Features of SAP FMS

Now the traditional Business Models are changed.

Typically Fashion companies were Wholesale/Manufacturing or Retail business but not both.

Now the trend is changed and the fashion companies used to do all the business, i.e. Wholesale, Manufacturing & Retailing. To cater all types of Business in one system SAP launched FMS. Below are some special features of SAP FMS.

The SAP FMS solutions have the following features:

1. Flexible data processing: The solution supports companies to handle an accurate end-to-end flow of material across all relevant procurement applications. It also enables data processing based on the characteristic values such as style, color, size, and season, and other flexible segmentation characteristics such as seasons and sales channels.

2. Segmentation: The solution allows you to categorize materials or articles based on their physical and logical characteristics. For example, color and size are physical characteristics of a fashion article and quality and country of origin are logical characteristics of a fashion article. The requirement segment is

Important in sales, for example, in sales orders and planned independent requirements. Stock segments are used for the logical distribution of the existing physical stock and the future receipts or procurement proposals such as purchase requisitions.

3. Multichannel planning: You can forecast future demand and procure supplies for multiple sales channels. You can also manage the demand of different channels separately, for example, retail, wholesale, e-commerce, or franchise according to the channel-specific processes. MRP on HANA now supports materials (articles in Retail) with segmentation. For materials with segmentation, the system executes the MRP processes based on the rules defined in the Segmentation strategy. The MRP run is performed at the variant level of the generic article. As a result, separate documents (purchase requisitions) are created for each of the variants belonging to the same generic article to fulfill the open requirements at variant level. This means that the planner or user must spend a lot of time checking a lot of documents for variants belonging to the same generic article. You can enable the grouping of purchase requisition functionality, and during the MRP run the system then groups the variants belonging to same generic article into a single document based on certain criteria. SAP introduces MRP live in FMS, MRP live is significantly faster than ABAP (Classic) based MRP for a number of reasons. MRP live Processes Large Data sets directly In memory (In-memory computing), where as the ABAP based (Classic) MRP calls the planning engine only by one for each Material/Plant combination.

4. ATP with segmentation: With advanced methods of requirement segmentation and the availability check, you can ensure that high priority channels receive their planned quantities even if their demand is delayed.

5. Season management: You can define the production of fashion wear according to the season for which it is manufactured such as summer or winter. In the fashion industry, a season belongs to a season year and has collections associated with it. The collections in turn have themes associated with them. You can define a validity period for every season. The seasons assigned to the articles are used or determined in both the sales and the purchasing documents. These seasons can then be transferred to the follow-on documents such as the outbound or inbound delivery and billing document

6. Characteristic value conversion: You can represent the value of a few characteristics of a fashion article on different scales for different countries or regions. Apart from defining base characteristic values, this feature allows you to define characteristic values in different country scales. You can maintain characteristic conversion type controls which can be country or region-specific identifiers. You can define the characteristic conversion IDs for an article, customer or vendor, and a user parameter.

7. Value-added services (VAS): Customers can request for special labels, packing according to certain criteria, or other special services for their goods. Depending on the service requested, additional articles or additional personnel/labor or special skills may be required. These services increase the value of the finished goods to be delivered. You can handle these services including the costs using the value added services in the fashion industry. You can assign the information related to different services using conditions. Later, the services are determined in the application documents (sales order, stock transport order, purchase order). During special business processes in sales, such as Third Party Order (TPO) and Purchase-to-Order (PTO), the VAS information is copied to the purchasing documents from the sales documents and you cannot change the values in the purchasing documents.

8. Order allocation run: The unique situation in the fashion industry necessitates an optimized assignment of existing stock to open requirements (sales orders and stock transport orders). For example, the allocation run ensures an assignment of the available stock to the open requirements according to your business requirements when there is a shortage of stock. The allocation run creates a fixed assignment between the requirement records, physical stock (batch managed or non-batch managed) and future receipts. You can only undo this assignment manually. The allocation run is a process based on rules. You can use the settings to sort the stock or requirements, release the allocation to decide when each individual requirement should be processed and the priority.