8 days on hand. Then for the next “X” number of periods, you could set a different number of Target days of safety stock. This functionality is usually used during ramp up/down situations, where the rate of consumption change is predictable. Typically, setting a Target will suffice for ramp up/down scenarios. STEP 6: Periods in profile with different ranges of coverage: (Optional) By double-clicking the “Periods in profile with different ranges of coverage” menu option on the left of the Range of Coverage Profile Creation screen, the entry options displayed in Figure 6 become visible. Here you are able to enter a specific date range during which a higher number Dynamic Safety Stock requirement is to apply. Multiple date ranges or the same date ranges in multiple years can be applied. This is an especially useful element of functionality where a forecast is not maintained, or a forecast without a seasonal model is maintained, and there is a requirement to make sure that excess inventory is purchased during a specified period. This can be used, for example, to ramp up stock levels in advance of predicted price increases, or to ramp up inventory levels in anticipation of expected demand at a particular time of year.
Figure 6: Setting Periods in Profile with Different Ranges of Coverage
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SAPtips4Cover Story / MM Minimum, Target, and Maximum Days of Coverage at Average Consumption can be specified for any period.
optimum inventory levels, are discussed in the Monitoring and Evaluation section of this article.
Appropriate Range of Coverage Profile? Once established and assigned to materials, these Range of Coverage profiles will ensure the resultant Dynamic Safety Stock values are always held in inventory. Since these are dynamic, it is important to ensure that the profiles assigned to a material are correct. This refers to the fact that it is, of course, possible to assign a material to a profile that is inappropriate for its demand fluctuations or planning cycle.
Before we turn to those tools, let us examine exactly how MRP performs the calculations we have been referring to.
EXAMPLES of Inappropriate Range of Coverage Profiles: 1. A Range of Coverage profile assuring a Dynamic Safety Stock of 1 calendar day’s worth of stock (at the average rate of consumption by month) is assigned to a material for which MRP is run only once a month. RESULT – Once the 1 day of safety stock is exhausted there is a long duration until a replenishment order can be created. SOLUTION – this material must be assigned a Range of Coverage profile requiring a higher number of days of stock, at the average rate of consumption. 2. A material for which demand is known to drastically fluctuate by week, and is included in a daily MRP run, is assigned a Range of Coverage Profile considering consumption over a 2 month period. RESULT – the determined average rate of consumption will ensure an inadequate safety stock level to accommodate the demand peaks. SOLUTION – Since the safety stock calculation is performed when MRP is run, the material should have an average rate of consumption based on the requirement for a week. 3. A material for which MRP is run weekly has an external or total replenishment lead time of 20 days, and is assigned a Range of Coverage Profile assuring a Dynamic Safety Stock of 1 calendar day’s worth of stock (at the average rate of consumption by month). RESULT – Once the 1 day of safety stock is exhausted, there is a long duration until a replenishment order can be received into stock. SOLUTION – this material must be assigned a Range of Coverage Profile requiring a higher number of days of stock at the average rate of consumption. The standard SAP systematic tools, which are available to confirm that the profile you have assigned to any given material is, in fact, appropriate, and will ensure
Range of Coverage profiles will ensure the resultant Dynamic Safety Stock values are always held in inventory. MRP Calculations:
The formula used by MRP in determining Dynamic Safety Stock levels are: Demand for the current whole month is calculated as: Existing Reservations/Sales Orders (including unfulfilled Reservations/Sales Orders created in the past) + Forecast for month. Where there is not a full month remaining at the time MRP is run, demand for the remaining part of the month is calculated as: Existing Reservations/Sales Orders + ((Forecast for month / number of working days in the month) * workdays remaining in month excluding today) Where Range of Coverage profile is set to calculate based on 1 month’s demand divided by workdays, the daily average demand is: Demand for month / number of workdays remaining in the month including today. Dynamic Safety Stock then is: Average daily demand* Range of Coverage specified number of days of Average Daily Demand to be kept in stock.
Monitoring and Evaluation:
The Range of Coverage values used by the system in determining whether or not the number of days of coverage is adequate to meet the settings made in this configuration, and assigned to a particular material, are visible via the Period Totals display in the Stock Requirements List (transaction MD04).
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SAPtips4Cover Story / MM If we were to run MRP for our example material, and the settings Forecast, Consumption, Range of Coverage Profile, and other Material Master settings mentioned at the beginning of this article, the stock requirements list in Figure 7 would be shown. (Note – there are 5 each of this material in Stock). In Figure 7 we see the initial 5 units of stock being depleted by the forecast demand. However, a purchase requisition is created on 4/20/2008. To understand the logic behind why the system created this requisition, we will need to view the Period Totals display screen of this transaction.
Figure 7: Stock Requirements
The Period Totals display is accessed by pressing the icon, on the Stock Requirements List (detail) Standard Display screen. The standard (detail) screen can be returned to by pressing the icon. This will be located in exactly the same position on the screen as the Period Totals display was found, acting, in effect, as a toggle switch between the two views of the stock requirements. The Period Totals display is an essential tool in the confirmation that appropriate profiles have been assigned to the material.
Figure 8: Period Totals Display of the Stock Requirements List
The columns in the Period Totals display (as seen in Figure 8) are now explained relative to Dynamic Safety Stock.
• Period – The period during which the various receipts and requirements have been aggregated
• Planned Independent Requirements – Forecast Demand (in this case, a forecast demand for 10 ea for the whole month)
• Requirements – Aggregated sales order and reservation quantities • Receipts – Aggregated expected Goods receipt quantities
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• Available Quantity – Aggregate amount of stock
decrement (due on 4/20) would have caused us to go below our mandated 2 days of coverage.
• ATP quantity – Stock not already committed to any other form of demand – available stock • Actual Coverage – The number of days the available quantity of a material in the periods displayed can cover the requirements in the periods that follow • Statistical Coverage – Available quantity at present moment/average daily requirements. As DSS is also based on the average daily value, this column is very important in assessing the efficacy of the Range of Coverage profile you have assigned to the material. The value in this column should never go below the number of days you have specified in your Range of Coverage Profile • Target Coverage (in number of days at average consumption) • Daily Average Requirements – Calculated using the settings made in the Range of Coverage Profile. Note how this changes when the month changes. This is because May has a different number of workdays than April.
Adding a reservation and running MRP for this material changes the Stock Requirements list.
Please note how the system maintains 2 days’ supply throughout the time series displayed. If you recall, the demand for the current whole month is calculated as: Existing Reservations/Sales Orders (including unfulfilled Reservations/Sales Orders created in the past) + Forecast for month Adding a reservation and running MRP for this material changes the Stock Requirements list, as per Figure 9.
• Maximum Coverage (in number of days at average consumption) • Minimum Coverage (in number of days at average consumption)
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• Target Coverage – specified multiple of displayed average • Maximum Coverage – specified multiple of displayed average • Minimum Coverage – specified multiple of displayed average In this example, we see that on 4/17 the statistical coverage was 2.9 days. Had the system done nothing, the next
Figure 9: Stock/Requirements List After a Reservation Has Been Created
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process of specifying a number of days in which a material must still be available to cover requirements is not foolproof, nor guaranteed to always prevent a stock-out situation from ever occurring. It is, however, the way to increase stock turns and reduce dead stock – all the while actively considering replenishment lead time and consumption in the period since you last ran MRP.
Figure 10: Period Totals View After a Reservation Has Been Created
The effects of this on the Periodic Total display can be seen in Figure 10. The reservation was taken into account, as well as the forecast demand. This meant that the system (MRP) predicted that the statistical number of days of coverage on 4/13 was 2.4. Thus, any further decrement will cause the 2-day limit to be breached. Accordingly, it created a requisition for 4/15, to ensure that this will not occur.
Safety Stock
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At the beginning of this article, I mentioned briefly that it is possible to use Dynamic Safety Stock as well as safety stock set in the Material Master MRP view. If this is done, the safety stock acts as a minimum stock level that cannot be breached, regardless of daily average requirements. It is only advisable to use the two in tandem where you wish to generally maintain a safety stock based on average consumption, but are aware that there can be occasional spikes in demand that may exceed the DSS determined, required minimum stock levels.
In my opinion, if there is any degree of constancy in your usage of any material, this is the replenishment/safety stocking strategy most likely to ensure inventory cost reduction goals are met, with the lowest potential rate of occurrence for customer service issues. Because it is so flexible, and re-calculated so often, it is common to test and confirm the optimal Range of Coverage to be assigned to any material. MRP can be run and re-run until you are sure you have selected the best number of days of coverage your supply chain allows. Once tried, the available alternatives seem unwieldy and cumbersome by comparison. Adam Tysman is a former long-term SAP America Senior MM Consultant. He has many years of experience improving, implementing, and supporting SAP systems across multiple countries in a variety of industries. This has included working for SAP in Germany and in the UK. Adam and his colleagues specialize in helping clients reap the benefits of untapped functionality lying latent within their existing SAP investments. You may contact the author at
[email protected]. Be sure to mention the author’s name and/or the article title.
≈
Conclusion
By constantly calculating and re-calculating the relationship between your consumption and your safety stock levels as described in the article, you have ensured that your customer service level specifications are met, while holding on hand only the minimum amount of inventory required to meet those commitments. This
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Cool CATS:
Simple Configuration of SAP®’s Cross Application Time Sheet By Satish Badgi, SAP HR Consultant Editor’s Note: What’s the difference between house cats and SAP CATS? Well, one is user friendly. All kidding aside, CATS, Cross Application Time Sheet, is a nifty tool for tracking employee time across different application modules in SAP. Satish Badgi walks us through the steps to configure and adjust the front end of this tool, in order to maximize usability.
Introduction
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Type of CATS interface
SAP Transaction
Description
CATS Classic
CAT2 This user interface is meant for users who require a simple interface to enter time data for multiple employees.
CATS Regular
CAT3 It is very similar to CATS classic and can also be used through Employee Self Service (ESS) application using a Web browser.
CATS – Web
CAT3 It is a version of CATS classic rolled out through Web.
CATS for Service Providers
CATSXT This interface provides an alternative to CATS Classic and CATS Regular, especially for servicebased industries and is integrated with the MMExt-Serv module in SAP.
CATS - Mobile
Off-line using
This is suitable for employees who want to use it
The Cross Application mobile computing as an offline data entry tool from laptops that are not always connected to the system. Time Sheet (CATS) tool in SAP is popular and widely Figure 1: Types of CATS Interfaces used due to its user-friendly functionality. CATS’ functionality and ease of use have remained constant from Figure 2 shows the different CATS transactions availversion 4.7 through to ECC 6 versions. CATS is a data able from the SAP Application menu. These CATS entry tool to enter time data for employees. As the term transactions are as listed in Figure 1 earlier. “cross application” suggests, the data entered through CATS reaches different application modules in the SAP environment. This data is used and evaluated in different SAP modules. SAP has provided a simple and straightforward, configurable data entry profile for adjusting the CATS front end to support your organization’s requirements. CATS is also used in the Employee Self Service (ESS) tool, and the data entry profile can be rolled out as a Web-based tool to employees. The purpose of this article is to understand the ease of configuring/adjusting the front end.
Types of User Interfaces
Before, we get to the details of the CATS tool, let’s list the available SAP interfaces for CATS. The table in Figure 1 offers a brief description of each of these interfaces. Figure 2: CATS Transactions in the Application Menu
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Before we get to the discussion of configuring the user interface, let’s run the CAT2 or CAT3 transaction, to look at the interface. Figures 3 and 4 demonstrate the use of these transactions. Using a data entry profile that is available from the drop-down list (Figure 3, Data Entry Profile field), users can select an available profile. Later in this article, we will learn to configure this profile.
Figure 3: CAT2 Data Entry
When you use a particular profile, you may want to expand the columns displayed, as shown in Figure 4. This screen, and the associated columns, can be configured for the data entry profile. The columns in Figure 4 refer to each day of the week for the month of February. The users will be able to enter hours, by the day, in this profile. We will now discuss customizing settings for the data entry profile.
Figure 4: CAT2 Data Entry Columns
Customizing Settings for Data Entry Profiles
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SAP has a couple of sample data entry profiles out of the box. When you use the dropdown list (Figure 3) for the first time (before configuration), you may see one or two sample profiles. When we use the term “profile” – we are referring to the various fields, columns, and structures of the CATS data entry screen. Figure 5 shows the IMG path for CATS configuration. These Figure 5: CATS Configuration Menu settings are for a specific type of CATS transactions. Earlier, in Figure 1, we discussed the different types of CATS as well as the specific configuration, which is accessed from the menu path (as shown in Figure 5).
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April/ May 2008 Volume VI Issue 2 Figure 6: IMG Path for Creating Data Entry Profiles
Similar to Figure 6, Figure 7 shows the configuration option for all different types of CATS. You will notice that, you can set up data entry profiles for any of the CATS user interfaces.
Creating a CATS Profile
Following are simple steps for creating a CATS data entry profile in SAP.
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Step 1 – Creating and maintaining data entry profiles: Figure 6 shows the IMG path for maintaining data entry profiles. Step 2 – As shown in Figure 8, use the “New Entries” button to create a new data entry profile. Some of the delivered (or pre-configured) data entry profiles are seen in Figure 7. You can also use the standard SAP “Copy” functionality to copy from the existing profile, and then modify it. The profile has an alphanumeric name followed by text as shown in Figure 8.
Figure 7: Configuration for Different Types of CATS
Figure 8: Creating A New Data Entry Profile
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Step 3 – Use the “Maintain general settings” option for the new profile. In Figure 9, “Ztest” is the name of the new profile. General settings allow you to maintain: • Clock time settings (Example: capture hours directly, or start/end times) • Totals • Release controls – after the user saves the time data entry • Display of workdays only Step 4 – The “Time settings” option as shown in Figure 9 allows you to maintain: • Decisions about the first day of the week. Example- Sunday being the first day or Monday being the first day • Period – Weekly time entry or bi-weekly time entry Step 5 – The “Person selection” as shown in Figure 9 allows you to control: • One person at a time or
Figure 9: Maintaining Settings for New Profile- 1
• Multiple persons/organization units. Example: Situations where one department’s assistant enters time data for all people in that department.
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Step 6 – The “Approval” controls in CATS as shown in Figure 9 dictates whether the time sheets need managerial approval before posting to different SAP application components. The Profile Maintenance screen continues with more details as you scroll down. I have divided the figures in multiples: Figures 9, 10, and 11 demonstrate all the functionality. However, all three figures are part of the same SAP screen in Profile Maintenance. Step 7 – Workflow control (Figure 10) helps you to trigger notifications between employee and manager.
absence and attendance type field is always the most useful in these settings. Step 10 – Worklist settings (Figure 11) can help improve the data entry productivity and helps you to “customize” the worklists. We will discuss worklist setup later. Step 11 – Data entry checks, shown in Figure 11, allow you to: • Display Warning/Error for absence and attendance collisions (Example – trying to enter absence and attendance for same period) • Tolerance and warning or error reaction to tolerance
Step 8 – Cost Accounting Variant (Figure 10) decides the receiving and sending cost center posting controls.
Step 12 – Quota control (Figure 11) allows controlling warning/error messages in case you choose to use attendance/absence quotas.
Step 9 – Default values (Figure 10) for fields help you to pre-populate the fields in the data entry screen. The
The CATS profile screen is pretty long, and you need to continue to scroll down to get the fill view. For the pur-
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April/ May 2008 Volume VI Issue 2 Figure 10: Maintaining Settings for New Profile- 2
pose of this article, I have broken the screens in multiple screen shots to make sure that we cover all the fields. Figure 10 continues from Figure 9 with more fields. Similar to Figure 10, Figure 11 continues with the profile. We will now move to the screen controls and learn about adjusting the columns. Earlier in Figure 4, we saw the columns for the CATS sheet. We can configure those columns very easily. Let’s review the configuration.
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Configuring CATS Profile/Creation of Personal Template Figure 7 shows the menu path CATS Regular‡Set Up Data Entry Profile and Field Selection. Using this menu path, you can get to the screen shown in Figure 12.
Figure 11: Maintaining Settings for New Profile- 3
If you follow the three options – Settings, Worklist, and Data Entry respectively, you will get to the screens shown in Figures 13, 14, and 15, respectively. Figure 13 has a list of the modifiable fields on the left-hand side and choice of Input/Required/Display/Hide options on right. The fields’ behavior can be configured based on the button on/off. Figure 12: Field Selection Menu
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April/ May 2008 Volume VI Issue 2 Figure 13: Settings
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Figure 14: Worklist Management
Figure 14 refers to the worklist and since all the fields in worklist are “Input” enabled due to the button settings, the worklist will be able to capture the fields in input mode. Figure 15 follows a similar concept as Figure 13 and 14; however, it is related to data entry control and you can make some fields mandatory for users to fill in, while some others can be hidden. We mentioned “worklists” earlier in this article. A Worklist is a screen area of the Data Entry screen, and can be configured using the field selections. By using the “hide”
Figure 15: Data Entry Section Control
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SAPtips4On HR column from the fields, many unwanted fields can be hidden. This helps users to create a simplified time sheet entry format. The columns for the time data entry in the Time Sheet screen (Figure 4) can be configured very easily, using these settings.
A Few Words on Mobile CATS
Figure 16: CATS Notebook Fields Selection
CATS Notebook, or as some users refer to it, “CATS Mobile”, is a version of CATS that can be used off-line, away from SAP, using laptop computers. Subsequently, the data is uploaded to SAP. The upload is handled by Mobile Time Sheet when the notebook is connected with the SAP system. The configuration of the CATS Notebook data entry profile Figure 17: Field Selection for CATS Notebook is slightly different from the regular CATS configuration (used in back-end SAP). Follow the configuration menu path shown in Figure 7, The classic industry issues around labor cost-tracking “Set up Field Selections”, and you will get to the screen can be easily addressed using CATS implementation. as shown in Figure 16. In this figure, you can see that In addition, I am sure you have noticed that the conI created a new Field Selection attribute and named it figuration of the Data Entry Profile and Fields Selection “Test”. screen is very straightforward. This configuration allows us to roll out simple formats to the users, resulting in I also set up the “Field Customizing” option (from the faster data entry and improved productivity. left-hand area of the menu in Figure 16) to do the fields selection. Refer to Figure 17 for this step. Satish Badgi, SAP HR Expert. Satish is a senior consulUsing the “Select Fields” button, you can select the tant with specialization in SAP HR and Payroll. He has fields and populate the Field Customizing list in the over ten years of experience implementing and supportscreen. The concept is very similar to regular CATS, but ing SAP systems across multiple countries in a variety the configuration “look and feel” is slightly different. of industries. In his recent engagements, Satish has been involved with implementing SAP HR, Payroll, and SAP’s standard help (http://help.sap.com) will assist Benefits systems in complex environments and you in further exploring the topic on the actual use of integrating them with Finance, Costing, and Funds CATS, as well as overall application functionality. Management. You may contact the author at
[email protected]. Be sure to mention the Conclusion author’s name and/or the article title. ≈ CATS is a very simple tool to capture the time data entry by employees or by HR department users. Due to many available user interfaces, SAP has ensured that you can use CATS either through back-end SAP, using SAPGui, the Web, or an off-line entry tool for laptops.
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Overview of the Logistics Information System By Jocelyn Hayes, SAPtips Director of Consulting and Training Editor’s Note: Who doesn’t love a heads up? If you’re not familiar with SAP’s Logistic Information System, it’s time to get on board. In addition to an oft-overlooked, yet useful analysis tool, it also provides an Early Warning System to let you know when your parameters are outside of the acceptable limits you set. Jocelyn Hayes takes you through the configuration steps.
• Creating or Changing a Purchasing Document
Overview
The main structures you will use for Purchasing and Inventory Management are:
The Logistics Information System (LIS) can be used for Materials Management (Purchasing and Inventory Management), Sales and Distribution, Production Planning (Shop Floor), Plant Maintenance, and Quality Management reporting and analysis. The tool, once learned, is relatively easy to use and can be quite useful for analysis and reporting. You can use the tool to evaluate actual data and create planning data. It also provides an Early Warning System where you can set up parameters to “watch”, and send alerts if a parameter is outside the acceptable limits. All versions of SAP R/3 and ECC have the LIS tool. However, SAP is not updating or enhancing this tool because they are driving their customers to using BI solutions like Business Explorer (BEx). But there are still many companies that can benefit from using LIS.
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LIS must be activated in your system to be used, and this is done through configuration. Some modules come pre-configured as activated, and some you must activate. For example, the Sales Information System is not activated, while the Purchasing Information System is activated. Once activated, data will be passed to the structures (like tables) that hold the data until you run an analysis on it. Note: If LIS is not activated, the structures do not get populated, and there is no way to go back to retroactively populate the tables (to get historical information). Therefore, if you plan to use LIS, and you are getting ready to go live, it is suggested you validate that the LIS components you wish to use are activated. Some of the events that cause the update to occur, include:
• Performing a Goods Movement or Invoice Receipt This article will show the configuration necessary to activate the structures, run a standard analysis, create an exception analysis, create and run a flexible analysis, and set up “early watch”.
S011 – Purchasing Group S012 – Purchasing S031 – Movements S032 – Stocks The main structures used for Sales and Distribution are: S001 – Customer S003 – Sales Organization
There are still many companies that can benefit from using LIS.
Configuration
To verify LIS is activated for the module for which you plan to use it, go to the IMG and navigate to: Logistics – General‡Logistics Information System‡Logistics Data Warehouse‡Updating‡ Updating Control‡Settings:(Module) ‡Update Group‡Assign Update Group at ** where ** is the area to be activated, like the item category, order type, purchasing group, etc.
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Figure 1: Configuration of Updating Sales Document Header
The example shown in Figure 1 is for Sales, at Header Level. You will notice that in this system, the first two entries have blank entries for Sales Org, Distribution Channel, and Division. This sets up the defaults for Customer Statistics Group and the Statistics Group for the sales document type. The Customer Statistics Group is used to control the update of information relevant to the customer. Other statistics groups can be based on Item Category, Sales Document Type, and Material.
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You also assign the Customer Statistics Group in the customer master, as shown in Figure 2. It is done similarly in the Material Master record. To define updating for the Item Cateogry and Order Type, you go to the IMG path:
Figure 2: Customer Master Screen Shot Showing Customer Statistics Group Field
Logistics – General‡Logistics Information System‡Logistics Data Warehouse‡Updating‡Updat ing Control‡Settings: Sales‡Statistics Groups‡Assign Statistics Groups for Each Sales Document Type (or Item Category)
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Configuration for the Purchasing Information System is different than that for the Sales Information System. It does not require you to configure the Statistics Groups and assign them to document or item types. You simply either turn it on or off by assigning Update Group “SAP” to turn it on, or leave it blank to turn it off in the Item Categories and PO Types, as shown in Figures 3 and 4. If the field shows “SAP”, it is turned on. If the field is left blank, it is turned off. To check your configuration, run the Check Assignments transactions that are available for each module in the IMG. They can be found in the same location where you configure the Update Group.
Figure 3: Configuration for Purchasing Item Categories
Standard Analysis
Standard Analysis allows you to use the standard info structures for reporting and analysis. The data can be formatted and drilled into many different ways. It is also possible to save an analysis, and review it in the future for historical comparison purposes.
Figure 4: Configuration for Purchasing Document Types
The common Info Structures used in Purchasing and Sales were provided in the overview of this article. To see the “data basis” or data included in the structure, navigate to the IMG, and follow the menu path:
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Logistics – General‡Logistics Information System (LIS) ‡Logistics Data Warehouse‡Data Basis‡ Information Structures‡Maintain SelfDefined Information Structures or Transaction MC23. In this example, we will look at Info Structure S012 – Purchasing. Figure 5 shows the Info Structure. On this screen shot, you can see the application to which the Info Structure belongs (02), the Characteristics, and the Key Figures. When you run an analysis against this Info Structure, the Characteristics will represent the reporting areas that you can drill down into. The Key Figures are
Figure 5: Display Info Structure S012
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the values calculated for the Characteristics. Note: It is also possible to create your own Info Structures. It is easiest to copy from an existing Info Structure. All Info Structures between S500 and S999 are custom info structures.
Figure 6: Standard Analysis for Material – MCE7
To run a Standard Analysis, follow the path: Logistics‡Logistics Controlling‡Purchasing Information System‡ Material or Transaction Code MCE7 Note: You can do this for the Sales Information System as well, but this is for illustration purposes.
Figure 7: MCE7 Switching Drilldown to Material Group
Enter your selection criteria and execute the transaction. Figure 6 shows the analysis screen. If you click on “Switch drilldown”, and select Material Group, you can see that the Characteristic has changed to Material Group (Figure 7), but you have not drilled into the Vendor, in addition to the Material Group. Try switching the drill-down back to Vendor, then doubleclick on Vendor. It takes you to the data for that Vendor only, and into the Period (month).
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Each Standard Analysis is set up with a specific drilldown path (when you double-click on the characteristic), but you can use the “Switch drilldown” function to avoid limiting your characteristic selection. Other options on this screen are shown in Figure 8:
Icon
To Do This
To change the analysis currency
To send the analysis via SAP Mail
To save to a PC file, like to Excel
To switch to another Info Structure
To choose key figures
Figure 8: Additional MCE7 Screen Options
Using Settings from the menu path, you can change the currency, the value display (percent or absolute), whether the analysis shows the characteristic description and/or number assignment, and the column width. You can also save some of these settings. Note: When you exit the analysis, you will be asked if you would like to save your analysis. You can save your analysis as a “‘Selection Version” and view it later. Think of it as a “snapshot” at the time of the analysis you have just run. You can also schedule your analysis to run and save the results as a selection version to be viewed later, or sent to a distribution list. This is very helpful if you have a large analysis, with a long runtime, that has multiple viewers. You can schedule it during night hours and have it sent to a distribution list.
Creating an Exception
The Early Warning System provided with LIS allows you to define an exception that will generate a warning. The exception can be run on an “as needed basis”, or scheduled with a background job, and sent to a designated recipient or distribution list. When you define the exception, you select an info structure for the exception to be run against. Then, you select characteristics for the exception. You assign requirements (to the characteristics) that represent the level at which the exception is flagged. You can also set up follow-up processing, such as sending an email or transferring a task to Workflow.
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You can run either a Standard Analysis with an exception, or an Exception Analysis. When you run the Exception Analysis, you will only see the data for which the exception requirement situation applies. To create an exception, follow the menu path: Figure 9: Example Standard Analysis with Exception Logistics‡Logistics Controlling‡Purchasing Information System‡Early Warning System‡Exception‡Create or use Transaction MC/E. 5. Follow-up processing, like sending the analysis to a user, distribution list, or workflow You will provide the following information when creating the exception: Figure 9 displays a Standard Analysis with an exception to show all Vendors that have a PO Value over $1000 in 1. Name and description for your exception the last period (in red).
2. Characteristics which are the “levels” at which the key figures are calculated Note: When selecting the characteristics, take note that they define the aggregation level where the aggregation occurs. The key figure check is at the lowest characteristic level. The sequence of the characteristics selected determines the drill-down sequence when the analysis is executed. 3. Requirements that represent the threshold value that causes the exception (for example, a PO value over $1000)
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Note: The Threshold value is calculated for the period for which the analysis is to run. So, if you are running the analysis for one month or three months, the exception will be triggered if the TOTAL PO Value for the period is exceeded. If you select the “Separate Periods” checkbox, it will be carried out for each period. 4. Color coding for the exceptions in the analysis (highlighting the exception lines in red, green, or yellow)
The Threshold Value is calculated for the period for which the analysis is to run.
Setting Up Early Warning
If you want to set up the Early Warning System exception to run automatically, you have to create a Variant, and then schedule the Variant. Unlike other modules of SAP, the Variant is set up using a transaction called “Area to Analyze”. Follow these steps to create the variant and schedule the analysis: 1. To create the variant, follow the menu path: Logistics‡Logistics Controlling‡Purchasing Information System‡Early Warning System‡Area to Analyze‡Create or Transaction Code MC/K 2. Enter the exception name, and select either System or Event driven as the type of analysis. 3. Enter the selection criteria if you wish to restrict the analysis. 4. Click on Variant Attributes, and save the variant. 5. Schedule the Variant, or Area to Analyze, by following the menu path: Logistics‡Logistics Controlling‡Purchasing Information System‡Early Warning System‡Exception‡Create or Transaction Code MC/N 6. Enter the exception name and click Schedule. 7. Here, you can select to have it scheduled one time, or as a recurring batch job.
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Conclusion
In this article, we have presented a brief introduction of how to use Logistics Information System. Next time your business group requests a report, instead of turning to your report writers or ABAP staff, take a stab at using LIS to meet the needs. You may need their assistance to add some fields into the info structures, but once you have your info structures built with the commonly used fields for your company, you have a very powerful tool that can be quite easy to use. Jocelyn Hayes, Director of Consulting and Training for SAPtips, has over 11 years of SAP experience. She has enjoyed a successful consulting career for a Big 4 firm as well as independently. Jocelyn’s focus primarily has involved the Logistics modules of SAP, and has also developed ESA Roadmaps using NetWeaver™ tools, including Visual Composer, XI, Enterprise Portal, and BI. She also led a CRM Business Process Reengineering project. You may contact the author at
[email protected]. Be sure to mention the author’s name and/or the article title. ≈
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Should Reliability Engineers Be Active in SAP ? ®
By Warren Bell, Olivet Inc. Editor’s Note: Engineers are the ideas guys, right? They are cerebral. So why would they want to get involved with the hands-on side of the process, interacting with the SAP system? Warren Bell felt that way in the past, but has embraced and come to love the information that engineers can obtain from SAP. Access to accurate equipment performance, failure, and maintenance activity data is, in Warren’s words, “manna from heaven… and often just as scarce”. In this article, Warren explains how easy it is to make this information work for you. Engineers, put away your slide rules, and start your systems.
Introduction
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The latter portion of my life has seen twelve years of SAP Plant Maintenance Consulting, where I have found the reluctance to get involved in SAP Plant Maintenance (PM) to be widespread amongst Engineers, whether their discipline was Maintenance Engineering (Electrical, Mechanical, Control, and Instrumentation), or whether they were Equipment Reliability and Integrity Engineers. This state of affairs is very unfortunate, because while SAP PM supports the work request, planning, scheduling, and execution processes very well, it also supports the reliability performance data acquisition and reporting processes very well.
It is strange, but unfortunately true, that Maintenance Management systems (aka CMMS, Computer based Maintenance Management Systems) like SAP’s Plant Maintenance, seem to enjoy scant regard from Maintenance Engineers or their specialist cousins, Reliability Engineers. In fact, CMMS systems can be the very gold mine of information the Maintenance Engineer seeks to be mission successful.
To Reliability Engineers, accurate equipment performance, failure, and maintenance activity data is manna from heaven… and often just as scarce. A reliable source of data for the Engineer’s specific site is a feast worth celebrating.
“Give me one good reason why my Engineers need SAP training!”
“Give me one good reason why
This was a challenge from the Manager of Reliability, Equipment Integrity, and Project Engineers within a major oil production company. Equipment integrity, equipment monitoring, tracking, and preservation were the names of their game, along with equipment replacements when necessary. Why should his Engineers be in SAP, at all? What business is there for Engineers in a Maintenance Management System? At the time, the answer was intuitive and obvious to me, but we should consider this question for a second. Most of my life has been spent in Engineering and Maintenance, within production facilities of one kind or another. So I have “been there and done that”, and I must say that while I was an Engineer, dipping my hands into a maintenance management system did seem as if I was humbling myself a bit. The planners and schedulers, managers, and some of the craftspeople needed to be there, but an Engineer? The ideas guy?
my Engineers need SAP training!”
Now, it is true that the SAP Plant Maintenance (PM) module has a focus on managing the maintenance work required to keep productive equipment maintained, and in a state of acceptable performance. The acceptable performance part, and how to keep the equipment in that state, is the substance of the Engineering performed by discipline and Reliability Engineers. Hence the relationship between SAP (often perceived as primarily a Finance management system anyway) and Engineering, at first glance, may not be noticed. As a Control Engineer, I have worked in many different industries including Gold and Coal Mining, Paper Tissue Manufacture, Chemical Processing, Oil and Gas Production, and many more. It was when I was working at a food manufacturing plant that I had a Chief Engi-
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neer who really got to the nub of the nature of Maintenance. Each morning he would review the equipment failures from the day before with all the Maintenance Engineers and Foremen, with just one question to each Engineer trying to defend his turf:
So here is a system that could help in our quest to gather equipment performance data. At least one of the measurements a Reliability Engineer might need to measure, namely that the equipment is still running and has not failed, could be available in a SCADA.
“What are you going to do to prevent this failure from EVER happening again?”
Hence, process plants equipped with a SCADA offer prime opportunities for the automatic gathering of continuous data about the service condition of equipment. Is it running as it should in accordance with its design specifications? If not, what performance characteristic is out of specification, by how much, and when did this condition occur?
For equipment maintenance… this is a Mission Statement that stands on its own! Very true, nice way to put it, but to really be effective, where do we begin? As a Control Engineer primarily focused on measurement and feedback control, it was very clear to me that accurate measurement is a critical factor in the execution of effective maintenance.
Cause and Effect
To be able to eliminate equipment failures, an Engineer has to be able to measure the cause and effect. In the first instance, the Engineer needs to know the what, when, where, and how of the failure. Then he/she needs to know the root cause of the failure. Next, he/she needs to know the history of failures on this equipment (and family of equipment) in this environment (i.e., what has been done to eliminate this failure before and how effective were those efforts). Finally the Engineer needs to understand the impact of the failure on the profitability of the business, to get a sense of relative importance, etc. All of these measures are critical to the quest for an effective solution, as any Maintenance or Reliability Engineer knows, but how to collect the data? Where does it come from?
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Modern petro-chemical, food, paper, etc. process plants are very often equipped with plant-wide electronic measurement and control systems, often called DCS (Distributed Control System) or SCADA (Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition) systems. These systems supervise and monitor thousands of points of measurement in a process plant (process temperature, pressure, level, etc.) and compute an appropriate response to the measurement and/or its dynamics. The system then executes the computed response through some form of actuation device like a valve, pump, motor drive, etc. In this way the measurement and control systems are able to regulate the progress of chemical and other processes just as an expert human might, to produce the manufactured product to the quality and consistency required.
Of course not all plants have SCADA systems, or have all the measuring points necessary (if they do have a SCADA system). In cases such as these, many enterprises work successfully with manually entered data. However, machine status data is only half of the story. The other half of the story for Reliability Engineering is in the measurement and recording of what was done to the equipment to preserve its running condition. In other words, a detailed history of maintenance activity is also required.
Maintenance History
To illustrate this point of needing the detailed maintenance history of a piece of equipment, here is a failure history that might bring tears to the eyes of a self-respecting Reliability Engineer, with an immediate resolve to “never let this happen again!” I was shocked to discover at one plant, that over a period of a week and several shift changes, a starter motor for a large diesel fire pump had been changed several times (Did I hear 10 times? Nah! Could never be that many…) because it was assumed to be the culprit for the diesel not starting. The various shift mechanics hardly saw or spoke to each other, and the symptoms that the fault presented brought each mechanic to the same confident conclusion. Change the starter motor. So they did. Again and Again. Now if the mechanics had been exposed to the history of maintenance activities on that starter each time they faced a failure to start (an automatic feature of SAP PM), they probably would have found the real fault condition a lot earlier. The real fault condition was finally identified as an intermittent electrical contact occurring in a badly terminated power cable. A review of maintenance activity history is often vital to an accurate diagnosis of a failure mode, and even more
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vital to the development of an effective remedy. I expect that it could be argued that the tracking of maintenance and failure history forms the very essence of successful Reliability Engineering.
the vital and searchable data. The following data entries are made by the originator of the Notification:
The SAP Plant Maintenance (PM) module includes functionality drawn from the best world practices, and includes a reporting capability that supports the aims of reliability management. Direct data entry from SCADA systems into the SAP PM module is available. This capability will not only track running status of machines, but also, in its multiple input/multiple variable form, will enable modern, complex, conditionbased preventive/predictive maintenance programs. The latter offer some of the most elegant maintenance solutions known to man.
• The equipment on which the symptom appears to be occurring
• The symptom of the problem
• The time and date of the failure symptom • The identity of the reporter • The apparent severity of the failure effect: – Critical to Health, Safety, and Environment – Critical to Production continuance – Not severe – this work can be scheduled Once the technician has completed the repair, the following data is added to the Notification to provide feedback to the originator, and also to provide valuable, searchable, and coded (for ease of retrieval) failure history data for Reliability Engineers:
It is within this process that the opportunities for Reliability Engineering
• The object type of the equipment repaired (e.g., Slurry Pump, Mechanical Seal).
data collection arise.
• The nature of the damage found (from a table of possible entries specific to the object type (e.g., water damage, dirt ingression, overheated).
How Does SAP PM Support Reliability Engineering?
As an introduction to the services available within SAP PM to the Reliability Engineer, I would like to outline the maintenance business process. It is within this process that the opportunities for Reliability Engineering data collection arise.
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The maintenance business process often starts with a request for work by a production operator, often as a first response to an equipment failure and/or a production stoppage. SAP provides the “Notification” (see Figure 1), an electronic document that notifies the Maintenance organization of the failure, and then goes on to record the activities and findings of the worker who services and rectifies the failure. Being equipped with the findings makes the document a good method for feeding back to the requester the status of the failed equipment, the damage found, and the cause of the failure. So the journey to maintenance activity data collection commences with the “Notification” in SAP (See Figures 1 and 2), which provides the vehicle for the gathering of
• The estimated root cause of the failure condition. Here we recommend training in RCFA techniques such as the “Five Why’s”, to determine the root cause informally, but methodically (e.g., design defect, inadequate preventive maintenance, poor operating practices). • The date and time of the failure of the equipment (could be SCADA data). • The date and time of the return to service of the equipment (could be SCADA data). Hence, in summary, the Notification alone provides: • To the serviceman responding to the call for help: A complete picture of the problem as encountered by production. • To the originator: After work execution, a complete picture of: – that repair work that was executed and completed – the findings, and what the cause of the failure is likely to be.
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• To the reliability Engineer: – The object type serviced – The damage type – The cause type – The start and end of the malfunction (which may come directly from the SCADA) – from which mean time to repair can be computed (MTTR), and mean time between failures (MTBF) – The equipment outage time (which may come directly from the SCADA) and therefore the production, losses incurred – The failure rate of this particular equipment (and this type of equipment) – The damage nature spectrum of this particular equipment (and this type of equipment) – The damage cause spectrum of this particular equipment (and this type of equipment)
Figure 1: Notification Data (Screen 1)
Figures 1 and 2 show where most of this data is located on the Notification.
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In addition to the data recorded in the Notification (which focuses on the failure itself), the second document in the SAP PM suite is aimed at the recording of detailed maintenance activity data, namely the maintenance Work Order. The Work Order has the capacity to record in detail each activity undertaken on the target equipFigure 2: Notification Data (Screen 2) ment, such as who performed the work, for how long, using what tools, procedures, exterThe work order can present a complete record of nal services, parts and materials, including documents, everything required to perform the work, for the benefit permits, and work clearances used. of future estimates, if the work were to be performed again. So from the work order, we can learn the costs of maintenance, since one of the roles of a work order is to The Gold Mine be a cost collector. The work order collects the costs of Furnished with the above information, for every failure the labor time expended on maintenance and surveiland maintenance activity, whether it is corrective or lance by internal resources, the costs of vendor supplied preventive in nature, the Reliability Engineer is able resources, the costs of materials consumption (in terms to develop, in time, a wealthy database from which of spare parts), and consumables, whether drawn from to make specific equipment performance and assessan internal warehouse or procured. ment investigations. A subset of this might be to amass
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statistics on the reliability and failure effects of different types of equipment, for different types of failure modes, due to different types of causes. Very soon, the Engineer may be enabled to spot patterns indicating weaknesses in production equipment, which in turn present opportunities for driving out failures through effective Engineering, effective preventive maintenance, or effective condition-based maintenance. The latter is where maintenance is triggered by the presence of some measured condition such as run time, cycle time, wear, oil analysis, heat profile, etc.
In pursuit of this objective, the Reliability Engineer would request the Planner/Scheduler (or Master Data Custodian) to equip the “Object Part” table of the Notification to include the different SCADA module types to be investigated, if they were not already included in the table. Then the associated “Damage” code catalog would similarly be equipped with codes suitable to record the damage conditions applicable to those SCADA module types, if they were not already included in the catalog.
A large and relatively new offshore oil and gas production platform on which I worked was faced with a particularly vexing dilemma. The installation was equipped with a SCADA that included a sophisticated network of data acquisition and command modules distributed all over the platform, gathering process data and reporting the data to operations desks. With all too frequent occurrence, portions of the SCADA network would fail, causing the platform to shut down in a fail safe mode. This was not a good thing.
This is the sort of scenario where
There seemed to be two failure modes: 1. One was related to marine corrosion of the network cable terminations in the distributed module enclosures, which were poorly equipped to protect the internal electronics assembly from the effects of the marine environment. 2. The second was a manufacturer defect in one of the types of electronic network communication modules.
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As can be imagined, it became critically important to kill both of these problems to keep the platform on stream, and there was a lot of urgency in the air to isolate these two problems for the following reasons: • Work needed to be done on improving enclosure integrity, but considering the hundreds of module enclosures on the platform, which should be addressed first to eliminate 80% of the problem in 20% of the time? • The manufacturer defect was disputed by the manufacturer. To support the platform’s demand for expedited warranty replacement modules from the manufacturer, failure statistics were required. This is the sort of scenario where the SAP PM capability to record and report on failure statistics can be shown to be invaluable.
the SAP PM capability to record and report on failure statistics can be shown to be invaluable. With each failure and repair, the Notifications would be equipped with the appropriate information. This would allow Reliability Engineers to track on a weekly, monthly, or annual basis: • The failure frequency of each failure mode • The location of the failures, and therefore the association of failure to environmental conditions • Other causes of the failures • The specific modules failing • The effect of the failures in terms of production losses and maintenance costs In addition, once a remedy was engineered, the success of the remedy could be tracked and verified against the data history gathered. All of this data would be available from just one SAP PM document, namely the Notification, with the exception of production losses and maintenance costs. The measure of production losses would be a submission from the integrated Production Planning (PP) module of SAP, and the maintenance costs would come from the maintenance Work Order, which is the second SAP PM document useful to a Reliability Engineer, as previously described.
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Reporting Out of SAP PM
So with the data gathered by these two documents (the Notification and the Work Order), the reporting capability of SAP becomes interesting. Reports such as “Bad Actor Reports” (examples shown in Figures 3 and 4) are easily compiled, singling out the worst of performers in terms of overall maintenance costs. It can also be specifically aimed at material costs only of a specific type, or labor costs only of a specific type, etc. The report also shows the worst performers in terms of failure rate, outage time, or other more pertinent measures, as applicable.
Figure 3: Cost Drivers
In addition, other classical Maintenance Management reporting of keen interest to Reliability Engineers also becomes possible, such as: • The ratio of the preventive maintenance labor hours to total labor hours expended by the Maintenance Organization in the month, or any period chosen (see example in Figure 5) Figure 4: Man-Hour Drivers
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Figure 5: Ratio of Preventive Maintenance Labor Hours to Total Labor Hours
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Figure 6: Ratio of Reactive Maintenance Labor Hours to Total Labor Hours
• The ratio of reactive maintenance labor hours (breakdown of high priority work which must be executed within less than a week) to total labor hours expended by the Maintenance Organization in the month, or any period chosen (see example in Figure 6) • The ratio of scheduled preventive maintenance work which is completed on time to the total preventive maintenance labor hours expended (Preventive Maintenance Compliance – see example in Figure 7)
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Extended Reporting
Figure 7: Ratio of Scheduled Preventive Maintenance Work Completed On Time to Total Preventive Maintenance Labor Hours
It is well known that one of the enormous strengths of SAP is its integration capability with all business areas of an enterprise. When these strengths are leveraged by integration of the PM data above with that available from the Finance Module (FI), Asset Accounting (AA), Quality Management (QM), and the Production Planning and Control Module (PP), even more powerful metrics become available, such as: ÿ Equipment Total Cost of Ownership (TCO), which includes all the costs of owning the equipment or asset. TCO directly relates to a business’ total costs across all projects and processes and, thus, its profit-
ability. This could be applied to a production unit, for example. ÿ Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE), a primary metric of the discreet manufacturing sector. The overall performance of a single piece of equipment or even an entire factory will always be governed by the cumulative impact of the three OEE factors: Availability, Performance Rate, and Quality Rate. OEE is a percentage derived by multiplication of the three ratios for the factors mentioned above. The OEE percentage is used for analysis and benchmarking. ÿ Total Cost of Unreliability (CoUR) represents a consistent measure of lost value across a manufacturing
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SAPtips4On Logistics/PM facility. The Cost of UnReliability (CoUR) defines a “Delta” as any deviation from full production levels at full quality performance. Event driven, CoUR is used to identify and prioritize opportunities for improvement and reduction of losses. Typically CoUR measures the total cost of an event to the plant, including labor, materials, and lost product (including quality losses). See Figure 8.
Conclusion
Having lived and worked for many years both as a Maintenance Engineer/Maintenance Manager and as an SAP Plant Maintenance practitioner in many different industries, I have had the privilege of experiencing two often disparate worlds.
Figure 8: Unreliability Cost
One seems dominated by the dynamics of the production, engineering, and maintenance business, where the focus is so often on production continuance and all the physical considerations that keep the plant in that happy status, almost at all costs. This world does not need maintenance historians or analysts because the hero of the sub-culture is the one who miraculously keeps production running tomorrow. It’s the NEXT! syndrome.
The long-term view and compliance with some of the advice that SAP PM can give us will always clash with the short-term view, and will always cost more in the long term.
The other is the longer term, meticulous perspective. This perspective sees so many treasured opportunities to undo short term wasteful practices of engineering and labor utilization, through the lens of an information system that is so often woefully underutilized. There are few maintenance environments in manufacturing that will support and encourage this view.
Engineers, brothers and sisters, take the time to learn how to use SAP PM, to be true to your craft. There is wealth in that data.
...you may just become a STAR overnight when you spot that pattern in the failure statistics that everyone overlooked...
The treasure to be gained in the long term, however, if only we would follow it to the end, could not be estimated accurately, because there are so many positive knock-on effects.
You will not be popular to start with, but you may just become a STAR overnight when you spot that pattern in the failure statistics that everyone overlooked, or when you can explain the high running cost of a production line and how to reduce the costs by 25%, … and when best of all, no one can argue otherwise. Go boldly! God speed! In closing, I wanted to share with you a response a Maintenance Manager made to a complaint at a weekly Maintenance Engineers meeting. The Engineer’s complaint went something like “SAP is such a dog to work with, sir. I just don’t have the time to perform these transactions every day”.
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There was a moment’s silence and then the Manager spoke these words before leaving the subject: “Gentlemen, this facility has chosen SAP as its core business system. If you are not in SAP, you are not in the business. Make your choices!” I was present in that meeting, and it didn’t happen yesterday, or in the US. It happened in the early nineties in Africa. So some managers have caught on … and they might be leading your competitors right now. And, in case you were wondering: Currently, more than 12 million users work each day with SAP solutions. There are now 121,000 installations worldwide, more than 1,500 SAP partners, over 25 industry-specific business solutions, and more than 46,100 customers in 120 countries. SAP is the world’s third-largest independent software vendor. So being in SAP might improve your marketability!?
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Warren Bell, Olivet Inc. Warren is an independent consultant specializing in the SAP PM Module and Life Cycle Asset Management techniques. He has over 12 years of SAP PM Implementation experience, and 20 years of experience in Maintenance Management, Engineering, and Project Management in a multitude of industries. Warren also specializes in developing postimplementation solutions for clients who want to optimize the benefits of the PM module once their personnel have become mature in the basic uses of PM. You may contact the author at
[email protected]. Be sure to mention the author’s name and/or the article title.
≈
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Parallel Currencies in SAP Part I: Supporting Local Legal Financial Reporting ®
By Dimitris Langas, SAP Consultant Editor’s Note: Need to accommodate a second currency valuation in SAP in order to generate your company’s financial statements based on local exchange rates? Think it’s impossible in SAP? Not so! It’s time to learn about Parallel Currencies. Dimitris Langas begins a series of articles on this technique. This issue he presents an overview of the solution and the details of the required system settings.
Introduction
Globalization trends over the last few years call on more and more countries to align their financial legal requirements with global standards like IAS and US GAAP. Yet, some countries are admittedly lagging behind in updating their local legal requirements, which sometimes challenges a consultant’s ingenuity! One such local legal requirement1 is valuating business transactions and, of course, generating a company’s financial statements based on the local National Bank’s exchange rates. Since, as we all know, SAP has only one exchange rate for each currency pair and exchange rate type, this request can come as a surprise.
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How do you accommodate a second currency valuation in SAP with minimal disruption and maximal automation to all your financial business processes? The answer is use the “Parallel currencies” technique; it ensures that both your Group’s and your local subsidiaries’ finance communities get all the functionalities and financial reporting they require. Further, you accomplish all this with only standard SAP tools, without invoking ABAP coding or changing your existing financial processes. This article is the first in a series on using Parallel Currencies in SAP. The transactions in this article were executed on an SAP ERP 6.0 system, but all the concepts and functionalities presented are available in R/3 4.x versions too; some slight differences to the IMG menu path descriptions exist (which I indicate when possible).
1
Parallel Currencies – What They Are … and Are Not
If you are a multi-national company based in the European Community and your Group Currency (GC) is EUR or in North America with the GC USD, then you probably translate your business transactions to and from your subsidiaries’ Local Currencies (LC) using the Exchange rates provided by one of the large financial data providers like the European Central Bank (ECB), Bloomberg, etc. Furthermore, you have probably automated loading of those exchange rates and maybe limit manual access to the Exchange rates (transaction OB08 – table TCURR) to just one or two individuals in your headquarters. How can you adapt your system setup to accommodate the legal requirement of some countries – that local companies should use their local National Bank’s exchange rates – without changing your long-established Exchange rate processes? SAP answers this requirement with the parallel currency functionality. In summary, activating the parallel currency functionality entails creating an additional currency code in the SAP system and assigning that currency code to all necessary company code settings of the relevant subsidiary. The “trick” is that the local subsidiary can then maintain all exchange rates to that new currency, in accordance with the local legal requirements (usually the rate provided by their National Bank); however, the exchange rates between all other currencies in the system, including the “official” local currency of that subsidiary, remain in your Group Finance governance. After implementing the parallel currency, the SAP system automatically updates all financial documents in that company code in both currencies. This enables sufficient financial reporting to accommodate both your Group’s and your local subsidiary’s legal requirements. There you have what parallel currencies are, but let me clarify what they are not because I have often come across much confusion about this. Parallel currencies
I have come across this request from customers operating companies in Poland, Slovakia, and some of the Baltic states (Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia)
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are not a parallel valuation method. The concept of parallel valuation (with the interchangeable terms parallel accounting and multiple valuation approaches) encompasses a much broader scope than parallel currencies. I therefore advise the interested reader to research SAP documentation on these concepts, if they are not clear.
Parallel currencies are not a parallel valuation method.
• Reporting changes: Introducing parallel currencies usually requires that you create some new reports, mainly using the SAP Report Writer/Painter, to make available your financial statements in the second currency. • Actual Costing/Material Ledger: If you are already using the Actual Costing/Material Ledger (CO-PCACT) module of Controlling-Product Costing (COPC), you must perform extra steps to migrate your Material Ledger data. This is a very tricky task, and definitely not one that you want to do mid-year, under any circumstances, as you will create data inconsistencies! Throughout this article, I assume that you will be setting up the parallel currencies for a new company code, one that is not already productive.
Setting Up the Parallel Currency Functionality
Due to its nature, you will always know from the start of business that a parallel currency requirement exists for the new company code. It is, therefore, of utmost importance that you set up and enable the parallel currencies in a company code as of the Go Live of your “roll-out” project.
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If, for any reason, you missed the opportunity and want to activate the parallel currency functionality for a company code that is already productive, only do so at the start or end of the fiscal year to avoid introducing risks to the running business. I add this caution: Due to its multiple-module scope and consequences, parallel currency functionality requires a project approach. Introducing parallel currencies to a company that is already productive, even at a change of fiscal years, requires consideration of at least the following points: • P rocess changes to the maintenance of exchange rates: Know which part of your organization currently updates which currencies/exchange rates and how the parallel currencies will affect that. • P rocess changes to financial transactions: As I show later in this article, the parallel currencies functionality affects areas like Fixed Assets, Material Ledger, as well as every financial document posted in a company code in any way (manual entry or automatically generated via any SAP standard or custom program). Your users need to be fully aware of the nature, scope, and purpose of the parallel currency before they can work with it effectively.
The paragraphs that follow present all the customizing steps needed to set up a parallel currency in your system: • General system settings • The single customizing step for your General Ledger (G/L), Accounts Receivable (A/R) and Accounts Payable (A/P) month-end processes • All customizing related to the Assets (FA) module • All customizing related to Material Ledger, which is optional for the case where you need to activate SAP’s Actual Costing/Material Ledger module in your company code
General System Configuration for Parallel Currencies Setup General system configuration contains only the customizing steps that are really required by the system to accommodate parallel currencies. After completing these steps, you can post a financial document in your company code that will update your parallel currency.
Set Up the Parallel Currency Code The first task is to define the Currency Key of the parallel currency. Start with transaction OY03 (IMG‡SAP NetWeaver‡General Settings‡Currencies‡Check Currency Codes), which is shown in Figure 1. A practical naming convention for your new currency code is to add a “Z” at either the beginning or end of the ISO (International Standards Organization) code
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Figure 1: Create a Parallel Currency Code (Transaction OY03)
of the original currency. In my example, I use the ZSKK, Slovakian Koruna (Local Exc. Rate), as the parallel currency code for the SKK, Slovakian Koruna: Our goal is to have our Slovakian company use this ZSKK currency in parallel to the “primary” Slovakian currency SKK (Figure 2).
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Activate Parallel Currencies in the Country Settings To activate the parallel currency in the global settings for the relevant country for which your company code is based, use transaction OY01 (IMG ‡SAP NetWeaver‡ Countries‡ Define Countries in mySAP® systems), as shown in Figure 3. You can select either the Indexbased or the Hard Currency Type2 for your parallel currency, as long as you note it somewhere, because you will need this information in some of the next configuration steps. In this example (Figure 3), I go for Hard currency.
Figure 2: The Primary Slovakian Koruna Currency Code (Transaction OY03)
Figure 3: Set Up a Second Currency in the Country Global Parameters (Transaction OY01)
Define Additional Local Currencies for Your Company Code Now that your additional currency is assigned to the relevant country, you must also assign it to the Com-
pany Code in question. This is done in transaction OB22, or via IMG‡Financial Accounting‡Company Code‡Parallel Currencies‡Define Additional Local Currencies.
2 You don’t necessarily need to pay much attention to the terms “Index-based” and “Hard” currency, as they are only terms used to identify your parallel currency. The functionalities and system behavior are exactly the same, whichever currency type you choose.
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Figure 4: Additional Local Currency for the Company Code (Transaction OB22)
The Currency Type must be the same as the one you selected in the previous step. I am using Hard currency in this example, and so the system defaults the ZSKK currency as the 3rd local currency (Figure 4).
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Define an Additional Ledger to Store Your Parallel Currency Values You must also define an additional ledger in which to store the parallel currency values. This is a purely technical step that is nonetheless important for the system to be able to store the parallel currency values. You do this in transaction OBS2, or via IMG ‡ Financial Accounting ‡Company Code‡Parallel Currencies‡Define Additional Local Currencies for Ledgers, shown in Figure 5.
Figure 5: Defining an Additional Ledger (Transaction OBS2)
Figure 6: Maintaining the Exchange Rate for the Parallel Local Currency ZSKK (Transaction OB08)
With this step, you completed the general system customizing. As I mentioned earlier, these are the only required customizing steps. You are now ready to post a financial document that updates both your official local currency (SKK in my case) and your parallel currency (ZSKK).
Just remember to enter an exchange rate via transaction OB08 for the system to use when translating between the currencies, like my examples in Figures 6 and 7.
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Figure 7: Maintaining an Exchange Rate for the Local Currency SKK (Transaction OB08)
Feel free to make a test posting to satisfy yourself with the picture of a financial document with three currencies, like I did in Figure 8. You could also make a posting using another Document currency, different from all three (Local, Group, and Parallel) currencies, like I did in my example using the GBP (see Figure 9). To summarize this section, here’s what we’ve achieved so far: • Defined a new currency code (ZSKK) • A ssigned this new currency to the relevant country (SK) and company code (0001) • C reated a Ledger (Z1) to store the values for this new currency
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Ensuring Accurate Updates
The configuration steps presented in the next sections include setting up all the relevant financial processes and modules so that the parallel currency values update correctly, according to your requirements. I would like to repeat that these next configuration steps are not required by the system and they should only be performed to satisfy your own business requirements. I anticipate that you will most often establish the settings in the first two sections, at a minimum. Performing the settings in the third section depends upon your business requirement: whether or not to use the Actual Costing/Material Ledger (CO-PC-ACT) module in your new company code. Here is a quick overview of these next configuration steps: • Account determination for the foreign currency valuation
Figure 8: Financial Document with Document Currency SKK (Transaction FB03)
Figure 9: Financial Document with Document Currency GBP (Transaction FB03)
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• R elevant settings for Fixed Asset accounting • R elevant settings for the Material Ledger In the following paragraphs, I’ll guide you through these configuration steps in detail. In the last part of my article, I will provide a quick demonstration of how the parallel currency setup is used to satisfy the local legal reporting functionalities while, at the same time, it does not affect any of the Group reporting rules and exchange rate updating procedures.
Figure 10: Account Determination for Open Item Exchange Rate Differences (Transaction OBA1)
Account Determination for the Foreign Currency Valuation Configuring the Account Determination for the Foreign Currency valuation is optional, but it must be performed when you want the system to determine different G/L account(s) per Currency Type for the automatic postings of the Foreign Currency valuation.
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You do this in transaction OBA1 or via IMG‡Financial Accounting ‡ General Ledger Accounting3 ‡ Business Transactions‡Closing‡ Valuate‡Foreign Currency Valuation‡Prepare Automatic Postings for Foreign Currency Valuation. Then select transaction KDF “Exchange Rate Dif.: Open Items/GL Acct.” See Figure 10.
Figure 11: Account Determination for OI Exchange Rate Differences for the “Primary” Currency
Figure 12: Account Determination for OI Exchange Rate Differences for the Parallel Currency
In this case I want to have the system post my Accounts Receivable (A/R) (G/L account 40000000) open item exchange rate differences to varying financial exchange gain/loss accounts, for my parallel currency, then for the “primary” company code currency (Figure 11). Notice in Figure 11, I leave the field Currency Type empty; while in Figure 12, I explicitly specify that, for Currency Type 40 (Hard currency), SAP automatically determine different G/L accounts (65400001 and 75400001 as opposed to 65400000 and 75400000). 3
Of course, you must maintain similar settings for all the relevant G/L accounts for which you require the system to post the exchange rate differences separately, for each Currency Type. A Small Note for Consultants and Technically Keen Users Account Determination for the Foreign Currency Valuation is really the only parallel currency configuration step you need to do for all your G/L, A/R, and A/P business processes. SAP takes care of the rest by itself! This is not by coincidence because SAP built the
In 4.x systems, you will find this configuration step under Accounts Receivable and Accounts Payable. The rest of the IMG path mentioned here is the same.
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parallel currency functionality deep into the heart of its accounting modules. Consider, for example, how many characteristics of the Accounting document line item (table BSEG) are available multiple times for these parallel currencies: Local Currency (LC) amount (DMBTR, DMBE2, DMBE3), Valuation difference (BDIFF, BDIF2, BDIF3), Tax amount (MWSTS, MWST2, MWST3), Cash discount (SKNTO, SKNT2, SKNT3), and many others.
To have your complete financial statements correctly stated in the parallel currency, you must create some settings in the Fixed Assets (FA) module. Parallel Currency: Fixed Asset Accounting Settings
To have your complete financial statements correctly stated in the parallel currency, you must create some settings in the Fixed Assets (FA) module. These settings allow you to keep track of the Acquisition and Production Costs (APC) of your assets, depreciation, and Net Book Value (NBV) in the correct parallel currency that you have just defined.
currency. You do this in transaction OADB, or via IMG ‡Financial Accounting‡Asset Accounting ‡Valuation ‡Depreciation Areas‡Define Depreciation Areas, as shown in Figure 13. It is important to use 40 for the Depreciation Area code. The system only maps certain Depreciation Areas to the Currency Types/Valuation Views, as explained in the next step. Assign a Currency Type to the Depreciation Area In this step, you define an additional Depreciation Area, to accommodate the figures of your parallel currency. You do this in transaction OABT or via IMG‡ Financial Accounting ‡ Asset Accounting ‡Valuation‡Currencies ‡Specify the Use of Parallel Currencies, as shown in Figure 14. Important: Remember, the system lets you select the Currency Type/Valuation View 40 – Hard currency because the Depreciation Area was coded 40. Please read the SAP help topics for the tasks under “Define Depreciation Areas” very carefully for a complete explanation of the prerequisites and naming conventions for defining new Depreciation Areas.
Here is an overview of the FA customizing that you need to do:
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• Define a new Depreciation Area (40) to store your parallel currency FA values.
Figure 13: Defining a New Depreciation Area (Transaction OADB)
• Assign this new Depreciation Area to the right Currency Type (Hard). • Define the Currency of this new Depreciation Area. • Activate the Depreciation Area. Define a New Depreciation Area for Your Parallel Currency In this step you define an additional Depreciation Area, to accommodate the figures of your parallel
Figure 14: Specifying the Use of Parallel Currencies in Fixed Asset Accounting (Transaction OABT)
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Figure 15: Define Depreciation Area Currency (OAYH)
Define Depreciation Area Currency Specify the currency for the new Depreciation Area with transaction OAYH, or via IMG‡Financial Accounting‡Asset Accounting ‡ Valuation ‡ Currencies‡Define Depreciation Area for Foreign Currencies (Figure 15). Activate the New Depreciation Area The last step is to activate the new Depreciation Area 40 for each asset class that you plan to use in your new company code. You do this in transaction OAYZ, or via IMG‡ Financial Accounting ‡ Asset Accounting ‡Valuation ‡ Determine Depreciation Areas in the Asset Class.
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Figure 16: Activate the New Depreciation Area (OAYZ)
You simply need to switch off the Deact indicator in the relevant asset classes, and if necessary, adjust the Depreciation Key and Default Useful Life according to your requirements (Figure 16). Tip: If you already have some Asset master records for your tests in your company code, you can automatically open the new Depreciation Area using transaction AFBN, which is accessible via SAP Easy Access Menu‡ Accounting ‡Financial Accounting ‡Fixed Assets‡ Environment‡ AFBN “New Depreciation Area” (see Figure 17).
Figure 17: Automatically “Open” a New Depreciation Area (Transaction AFBN)
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Figure 18 shows how I run transaction AFBN in my example. This completes the Fixed Assets settings necessary to accommodate our parallel currency solution! You should now take a moment to create a Fixed Asset in your system and then use the “Asset Explorer” (transaction AW01 or AW01N) to verify that the new Depreciation Area is working correctly (see Figure 19).
Figure 18: Automatically “Open” a New Depreciation Area (Transaction AFBN)
If you have no requirement to activate the Material Ledger in your new company, you have now completed all the required customizing and are ready to test the new functionality. If you are going to use the Actual Costing/Material Ledger module in your company code, then you must also complete the configuration steps presented in the next installment of this series, “Parallel Currency: Actual Costing - Material Ledger settings”.
Figure 19: Displaying a Fixed Asset with the New Depreciation Area (transaction AW01N)
Conclusion
In this installment of my series on using parallel currencies, I explained the benefits and nuances of parallel currency reporting in SAP. I presented an overview of the solution and then took you through the details of the biggest part of the required system settings.
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In the next installment, I will look at the necessary steps to activate the parallel currency in the Material Ledger module and then use these parallel currencies to facilitate local legally required reporting using, for example, exchange rates that are provided by the National Bank of your local subsidiary.
Dimitris Langas is an independent SAP consultant specializing in the Financials modules. He has participated in numerous SAP implementations across many European countries and has worked with customers of almost any size, industry sector, and nationality in the EU. Working with business software since 1992 and with SAP products since 1998, he has undertaken many technical, functional, and management roles in a large number of IT projects. His current interests include financial process automation, accommodating financial reporting standards and local legal requirements on SAP ERP, and using SAP software and tools to turn transactional data and figures into valuable management information and insight. You may contact the author at
[email protected]. Be sure to mention the author’s name and/or the article title. ≈
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SAPtips4On BI Backend Performance Improvement Measures: Make Your BI Queries Soar By Anurag Barua, Director, EDC Consulting Editor’s Note: Disappointed by your system’s BI performance? Take heart—things can improve. Anurag Barua demonstrates how to get that most out of your BI queries by focusing on a few areas the can make a significant impact on taking things from 0 to 60 in no time flat!
If it’s time for some fine tuning on your BI engine, you can focus your effort on just a few areas for the greatest impact.
Introduction: Buyer’s Remorse?
Here’s an unlikely scenario but one that serves as a good analogy. Imagine that you are in the market for a car that meets all your criteria – a plethora of features, impeccable German engineering, peerless performance, classy interiors, premium brand, and your hubris. Let us say that after considerable research you settle on a Mercedes S550 and you estimate the final cost to be around $90,000. You convince your spouse and/or other stakeholders in your family, through a long and painstaking process, that this will be a worthwhile investment. Finally, the rubber hits the road and your dream car is ready to roar. The first few months are a dream. Gradually though, you start to see some disturbing signs. Quite often your toy is coughing and sputtering instead of roaring. The engine is not exploding off the blocks, some of the sophisticated gadgetry is malfunctioning, and gasoline consumption is off the charts. You feel that the car is failing several of your initial criteria. And the fun and joy of driving it is receding just as the total cost of ownership (TCO) is starting to go up. Something has to change… If you think of SAP® as the Mercedes of ERP software, this analogy is on target. And if you have upgraded to or installed SAP NetWeaver™ 7.0 (and BI 7.0 in particular), you expect very good (if not spectacular) performance, even without the BI Accelerator. If you believe that the performance of your BI queries is not what it should be, there are several measures that you can take to analyze, improve, and mitigate performance bottlenecks. In this article, I walk you through the most important ones.
Performance Improvement Measures
If it’s time for some fine tuning on your BI engine, you can focus your effort on just a few areas for the greatest impact. These include: • Aggregates • Read Mode • OLAP Cache • Partitioning • Compression • Secondary Indexes This article fully describes steps to tweak, tighten, and otherwise improve BI engine performance for each of these areas. Aggregates Aggregates are mini-cubes built on top of InfoCubes. An aggregate is a highly summarized version of the data in the underlying InfoCube. During query execution, if applicable, an aggregate is hit before the InfoCube, and this serves to improve performance. It is important to note that unlike multiproviders, aggregates actually store the aggregated data in the database. A multiprovider enables users to run reports off more than one InfoProvider, by combining the information that resides in them in a “union” operation. When a query is run on a multiprovider, the processor spawns parallel sub-queries to the various InfoProviders, and this in turn expedites query execution. Users of aggregates (especially first-timers), tend to think of it as a silver bullet for the “query is taking forever to run” problem.
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Figure 1: Maintenance of Aggregates for an InfoCube
However, the sole rationale for using aggregates shouldn’t be that a query is taking too long to run. Unless the planning and design process is properly followed, aggregates may degrade performance rather than improve it. An example case of this is frequent change to master data attributes. Keeping these updates to your InfoCube synchronized with the corresponding aggregate(s) involves frequent “change runs”, which take longer and longer as the number of aggregates increases.
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You can follow either of two approaches in creating aggregates. If you are unsure and/or are new, you can have SAP suggest feasible aggregates. I say “feasible” because these are merely suggestions and you do not have to accept them. If you prefer to create aggregates yourself, the BI system provides the capability to do so. The following rule of thumb should be kept in mind when you consider aggregates: When you analyze your query statistics, if you find that multiple queries on an InfoCube are reading ten times more than the number of records from the database that are displayed, and if the % of time the query spends on the database is over 30% of the entire runtime of the query, then you should consider building an aggregate on this InfoCube. As you might infer, whether to create an aggregate is part science and part art. Beyond this rule of thumb, you must exercise your judgment to decide if building one is the right way to go.
Figure 1 displays the menu path that takes you to aggregates creation: First, drill down to the InfoCube on which you want to create an aggregate. Highlight this InfoCube; then from the context menu (right mouse click), select “Maintain Aggregates”. Read Mode Read mode determines the manner in which data are returned by the OLAP processor when you execute a query. SAP provides three read options. These are: • (H) – Query to read, when you read or expand hierarchies: In H mode, the detailed information within the nodes and sub-nodes of a hierarchy are read on demand (i.e., when you expand a hierarchy node). The amount of data transferred to the OLAP processor is the least of all the three categories. The downside is that the number of database reads increases as you keep expanding hierarchy nodes. SAP recommends setting queries to the H read mode. This is based on the empirical evidence of the relative performance of queries set to each of these modes. • (X) – Query to read data during navigation: In this mode, data are requested by the OLAP processor as dictated by every navigational step. The difference between X mode and H is that in the case of hierarchies, all the data on a leaf level are completely retrieved by the OLAP processor.
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• ( A) – Query to read all data at once: As the title suggests, in A mode, all data are read all at one time and brought into the main memory of the OLAP processor. All subsequent navigations that require more detailed data retrieve this data from the main memory. For queries with very few or no navigational steps (i.e., when you are interested only in the aggregated data), this mode works well. You can set the query mode by running transaction RSRT, as shown in Figure 2.
Figure 2: Setting the Read Mode in the Query Monitor
Once you are on this screen, you need to enter the technical name of the query (or select the name of the query by doing a dropdown in the “Query” field), and click on the “Properties” tab. It opens a popup as shown in Figure 2. Upon doing a dropdown on the “Read Mode” field, you are able to see the three options, and you can select one of them.
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OLAP Cache The OLAP Cache is another reliable performanceenhancing tool. The OLAP cache saves frequently accessed data in a medium that allows for quicker access. The media can be main memory, application server memory, and the network. Starting with BW release 3.0B, you can configure the OLAP cache, even though it was first introduced in version 2.0B. The reason is that prior to 3.0B, queries were cached at the individual user level. Now they are cached at a global level, thereby benefiting all users.
There is a Basis/NetWeaver administration activity that your administrator needs to carry out in transaction RZ10 to set the buffer size for the global cache. This activity is usually exclusive to NetWeaver administrators. Once this is set, you can make the parameter settings for the global cache. To do this, carry out the following navigation in the IMG: SAP NetWeaver ‡ Business Intelligence ‡ Performance Settings ‡ Global Cache Settings. The screen that displays is shown in Figure 3.
You can leverage the cache in the following ways: a) All queries (potentially affected) – This implements the perfect global cache concept.
Figure 3: OLAP Cache Parameter Settings in the IMG
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Here’s what each of the cache parameters means: - C ache Inactive: This checkbox is unchecked by default, so the global cache is active by default. Checking the box deactivates the global cache and the system uses local cache. - Local Size MB: In this field, you set the maximum size of the local cache. Keep in mind that this value will be ignored if the global cache is being used. If the global cache is turned off, or if the specific cache settings (for the individual InfoProvider or query) are not available, the value in the Local Size MB parameter is taken into account. - Global Size MB: This is the maximum size of the global cache.
b) S pecific queries – Sometimes it is necessary to set OLAP cache parameters on individual queries. You do so by running transaction RSRT. On the initial screen, enter the technical name of the query, and then click the “Properties” tab. This is shown in Figure 4. A popup screen displays, as shown in Figure 5. The options appear when you select the drop-down list on the “Cache Mode” field. Select one of these options, based on your needs. c) InfoProvider – You can make cache settings on a particular InfoProvider. These settings are then applicable to all queries run on this InfoProvider. To do so, once you are in the Modeling area of the Data Warehousing Workbench (transaction RSA1),
- Persistence Mode: This parameter determines in what form and where you store the cached information. You have two options and which option to use is largely dependent on your enterprise’s specific needs, policies regarding space, hardware, etc.
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w Flat file: The cached
data is stored in a file of your choice on the application server or on a network that is accessible by all app. servers. You can also specify a “comprehensive file” that is the overflow “parking lot” for all cached data across servers.
Figure 4: Entering Query Technical Name in the Query Monitor
wCluster table/
transparent table: Cached data is stored as a cluster table or as a transparent table with BLOB (Binary Logical Object). Figure 5: Setting OLAP Cache Mode for a Query
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SAPtips4On BI drill down to your InfoCube, and highlight it. From the Environment menu, select InfoProvider properties and the “Display” option. This is shown in Figure 6. The screen that displays gives you the same choices as with the specific queries option. Make your choice accordingly. Partitioning Partitioning is a mechanism that splits a fact table of an InfoCube into several chunks based on the calendar month (0CALMONTH) and fiscal year/period (0FISCPER) characteristics. This powerful technique enhances performance by running parallel queries, since the target dataset does not reside in one contiguous chunk. Each InfoCube has an “E” and an “F” fact table. The latter gets partitioned. Partitioning is useless if compression is not done beforehand. BI 7.0 allows you to repartition data, something not possible in older releases. To carry out partitioning, from the Data Warehousing Workbench, navigate to the InfoCube and double-click it. From the menu, choose “Extras” ,then “DB Performance”, and then “Partitioning”. This is shown in Figure 7.
Figure 6: Navigating to OLAP Cache Properties for InfoProvider
Figure 7: Partitioning an InfoCube
Compression The Compression technique results in reducing the volume of data in the fact table of an InfoCube. This is an SAP Best Practice: therefore it is highly recommended that you make compression part of your regular operational activities for your InfoCubes.
The approach that is used to compress in BI is rather straightforward. Since data comes to BI in packages, the same data (records) are sometimes repeated, but with different Request IDs. A query on such data has to aggregate this data when the query executes, leading to poor performance. Compression strips the Request ID from similar records in different data packages and
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combines them into a single aggregated record. Compressed data is then moved from the F to E fact table. Compression introduces one important shortcoming. Since compression involves deleting Request IDs, there is no way to selectively delete data packages. Also, once data are compressed, you cannot decompress them. Some organizations circumvent this shortcoming by keeping a copy of their uncompressed data (provided space is not a constraint). Secondary Indexes Building indexes on a relational database is a popular technique to expedite searches. In BI, indexes can be built on various objects, including DataStore Objects (DSOs). When you build a secondary index on a DSO, you can choose the characteristics that a query most frequently hits, and base your index on these characteristics. In the case of InfoCubes, the fact tables have indexes for each dimension. Additionally, you can create new indexes.
Conclusion
This article reveals the various backend measures that you can take to improve query performance. By adopting these measures and by being diligent and regular in carrying out these fine-tuning activities, your system will better meet your performance expectations. After all, when you own a Mercedes S550, you need to coddle it constantly. Good performance is then very much within your realm of expectation.
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Anurag Barua is Director, EDC Consulting . He has 16 years of experience in conceiving, designing, managing, and implementing complex software solutions, including nearly 10 years of SAP experience. He has been associated with several SAP implementations in various capacities. Anurag’s core SAP competencies include FI/CO, Logistics, SAP BW and SAP NetWeaver BI, SAP NetWeaver tools and technologies, Sarbanes-Oxley compliance, reporting, and project management. Anurag is a frequent speaker at SAP conferences and contributes to several publications. He has a B.S. in computer science and an MBA in finance. You may contact the author at
[email protected]. Be sure to mention the author’s name and/or the article title. ≈
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Configuring SAP ’s Maintenance Optimizer in Solution Manager ®
By Eric Walter, SAP Basis Consultant Editor’s Note: If you are considering the installation of any NetWeaver™ products, you’re already aware that Solution Manager is a must-have for product installation. And with Solution Manager comes Maintenance Optimizer, the new method for obtaining patch downloads from SAP. Neither of these applications are “optional”, so it’s key to have them up and running before engaging in any installations or upgrades. Fortunately, we have Eric Walter to share with us all that we need to know about Solution Manager; this issue, he takes us through the technical steps you’ll need to set up and configure Maintenance Optimizer.
Introduction
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SAP has mandated the use of Solution Manager for support stack and patch downloads for all patches released after April of 2007. As I have mentioned in past articles on Solution Manager, SAP is mandating Solution Manager as a prerequisite to the installation of any NetWeaver products. You can’t install or upgrade SAP without the key that is obtained in Solution Manager. Now, in addition, they are forcing Solution Manager usage by not providing patches without it. The new SAP method for obtaining your patches is through the use of the Solution Manager Maintenance Optimizer. This article will walk you through the technical steps that are required for setup of the Maintenance Optimizer. First Things First First, you will need to install Solution Manager. These steps were closely outlined in my Solution Manager Installation article, SAP’s Solution Manager: How Do You Get It, and How Do You Use It?, which you can find in the SAPtips document library (in the Basis category).
You can’t install or upgrade SAP without the key that is obtained in Solution Manager.
Once Solution Manager is installed, you will need to make sure that you are on Solution Manager 4.0, support stack 9. You can verify your support stack level by using the System‡Status menu option from any screen in Solution Manager. You must then look at component “ST” to see which stack you have implemented. If you are using a stack version less than 9, you must use your Download Manager to obtain your patch files. Stack 12 is the first level that must be obtained using Maintenance Optimizer. Figure 1 shows an example of the “System‡Status” menu output for viewing your stack and patch levels.
Figure 1: Solution Manager System Status Display to View Support Stack Level
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Now that you have verified a minimum stack level of 9 (ST = 0011 in this example), you can continue configuring the Maintenance Optimizer. Start by opening SAP Service Marketplace OSS note 990534. This OSS note will contain two attachments that are in the zip file format. Download those attachments to your local workstation. Set up your user authorizations for Solution Manager Maintenance Optimizer by assigning role “SAP_ MAINT_OPT_ADMIN” to your user ID. This will provide you with the standard optimizer menu paths in your initial login screen.
Figure 2: Section of OSS Note That Shows the Validity with Respect to Version and Stack of the OSS Note
Figure 3: Transaction SCPR20 with the Proper BC Set Displayed to Activate Maintenance Optimizer
You will then need to make sure that your SAP_OSS connection test in SM59 is working successfully. Once you have verified your connection is good, you will need to replace the original user ID credentials with your Service Marketplace S number, and your password, to validate a successful connection with your ID.
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Next, you must run the Figure 4: Shows Transaction SE01 with the Transport Request program SM_PREP_MAINTENANCE_OPTIMIZER, using transaction SE38. This will run and initialize your Once your BC Set is properly activated, you will need system so you can configure Maintenance Optimizer. to create a transport that will move the proper data to If this program does not already exist in your system, configure Maintenance Optimizer. To do this, you must you must obtain the patches that are shown in the OSS run transaction SE01, and transport the objects from note. Figure 2 shows the section of the note that lists the client 000, as shown in Figure 4. patches that are included in the stacks. As an alternative, you may manually make a transport Next, you will need to use “BC Sets” to activate the request using transaction SE09, and copy the list of SOLMAN40_MOPZ_TTYP_SLMO_000 BC Set in your objects that was contained in the zip file that you downclient. To do this, run transaction SCPR20. Select the loaded from note 990534. If this is the case, you will BC Set as shown in Figure 3, and then activate it using need to run transaction SE09 to create a transport, and the button that has a match stick on it. You will be copy and paste the list (that is in the zipped text file) to prompted to “overwrite everything”. Choose this option your new transport request. This is shown in Figure 5. and continue.
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April/ May 2008 Volume VI Issue 2 Figure 5: SE09 Creation of a Transport Request (with zip file objects)
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The next step is to activate BC Set SOLMAN40_CHARM_PROXYFACT_001. This is done in transaction SCPR20. Again, click the button with the match stick to activate this BC Set. This is shown in Figure 6. Next, run transaction SM_MOPZ. This will start configuration of the Maintenance Optimizer. Figure 7 shows the selection box for this. Click “Yes” to confirm Maintenance Optimizer configuration.
Figure 6: BC Set Configuration
Figure 7: Confirmation Popup for Transaction SM_MOPZ
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Next, you will have to define your system as it will be seen in Solution Manager. To do this, use transaction SMSY. You will need to define your systems exactly as you defined them in this transaction (SMSY) when you obtained your system Solution Manager key (when you installed NetWeaver, or upgraded from a previous version). You will also need to define a logical component in transaction code SMSY for your Solution Manager system. I called this Z_SOLMAN in my example, shown in Figure 8. You will then need to define a logical system and define it in the client you are using. To do this, run transaction SCC4 and check if you have assigned a logical system for any other ALE applications. This is shown in Figure 9.
Figure 8: Logical Component Definition in Transaction Code SMSY
If not, you can define a logical system using transaction code BD54, and enter the details as shown in Figure 10.
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Now, everything should be activated and ready for you to configure the Maintenance Optimizer. Now run transaction code SOLUTION_MANAGER. Select the Change Management tab, and then select Support Package Stacks. Then click on Maintenance Optimizer, as shown in Figure 11.
Figure 9: Logical System Definition in Transaction Code SCC4
Figure 10: Initial Screen for Transaction Code BD54
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April/ May 2008 Volume VI Issue 2 Figure 11: Maintenance Optimizer Initial Screen Before Final Configuration
You should then see all of your system components displayed, as shown in Figure 12.
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After clicking on the Maintenance Optimizer button, you then continue through the next several screens, which will prompt you for the systems (for which you want to approve patches) until you come to the screen with a button that prompts for “Confirm Files in Download Basket”. Click this button, and the system will display the screen shown in Figure 13. Figure 12: Main Maintenance Optimizer Screen
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April/ May 2008 Volume VI Issue 2 Figure 13: Confirmation of Download Basket Items
After you click the “Download files from the Download Basket” as shown in Figure 13, you will see a screen that prompts for selection of your download basket files. You can select the files (Figure 14) you would like to approve, and then click “Confirm Download”.
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You will now be able to use your Download Manager to get patches that were released on Service Marketplace since April 2007.
Figure 14: Final Confirmation of Download Basket Items
Your Solution Manager Maintenance Optimizer is now set up.
Conclusion
This is a layer of complexity added by SAP to enforce your use of the application in your SAP landscape. Since failure to comply is not an option, the sooner you accomplish this setup, the better. Hopefully, this article will assist you in the setup and implementation for all of your SAP patch management to come.
Eric Walter is a senior consultant specializing in SAP Basis technologies along with J2EE and Java integration with SAP. He has ten years of experience with SAP Basis and security, UNIX administration, Oracle® database administration, and seven years with Java technologies, integration servers, and portal environments. In this time, he has led and supported numerous public and private implementations of these technologies along with developing and implementing architecture at all levels, from programming interfaces to hardware improvements and upgrades. You may contact the author at
[email protected]. Be sure to mention the author’s name and/or the article title. ≈
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A Tour of the New Business Add-Ins (BAdIs): A Guide for SAP Developers and Consultants ®
By Rehan Zaidi, Siemens Pakistan Editor’s Note: Pssstt…wanna check out something HOT in SAP? Take a look at the newly enhanced BAdIs available in ECC 6.0. Rehan Zaidi addresses the benefits of the new Business Add-Ins, how they differ from previous versions, their implementation, single vs. multi-use BAdIs, and even answers this question: What is an Enhancement Spot? Take a tour with Rehan and learn how you can get the most out of the BAdIs in your SAP system.
This article is primarily intended for ABAP developers. I will assume that the reader is familiar with ABAP programming, as well as the Classic BAdIs. For more information, refer to the SAP documentation on http://help.sap.com. All the screenshots in this article have been taken from ECC 6.0.
These BAdIs are faster in
Introduction:
Over time, SAP has improved the ways it allows customer-specific requirements to be incorporated into the standard R/3 functionality. The enhancement options are no exception. One example of such an improvement is the introduction of the new BAdIs. These BAdIs are faster in performance and are easy to define and implement. For these reasons, having the knowledge of the new BAdIs is an absolute must for developers and consultants.
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The aim of this article is to discuss the new Business Add-ins (BAdIs) provided by SAP since ECC 6.0. I will begin with an overview of the new features, and then discuss the characteristics of multiple- and single-use BAdIs. The structure of the new BAdIs will be examined and examples will be presented. How to implement the new BAdIs will be explained in detail. These are some of the questions this article will address: • What are the benefits of the new Business Add-ins? How do they differ from classic BAdIs? • What is the new Enhancement Framework, and what is an Enhancement Spot? • What would a typical call for the new BAdI look like? • How do single-use and multiple-use BAdIs differ? • How are the new BAdIs implemented?
performance and are easy to define and implement.
New Business Add-Ins (BAdI): An Overview
SAP has provided an improved and faster BAdI technology in the ECC 6.0 release. The new BAdIs are based upon the same concept of object orientation as classic BAdIs. However, there are a few differences. The new BAdIs are provided as part of the new Enhancement Framework. In the new Enhancement Framework, the BAdI becomes an optional enhancement, or an anchor point into which coding may be plugged. The new BAdIs reside in containers known as Enhancement Spots. Each BAdI has an Interface composed of the BAdI method(s). It is this method which is accessed in the program. Note: An entire discussion of Enhancement Framework is beyond the scope of this article. It will be discussed, however, in an upcoming article. For more on Classic BAdIs, see my article Enhancing Standard Programs Quickly & Easily Via Business Add-Ins (BADIs) in the “ABAP, Java, and J2EE Development” category in the SAPtips Document Library. In addition to the benefits provided by the Classic BAdI, one major advantage that comes with the new BAdIs is that they are faster in execution.
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SAPtips4On ABAP / J2EE BAdIs may be developed by SAP or may be custom defined. We refer to the developer of the BAdI or any other enhancement option as the Option provider. The methods and their signatures (or the parameters) for each respective method’s imports, exports, changes, or returns, are defined by the BAdI developer. The methods defined in the BAdI interface are implemented by the BAdI implementer. The option provider (BAdI creator) defines what has to be done, but it is the implementer who carries out the actual implementation of the BAdI. Within the new BAdIs, the actions of the implementer are controlled by the option provider, who controls the class upon which the BAdI is based. A developer must use BAdI when he or she wants a particular procedure to be executed at a particular position, but does not want to specify the exact content of that procedure. This might happen if the procedure details used are different among various potential implementers. It might also occur if the procedure details are so specific that the developer is not familiar with them, or if adding different implementations at a later stage. Note: In addition to BAdIs, the new Enhancement Framework provides another option of enhancement known as Source Code Plug-ins. The possibility of attaching a source code plug-in is allowed when an enhancement point in the code is inserted by the option provider. The implementer may add her or his own code at this enhancement point. This has a few disadvantages. Because the written code is generally implemented later in the development, the option provider has no control over it. All the variables that are visible in the enhanced modularization unit may be accessed by the code within this source code plug-in. Therefore, the implementer is able to modify the value of any variables. This may be undesirable in some cases, and cannot be prevented by the option provider. In this case, there is no control over the implementer. On the other hand, the BAdIs provide more control to the option provider.
• The GET BADI statement is used to generate a new BAdI object, and assigns the reference to this object to the specified variable (in our example, g_BADI_ME59_ EXCLUDE). This is also termed as the handle to the BAdI object. Prior to the GET BADI statement, the variable used must be defined based on the BAdI that is to be used. In case you have defined filters for your BAdI, you may include suitable filter values in your GET BADI statement. The GET BADI statement will be changed as shown below: GET BADI myobject filter = filters. • The CALL BADI statement is then used to call the relevant BAdI method. This method call may involve importing, exporting, and changing parameters (see Figure 1).
Multiple- and Single-Use Business Add-Ins The new Business Add-ins may either be Single-use or Multiple-use. These two types of BAdIs are quite different. In single-use BAdIs, the business logic requires exactly one single calculation result. The program’s next steps may need this result; therefore at least one BAdI implementation is needed. In this case, exactly one result is required because there is no way to handle many return values. The system takes care that there is exactly one active implementation in a single-use BAdI.
A typical call of the new BAdI is shown in Figure 1. The BAdI method is accessed using two new ABAP commands, namely GET BADI and CALL BADI. Let us take a closer look at the use of these two commands:
Figure 1: A New BAdI Call
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Therefore, the call of the method of a single-use BAdI functions like a method call. Multiple-use BAdIs operate very differently. Multiple-use BAdIs are suitable for various activities that might even be conducted in different ways, in different implementations, during the execution of a program. There may be different active implementations that can coexist simultaneously, but it is also possible that no active implementation might be present. The call of a method pertaining to a BAdI of this type may be similar to sending a message. The developer of the BAdI simply does not care how many sets of code are executed.
Figure 2: Initial Screen of the BAdI Builder Transaction
Figure 3: Creating the Enhancement Spot
Creating a New Business Add-In
In order to better understand the structure of a BAdI, let us consider a simple example of creating a new BAdI. For simplicity’s sake, we define a Single-Use BAdI. The steps needed are shown here:
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Figure 4: Enhancement Spot Maintenance Screen Step 1 – Creating an Enhancement Spot As already mentioned, the new BAdIs reside within an screen for the Enhancement Spot then appears, as Enhancement Spot. In this step, we create the Enhance- shown in Figure 4. ment Spot. Call the transaction SE18. The screen shown in Figure 2 appears. Step 2 – Creating the BAdI Definition Click the Create button on the left. The dialog box Enter a suitable name for the Enhancement Spot in the appears, as shown in Figure 5. field provided, and click the Create button. The dialog box appears, as shown in Figure 3.
Enter a description in the Short Text field and press Enter. The maintenance
Figure 5: Creating the BAdI Definition
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Enter a suitable name and description of the Business Add-in, and press Enter. This leads you to the screen shown in Figure 6. In case you need to create a Multiple-Use BAdI, make sure the Multiple-use checkbox is “on”. Step 3 – Creating the Interface (and Methods) of the BAdI This is an important step. We need to create the interface in which the methods will reside. In order to create the BAdI interface, click the icon shown in the left pane of the screen in Figure 6 (this is before the BAdI name).
Figure 6: BAdI Definition Screen
The tree opens, as shown in Figure 7. Double-click the Interface node. The right pane of the screen changes, as shown Figure 8.
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Figure 7: BAdI Interface Creation
Enter a suitable name for the interface in the field provided, and press Enter. A dialog box appears prompting you for the creation of the interface name you have specified (see Figure 9). Figure 8: BAdI Interface Screen
Figure 9: Creating an Interface Name
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Figure 10: Interface Detail
Click the Yes button. This will lead you to the Interface Detail screen, as shown in Figure 10. We will now define the method(s) of the BAdI interface. • Enter the name of the method that you would like to create. • Also specify whether the method is to be created as an instance method or static, and input the description in the field provided.
Note: In case no active implementation exists for your single-use BAdI, the above coding will raise an exception, CX_BADI_NOT_IMPLEMENTED, and a runtime error will occur. One way of handling this is through the use of a fallback class. The method of the fallback class is called if no active implementation of the BAdI exists. The fallback class must be specified by using the relevant fields on the BAdI definition screen shown in Figure 6.
• Use the Parameter button to specify the parameters of your BAdI method.
A BAdI definition resides in
In our example, shown in Figure 10, we created a method CAL_HR_ALLOWANCE, and gave it the Description “Calculating the HR Allowance”.
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After making the necessary steps, Save and Activate the interface by clicking the button, as well as the BAdI definition, and the Enhancement Spot. The code of the program that calls our BAdI is shown here: data : mybadi type ref to Z_BADI_CAL_HR. data : hr type betrg. data : basic type betrg. start-of-selection. get badi mybadi. call badi mybadi->cal_hr_allowance EXPORTING basic = basic IMPORTING hr = hr.
an Enhancement Spot.
Implementing the New Business Add-In
In this section, we will see how the Business Add-In created in the previous section is implemented. As already mentioned, a BAdI definition resides in an Enhancement Spot. Likewise, the implementation of the new BAdIs must reside within containers known as Enhancement Implementation. Enhancement Implementations must be created before implementing BAdIs. A BAdI definition may have multiple BAdI implementations. On the other hand, a BAdI implementation may relate to a single BAdI.
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SAPtips4On ABAP / J2EE The minimal steps required in creating a BAdI implementation are shown here: • Call transaction SE19. The screen appears, as shown in Figure 11. Enter the Enhancement Spot to which the BAdI belongs, in the field denoting the Enhancement Spot of the New BAdI. Click the Create Impl. button. The screen shown in Figure 12 appears. Enter a suitable name and text for the Enhancement Implementation in the fields provided, and press Enter. This leads you to the screen shown in Figure 13. Enter an appropriate name and description for the Enhancement Implementation in the fields provided. Then press Enter. Now, we have created a container (Enhancement Implementation) for the BAdI implementation that will be created. This Enhancement Implementation is assigned to (or corresponds to) the Enhancement Spot in question.
Figure 11: Creating a BAdI Implementation
Figure 12: Creating Enhancement Implementation
A dialog box appears, as shown in Figure 14, that lets you specify the BAdI implementation name for the BAdI definition in question. Figure 13: Enhancement Implementation Name and Text
Figure 14: Assigning BAdI Implementations to BAdI Definition
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Figure 15: Enhancement Implementation Details
Enter a suitable name for your BAdI implementation, and press Enter. This leads you to the Enhancement Implementation details screen, as shown in Figure 15.
Figure 16: BAdI Implementation Class Node
Enter a description in the fields provided, and make sure the “Implementation is active” checkbox is checked.
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Click the in front of the implementation name in the left pane of the screen. This will open the node, as shown in Figure 16. We now need to create an Implementation Class. Double-click the Implementing Class node. The right side of the screen changes, as shown in Figure 17.
Figure 17: Implementing Class
Figure 18: Creation of the Implementing Class
Enter a suitable name for the implementing class in the field provided, and press Enter. A dialog box appears to confirm the creation of the class by the given name. Click Yes. This leads you to the screen shown in Figure 18. Double-click the row denoting the method that you need to implement. A dialog appears, as shown in Figure 19.
Figure 19: Method Implementation Dialog
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Click the Yes button. This will take you to the editor, where you can add the code for the implemented method (see Figure 20). Once you are finished writing the code for your method, activate the method, Figure 20: Method Editor the Implementing Class, and the Enhancement Implementation. The method may be activated by using CTRL-F3 or the button. Now when the code of the calling program is executed, there is no runtime error generated, as the BAdI is now implemented. The value of “Basic” is taken and calculated according to a formula specified by the implemented method code.
Conclusion
In this article I have discussed the new Business Add-ins available in SAP release ECC 6.0, which offer numerous advantages for developers. I began with an overview of the new features, and then discussed the advantages over the Classic model. The characteristics of multiple- and single-use BAdIs were explained and their structures examined, and examples were presented. The article explains in detail how to implement the new BAdIs. I hope that this article proves to be a useful resource for your ABAP team.
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Rehan Zaidi, Senior SAP Consultant, Siemens Pakistan. Rehan has been involved in both ABAP development and functional configuration for SAP HR implementations at multinational and local companies, and also has experience with SAP Workflow. He has contributed articles to the SAP Professional Journal, the HR Expert newsletter, and to the TechRepublic Website. He is currently working on his first book, specifically designed for SAP HR Users and Managers, as well as a guide for ABAP/Workflow Consultants titled “201 Interview Questions on Workflow”. Rehan is the founder of the Website www.siteofSAP.com. You may contact the author at
[email protected]. Be sure to mention the author’s name and/or the article title. ≈
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IT Spending in an Uncertain Economy By CJ Rhoads Editor’s Note: We’re all reading the headlines about the downward trends in the economy. We’re tightening our own belts, while our companies are doing the same. So it should come as no surprise to anyone that IT budgets will be among the likely victims during this economic crunch. But, is this the right response? CJ Rhoads has the answer—and you might be surprised at what her verdict is.
Impact of Economy on IT
The human decision-making psyche is very predictable. During feast times - when sales are up and the volume of business can be likened to drinking from a fire hose - we tend to spend more money on Information Technology (IT) projects. During famine times - when sales are down and we fear for our future - we pull back and stop spending money on IT projects. While it may be common, this behavior is flat out wrong.
Furthermore, when sales are down, we...
“Wrong?!?” you say? “How can spending when you have money and tightening the belt when you have less be wrong?” I’ll tell you several reasons. When sales are up, we have a tendency to... • Plan as if they will always increase at a constant rate. • Think we can afford more than we really can.
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• Try to quickly put together large projects that will help us deal with current volumes. Growth at a constant rate over the long term rarely happens. Instead, growth tends to occur in spurts. It makes more sense to adjust to the growth spurts and effectively use the downtime. Furthermore, a project that sounds great when it only costs 2% of our sales may turn out to be a terrible idea when it costs 25% of our sales. Perhaps the worst mistake is planning big projects in the midst of overwhelming volumes of sales. At this point our focus should be on our current customers, and planning a big project takes our focus away from the customer.
• Often panic and cut expenses – sometimes too much. • Don’t have a sense of urgency about smoothing out our processes. • Don’t see the disconnects in our processes that will cause problems later. Again, the reasons for this are psychological. When times are good, we believe that it is due to our own superior products, services, and efforts. When times are bad, we tend to blame the economy. As a result, we have a hard time focusing on improvement when we have the extra bandwidth to do so. After all, why should we work hard to improve our products and services when they were obviously good enough during good times? So instead of taking advantage of the slow times in order to increase our capabilities, we think that there is nothing that we can do (after all – we can’t fix the economy, can we?). Recently I was reading a new booklet by Jim Collins (author of the bestselling Good to Great) and I was surprised by the answer to two questions he asks: • Which currently profitable company outperformed all others for the long haul?
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•W hich company topped the charts in return on investment? The answer was not Wal-Mart nor was it Microsoft. It was Southwest Airlines. Despite 9/11. Despite drastically rising fuel costs. Despite being in an industry where every other major player went bankrupt. Southwest Airlines has turned a profit for twenty-four consecutive years. Southwest Airlines has seen its stock soar 300 percent since 1990, and they did this while maintaining an unequaled position as the safest airline in the world. Southwest Airlines also ranks number one in the industry for service, on-time performance, and lowest employee turnover rate. Jim Collins points this out as he describes what his in-depth research has revealed about business success; great companies do well in both boom times AND in poor economic times. Great companies know that high sales are likely a result of external forces (a good economy, for example), but when sales lag, they focus inward to see what they can improve.
Great companies do well in both boom times AND in poor economic times.
Preparing for less growth, however, shouldn’t mean that we stop spending on IT. If you were following my advice from previous columns, you weren’t spending a lot on huge IT projects not related to your hedgehog concept anyway. You would also be slowly (but surely) consolidating and simplifying platforms and applications because you know that the costs associated with complexity saps your resources and doesn’t add value. You would also be taking a look at potential replacements for your current technology by purchasing and playing with new cutting-edge technologies in a research lab. You would be waiting, patiently, for just the right time to implement a new technology (i.e., Pounce like a Panther).
During Slow Times
None of these common sense IT Management policies should change. However, during slow times, we could take advantage of the situation and focus our efforts on implementing those large projects that will enable us to improve our processes – just in time for the next growth spurt in a year or two. Think of it this way; when there is a raging snowstorm outside, we could haul on our gear and get out in the snow. We could spend our time and energy shoveling the walk and putting chains on our tires. We could brave the elements and drive somewhere. OR we can use the time to clean out our files, update our contact database, work on the flyer that we will need for our new products. Which one helps us more in the long run? Now is the time to really focus on our processes. Ask yourself:
The “R” Word
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After the Internet Boom came the crash when many lost fortunes as stocks sank. Value in stocks started returning in 2004 and we’ve had a pretty robust economy since then (though as many people pointed out, it is often called a “jobless” economy because value returned to companies without increasing employment much). But now things are starting to slow down again. There has even been mention of the dreaded “R” word (shhhhh - no one wants to admit that there might be a recession). The subprime credit crisis looms, and investors are getting nervous again. The War in Iraq has been going on for years, with no clear-cut end in sight. The stock market has been a bit, shall we say, variable. Pretty much everyone agrees: We should be preparing for less growth in the coming year than we had in the last few years.
• During peak volumes experienced in the last few years, where were the bottlenecks? • Which processes didn’t run as smoothly as they could have run? • What tweaks do we need in people and processes in order to get maximum value? • What training can we get now that will improve our abilities later? If we use the periods of slowness to improve our processes, we are utilizing our resources most effectively and efficiently. What many companies do when the economy slows is to increase the amount they spend on marketing in order to bring in more customers (i.e., go out into the storm). But if customers don’t have the money to spend on the products and services of those
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companies, these companies are wasting their money. If, instead, the company increases the amount of money spent on IT, then resources are used more effectively. Using the downtime to plan for, install, and implement new technologies (that fit into the hedgehog concept, of course) will enable the company to better meet the needs of the customer. When the economy returns, the company will be able to take advantage of the smoother processes and increased volumes to put money away to cover the increased costs during the NEXT recession. Both the company and the customer win in the long run. So the next time the CEO of a company goes to the CIO and asks the IT department to cut their budget while increasing money for advertising, consider whether that is really in the best interest of the company. Dr. CJ Rhoads speaks and writes about leadership development, business strategy and technology. She is the founder of ETM Associates, Inc., a Douglassvillebased enterprise technology management consulting firm (ETMAssociates.com). She’s also an associate professor in the College of Business at Kutztown University, and a widely published book author. Her company is currently looking for candidates for a program this summer to improve by “More Than A Million”. If you think your company would qualify, contact her email at
[email protected]. ≈
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Say What?
A Guide to the SAP® Terms You Need to Know for ASUG 2008 and Beyond By Jon Reed, JonERP.com Editor’s Note: Did you start working with the Business Information Warehouse (BIW) and consider yourself pretty much an expert, only to learn that BIW had become BW (Business Warehouse)? Then, as you adjusted to BW and thought you were the master of all you commanded…you learned that BW no longer existed, but BI (Business Information) was the data warehouse du jour for SAP. Do you find yourself confused…or worse…outdated, when it comes to the alphabet soup that is SAP? No worries, SAP career expert Jon Reed has a tutorial to bring you up to speed before you have a chance to make an acronym faux pas at the annual ASUG/Sapphire conference. I have a running joke with a friend of mine who insists on pronouncing ABAP “Ayy-Bop”, as opposed to the more commonly heard pronunciation “Ahh Bop”. He says it’s just a case of “you say ‘to-mA-toes’, I say ‘tomah-toes’”. I say that how we pronounce terms in the SAP world sends a clear message as to how much we know about the software.
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And the more we know, the better the results. When in doubt, I pronounce SAP terms the way CEO Henning Kagermann and the rest of the guys on the board do it. That way, if I’m ever in front of them, I’ll hopefully fit right in instead of branding myself as an ill-informed American who doesn’t respect the best practices honed night and day in Walldorf. Well, maybe I wouldn’t fit right in. But if the opportunity comes up, I don’t want to be the one who refers to NetWeaver™ as “that Fusion-type product”. Think of it this way: if someone calls you on the phone and the first thing they do is call SAP “sap” as opposed to the usual “S-A-P,” you would make the assumption that they are new to the world of SAP. And if you’re in a hurry, which most of us are these days, you’d be more likely to send them to Amazon.com for an “SAP for Newbies” title, versus taking your time to bring them up to speed. As we approach ASUG/SAPPHIRE 2008, we run into the same kinds of dilemmas. Sometimes I have joked that knowing the right SAP terms helps you sound
“cool” at SAPPHIRE socials, but mastering SAP terminology is more than just coming off as a first class trade show schmoozer. I submit that it’s not a bad thing for job security to become known as “that guy/gal at our company who stays on top of these SAP trends.” Of course, the need for a terminology primer is exacerbated by how quickly SAP tries a term on for size, and moves on to another – but not after spending sizable chunks of time and money branding product names that are quickly discarded, or, in extreme cases, appropriated by some other SAP product. I have actually seen SAP product representatives misuse SAP terms or use outdated product names. If these folks have trouble keeping up with SAP, what about the rest of us? What follows is a freewheeling SAP terminology guide that you can put to use at ASUG/SAPPHIRE and beyond. Hopefully, knowing your way around the SAP vocabulary matrix will help you to get your SAP questions answered. In just a few short minutes, you can become the go-to-person at the water cooler when it comes to what’s hip and what’s not in SAP. It does seem like SAP’s product name changes can be somewhat arbitrary, but I find that in most cases they are not. So, with each term, I will provide my best answer as to why the term is being phased out or brought in. Note that this represents my take alone, and does not represent SAP’s views, or those of SAPtips.
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ERP 6.0 – “ERP 6.0” is the name for SAP’s latest core ERP release. This is the NetWeaver-driven, serviceenabled version of the product that will receive standard maintenance support through 2012. The “ERP 6.0” version name replaces all kinds of other term combinations I will get to during this piece. Why the term change? SAP wanted to get rid of some previous terms that were confusing, and some that were dated by the year (for a little while, ERP 6.0 was called “mySAP® ERP 2005”). And there was a time when SAP referred to the core ERP component of ERP 6.0 as “ECC 6.0”, but SAP now wants to emphasize business-friendly terms over terms that make SAP sound complicated and technical. “ECC” is one of those abbreviations that conjures up images of IT folks with pocket calculators who are needed to translate SAP into terms businesspeople can understand. So, the “ECC” term is still in use, because technically it still represents the enterprise core of ERP 6.0, but it’s not a term of emphasis when SAP describes its new solutions. eSOA – At this point, if you haven’t run into the term “Enterprise SOA,” or “eSOA” for short, it’s time to take a break from go-live and come up for air. In the years to come, we’re going to see plenty of the term “eSOA”, as SAP has literally staked the success of its product (for the next five years) on the appeal of eSOA. If you want to read more on eSOA, check out my last three CIO Corner columns. For now, we can use the shorthand version and say that SAP’s eSOA bet is probably a good one. Across the industry, software vendors of all kinds are racing to become “SOA friendly.” The appeal? SOA may be able to offer the same benefits of Enterprise Application Integration (EAI), but without the hassles of custom interfaces. SOA is based on universal (or near-universal) standards, and SAP’s eSOA product is no exception. So, this is a term you want to work into your PowerPoints sooner rather than later! Why the term change? Some of you may be wondering where the heck the term Enterprise Services Architecture, or ESA for short, ran off to. For a brief and spastic period, SAP marketed the heck out of “ESA” as their SOA solution. So why the swap to eSOA? I have never heard an official explanation from SAP, but my take is that SAP realized it could not win the branding war against the commonly-used SOA phrase. So, why not piggyback onto the broader marketing of the SOA phrase with the eSOA moniker? It seems to work.
NetWeaver – SAP has put huge resources into the branding of the NetWeaver name. If anything, I would say that NetWeaver is misused by the implication that it’s really just one product. I see NetWeaver as an umbrella for a series of inter-related products. The end result? A whole slew of SAP terms that were previously more like stand-alone products, are now officially prefaced by the NetWeaver term. So, the way to impress your friends with NetWeaver is to be well-versed in all the main products under the NetWeaver umbrella. Just look at all the terminology casualties caused by NetWeaver alone: • NetWeaver Portals (formally Enterprise Portals) • NetWeaver BI, or NetWeaver Business Intelligence (formerly Business Warehouse) • NetWeaver Composition Environment (CE) –new SAP Java-based development environment with a combination of new and old tools within it. • NetWeaver Master Data Management (MDM) –new MDM solution, ships with NetWeaver but as of this writing costs an additional fee to activate. • NetWeaver Application Server (formerly Web Application Server) – not a product SAP emphasizes in marketing as much as the others; this is the engine of the NetWeaver car. • NetWeaver PI, or NetWeaver Process Integration (formerly NetWeaver XI or NetWeaver Exchange Infrastructure; this one deserves its own entry). PI (Process Integration) – PI is the integration hub of SAP’s NetWeaver architecture, and is also the recommended platform for SAP’s eSOA initiatives. For a ridiculously brief period, before it was re-branded as PI, this product was known as the Exchange Infrastructure (XI). PI is a very important part of SAP’s technical vision, so SAP was ruthless about naming it appropriately, even if the quick name change caused some customer confusion. Of course, the problem has been compounded by the fact that the “PI” term was already used in the SAP lexicon to refer to “Process Industries”.
SAP has put huge resources into the branding of the NetWeaver name.
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your particular SAP environment is still running these products). So, here are some terms we can use, but should still be careful with:
Often, we saw this come into play as the PP-PI module, or SAP’s Production Planning configuration for Process Industries. Perhaps SAP felt comfortable making this change because PP-PI is much more of an SAP R/3 term than an ERP 6.0 term. To the best of my knowledge, PP-PI is still in use, as is the term “SAP for Process Industries,” so for now, both uses of the PI moniker are still in use at the same time. At last year’s SAPPHIRE, I even met a product manager who had responsibilities in both areas. I asked him about it and all he did was laugh. He stopped laughing before I did. At this point, when we see the term PI, it usually means NetWeaver PI, unless it has PP in front of it.
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Why the term change? SAP is trying to position itself as a “Business Process Platform”, and as such, SAP wants to be perceived as a business-driven application, rather than an IT-driven product. XI, once again, sounds like something overly technical, something that would require a mechanic to lift up the hood of your ERP system and do things for you. “PI”, for “Process Integration,” implies a more elegant view of ERP; one that hides the complexity from you and lets you model your own processes and build them right into the SAP system without being at the beck and call of the Information Technology department.
Terms You Should Be Careful with
Now that we’ve covered the hippest SAP terms, we move into trickier territory. This section contains SAP terms you can still use, as long as you are careful about the context. Used properly, folks will know that you are aware of the latest terms, but that you choose to use a different term for accuracy’s sake (perhaps because
Web Application Server – I can’t think of a reason offhand why you would need to use this term unless you are deep into the technology; but there are some flavors of NetWeaver that still run on the Web Application Server. Technical team members can certainly use this term for clarity on support and installation issues. One additional reason that SAP has shifted the term Web Application Server to NetWeaver Application Server? Web Application Server was often abbreviated as “WAS,” the same abbreviation as IBM’s WebSphere Application Server – a situation that caused confusion. Rumor has it that IBM, one of SAP’s most important partners, was not too thrilled about SAP’s use of WAS either. Change term – problem solved. BW (or Business Warehouse) – Many SAP shops are still running on a flavor of BW that is actually still called BW. If you’re running BW 3.5 or under, you are still definitively on BW, not BI, so you can still use the classic “BW” reference. We don’t get into the usage of the “BI” term until NetWeaver BI 7.0. Why did SAP change terms? Because they didn’t want their product to sound like it was operated by a geek squad out of a warehouse; they wanted to make it sound like the robust business intelligence platform that it truly and finally is. In addition, the industry buzz has shifted away from “data warehousing” and onto the trend of “business intelligence”. BW-to-BI allows SAP to capitalize on that branding momentum. Basis – Basis is a tricky one because we aren’t sure if SAP is going to create a new term for “NetWeaver System Admin” or just stick with Basis, as in “NetWeaver Basis”. I have seen the phrase “NetWeaver Basis” on some job descriptions, but I haven’t seen it used by SAP itself. This one is too early to call, but my bet is on SAP phasing out the Basis term, because it is so closely tied to the R/3 systems architecture that is being supplanted by NetWeaver. Of course, many customers are still on older versions of R/3 (typically 4.7 or lower) that are not NetWeaver-driven. These folks can still use the Basis term freely. But once we get into NetWeaver environments, tossing the term “Basis” around might make you seem a little, well, “old school”. You might not get
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invited to run your company’s “Where is SAP headed next?” presentation if you use the term “Basis” too freely. I never liked the term myself, as it has too many connotations from other accounting contexts, so I won’t mind seeing it go. ABAP – Actually, ABAP may be the one term from the R/3 world that remains alive and well. SAP backed off of ABAP a few years ago and pushed its Java-friendliness, but its customer base, heavily invested in ABAP customizations, was not too thrilled with that approach. These days, ABAP may not get much marketing attention from SAP, but ABAP is still very much a part of SAP’s “development platform of the future”. True, SAP’s next-generation Composition Environment (CE), is exclusively Java-based, but there are many important development tools that are ABAP-based (Web Dynpro for ABAP, for one) and many NetWeaver-based processes that are driven, at least partially, by ABAP code. ABAP is here to stay, but if we use the term too much, it gives the impression that we’re not clued into the eSOAbased approach.
ABAP is here to stay, but if we use the term too much, it gives the impression that we’re not clued into the eSOA-based approach.
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SAPtips4On Humor
The eSOA shift is about not being tied to any one development language, even one as trusty as ABAP. The eSOA vision is really about allowing companies to use the development tools of their choice, or in many cases, using modeling tools to integrate business processes into the technical layer with less hands-on coding than ever before. To be extra cool when you talk about ABAP, if you can work in some mentions of “Object-Oriented ABAP”, or “ABAP Objects”, then you will give off the vibe that you understand the overriding importance of re-usable programming techniques in the eSOA era. Just remember, if you use this term, don’t pronounce it “Ayyy Bop.” Not unless you want to get into a “Tomato/ Tomahto” argument with some SAP know-it-all like me.
Terms You Probably Shouldn’t Be Using
mySAP – Before “NetWeaver” came along, “mySAP” seemed like the term SAP had staked its future on. But
now, SAP is dramatically phasing out the “mySAP” term. It is getting harder and harder to find the term “mySAP” anywhere in SAP’s solutions literature, which is a bit of a shock given that not long ago, “mySAP” went in front of all of SAP’s new ERP releases, as well as before its “Business Suite” products. For a few years after Y2K, SAP plastered the term “mySAP” in front of everything as a way of making clear that SAP was now in tune with Internet trends. But the personalization of the Web has gone beyond the “my” prefix into the Web 2.0 arena of blogging and podcasting and trackbacks, and the mySAP term now comes off as dated. I suspect that’s why SAP is phasing it out. “mySAP” served a purpose, but you can only brand a few terms in a big time way, and SAP is largely focused on branding ERP 6.0, eSOA, and NetWeaver now. “mySAP” seems like a terminology bandwidth casualty. Think of it as an honorable discharge, and consider discarding it from your SAP vocabulary. mySAP ERP 2005 – This term has all kinds of problems with it. Beyond the fading “mySAP” aspect, SAP is trying to drop the year numbers from all its products. It’s all about ERP 6.0 now. ECC 5.0 – ECC 5.0 was the “Enterprise Core Component” of the mySAP ERP 2004 release, another mouthful for the terminology scrap heap, now superseded by the ERP 6.0 release. The only reason to use “ECC 5.0” would be if you were trying to complete an “SAP Crossword Puzzle”, or if you were referring specifically to the ECC 5.0 environment or working for a company that is currently running on ECC 5.0. There are more than a few companies running on ECC 5.0 now, though their numbers are rapidly being eclipsed by those that are either running on, or are moving to, ERP 6.0, which has the ECC 6.0 core. XI – Pretty much the same deal here as with the ECC 5.0 term. “XI” had a limited shelf life and pretty much only applies when referring to those live SAP customers still running on XI. Otherwise, it’s “all PI, all the time”. Service Management – This term can still be used, as long as it’s not confused with the newer “CRM Service” or “SAM” (Strategic Asset Management) terms. Many SAP users are still running on the Service Management (SM) product; others partake in the CRM-based version of this product (CRM Service). SAM is an unrelated term, but it’s just one “A” away from an identify conflict, and I ran into someone who confused the two just last week.
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SAPtips4On Humor Please Stand at the Back of the Room (If You Use These Outdated Terms)
Use of these terms may cost you the select seats on the ASUG conference bus. It’s wise to retire them unless you have been asked to write a history of SAP. New Dimensions – I still hear people use this outdated term from time to time. I was never fond of it; I’ve joked in the past that it sounded more like a New Age cult than a cutting edge product. It’s hard to believe that SAP once poured millions into the use of this term on a broad scale. New Dimensions was the term used to describe the immature products that have now become the robust “SAP Business Suite” product line. It’s a funny term to drop when you want to remind people of how wacky SAP can be, but I’d save it for those purposes only. Business Information Warehouse – The Business Information Warehouse, or BIW term, went out of fashion years ago, as SAP made the first of several shifts in the product that pushed it away from affiliation with tech tools and towards a business intelligence platform. The BIW term harks back to a time when the data warehousing market was in its heyday. At that time, SAP was actively seeking credibility from the leaders of the data warehousing movement, such as the father of data warehousing, Bill Inmon, who was one of many who was initially critical of SAP’s fledgling BIW product, perceiving it as an affront to the sophistication of true data warehousing. But the last I heard of Inmon, he had worked some stumping for NetWeaver BI into his schedule, so that shows you how much times change, and how well SAP evolves its products. From BIW to BW to BI, there’s never a dull moment for SAP’s flagship Business Intelligence product. We can only hope that the recent Business Objects acquisition doesn’t provoke deliberations on another BI-related product name change.
Some of these terminology decisions can seem random, but I hope I’ve shown that despite some missteps, there is a method to SAP’s terminology madness. I wish all SAPtips readers the best of luck at the spring conferences, and I hope to see you there. I’ll be the one with the little notepad, scribbling down the terms I will use in the next update to this article. Jon Reed, JonERP.com. Jon Reed is an independent SAP analyst who writes on SAP consulting trends. He is the President of JonERP.com, an interactive Web site which features Jon’s SAP Career Blog and his podcasts for SAP professionals. Jon has been publishing SAP career and market analysis for more than a decade, and he serves as the career expert for SearchSAP’s “Ask the Expert” panel. From 2003 to 2006, Jon was the Managing Editor of SAPtips. You may contact the author at
[email protected]. Be sure to mention the author’s name and/or the article title. ≈
Conclusion
I hope that the tongue-in-cheek tone of this article did not take anyone back to unwanted memories of high school when people were considered cool or uncool based on what came out of their mouths. At the same time, I also hope that the tone of this piece did not take away from the importance of staying on top of SAP’s terminology. I have seen many SAP professionals capitalize on their knowledge of SAP trends. I would go so far as to say that all the exceptional SAP professionals I know make it a point to stay on top of the SAP product line and the terms SAP employs.
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SAPtips Software Solutions SAPtips
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SAPtips Associate Editors Logistics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Sutrisno Japit, SAP FI/CO Consultant Pricing. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Matthias Liebich, MLI Solutions, LLC CRM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Scott Cameron, CRM Consultant Financials . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Dimitris Langas, SAP Consultant HR and Payroll. . . . . . . . . . . . . . Satish Badgi, Unisys Corporation Business Warehouse (BW). . . . . . . . Anurag Barua, Independent SAP Consultant Basis. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Eric Walter, Senior SAP Consultant ABAP Development. . . . . . . . . . . . Rehan Zaidi, Siemens Pakistan Data Archiving. . . . . . . . . . . . . . Breck Whitten, Halliburton
We are always looking for outstanding SAP® consultants and subjectmatter experts who want to write for us on a regular or semi-regular basis. Get involved with the SAPtips editorial team today, by emailing Managing Editor Cheryl Cave at
[email protected]
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Laura Donovan, Director of Publications Laura Donovan is Director of Publications for Klee Associates, Inc., with responsibility for the SAPtips and JDEtips Journals and the editing and production of our Mastery-Level Training Manuals. Laura has over 30 years experience in the software arena, where she has specialized in user documentation and training development and delivery. She’s held in-house publications and training management positions and has worked as a consultant. Laura may be reached at:
[email protected] 1.877.832.2594 ext 190
The publisher, Andy Klee, is the President of Klee Associates, Inc., a premier provider of JD Edwards and SAP implementation and training services. Andy’s personal goal for 2008 is to help more clients optimize their use of JD Edwards and SAP, and realize more value for their software investment.
SAPtips is published six times per year. Copies are available online to paid readers. Preview all content at: www.SAPtips.com
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