7.1 Delivery Documents and Organizational Units for Delivery Processing, Including EWM
Key Takeaways
A goods receipt or goods issue posting always relates to a delivery, and warehouse activities such as creating and confirming a warehouse order are completed before inventory changes.
Delivery documents are used for sales orders and also for stock transport orders, subcontracting, vendor returns, inbound deliveries for purchase orders, and deliveries from projects.
Each outbound delivery is managed by exactly one shipping point; a shipping point can serve several plants that are close together, and a plant can have several shipping points.
Loading points structure a shipping point; they are assigned manually in the delivery header, and each loading point belongs to only one shipping point.
In EWM, the warehouse number is divided into storage types, storage sections, and storage bins; activity areas group bins for picking, putaway, or physical inventory, and a quant is the stock of a product in a bin.
Delivery Documents and Organizational Units for Delivery Processing, Including EWM
Shipping starts where sales ends: once a sales order item is confirmed and due, a delivery document takes over. The S46100 course Configuring Delivery Processing in SAP S/4HANA Sales is one of the largest in the learning journey (718 minutes), and it begins with two foundations covered here: what a delivery document does, and which organizational units shipping and warehouse management use.
Deliveries in Logistics Execution
Logistics Execution covers both directions of goods movement: goods receipt and goods issue. The official course makes two points that shape everything in this chapter:
- SAP Extended Warehouse Management (EWM) is also available inside SAP S/4HANA as embedded EWM. Legacy Warehouse Management (WM) remains available, but future development takes place only in EWM, which will replace legacy WM entirely. A lean version of legacy WM continues as Stock Room Management.
- When you work with deliveries, warehouse activities such as creating and confirming a warehouse order are completed before the stock level changes in inventory management. A goods receipt or goods issue posting always relates to a delivery. The warehouse order is the document used to execute all material movements in the warehouse.
More Than Sales Orders
Delivery documents model many processes through different delivery types. Besides the outbound delivery for a sales order, the course names:
- Replenishment deliveries for stock transport orders: the ordering plant creates a purchase order on the supplying plant, and the supplying plant creates a delivery with reference to it as the basis for picking, output, and goods issue.
- Deliveries for subcontract orders.
- Vendor returns.
- Inbound deliveries for purchase orders: one inbound delivery can cover a complete purchase order, partial quantities, or several purchase orders, and serves as the basis for packing, putaway, the warehouse order, and the goods receipt posting.
- Deliveries from projects.
What Shipping Processing Includes
The course lists the activities of shipping:
- Monitoring the deadlines of reference documents due for shipping
- Creating and processing outbound deliveries
- Monitoring the capacity situation in the warehouse
- Supporting picking
- Packing
- Printing and distributing shipping documents
- Processing the goods issue
- Controlling through overviews of deliveries in progress, open activities, and bottlenecks
The delivery document is the basis for all of them, and its status values show how far each step has progressed. After goods issue, the delivery is added to the billing due list.
Structure of a Delivery Document
A delivery consists of a header and items. The header contains data for the whole document, so the ship-to party, the shipping point, and the route are clearly displayed in the header of every outbound delivery. The items contain the materials to be delivered. The overview screen shows selected header and item data grouped on tabs by activity. Detail screens at header level group information into tabs for processing, picking, loading, shipment, foreign trade/customs, texts, partners, output, package monitoring, and conditions, and item details offer similar tabs.
Delivery versus Shipment or Freight Order
A delivery describes what leaves one shipping point for one ship-to party. Transportation is planned in a separate document: a shipment in classic Logistics Execution transportation, or a freight order in SAP S/4HANA Transportation Management. One shipment or freight order can group several deliveries that travel together on one truck, so delivery processing (picking, packing, goods issue) and transportation planning (carrier, stages, freight costs) remain separate.
Organizational Units for Inventory Management
You model the inventory structure of a corporate group with clients, company codes, plants, and storage locations. A client represents the corporate group and a company code an independent accounting unit. The plant plays the central role: it is a physical location where inventory is stored, such as a manufacturing site or distribution center, and production, procurement, maintenance, and materials planning are managed at plant level. Each plant has one or many storage locations, which differentiate the stocks of a material within the plant; stock is managed at storage location level. A plant can be assigned to only one company code, so stocks and stock values are managed independently per company.
Organizational Units for Shipping and Goods Receipt
Shipping Point
A shipping point is an independent organizational unit at a fixed location that processes and monitors outbound deliveries and goods issues. The official rules:
- Each outbound delivery is managed by a single shipping point. The responsible shipping point is determined in the sales order at item level (section 7.2).
- A shipping point can process the deliveries of several plants, but this is only useful if the plants are located close to each other.
- Several shipping points can be assigned to one plant, for example for different loading equipment, processing times, or modes of transport.
- The allowed combinations of shipping points and plants are defined in Customizing.
- A shipping point can also be set as a goods receiving point, so it can manage inbound deliveries too.
Loading Point
A loading point structures a shipping point, for example into individual loading ramps. Loading points are defined in Customizing for Logistics Execution and are assigned manually in the delivery header; they can be printed in the delivery output. Any number of loading points can belong to a shipping point, but each loading point belongs to only one shipping point.
Organizational Units in SAP EWM
When a warehouse is managed with EWM, a more detailed structure describes the building:
| Unit | Description |
|---|---|
| Warehouse number | The whole warehouse complex, with attributes such as weight, volume, and time units and the determination procedures for palletization data and packaging specifications. SAP recommends one warehouse number for each group of storage areas or buildings in the same geographical area, and separate warehouse numbers for complexes in different cities. To identify the owner of the stock, the warehouse number is assigned to a supply chain unit (SCU). |
| Storage type | A physical or logical subdivision of the warehouse, characterized by warehouse technology, the nature of the products, space required, and organizational function. It has a four-character key and a storage type role that defines its use. |
| Storage section | A subdivision of a storage type that groups bins with similar attributes (heavy parts, bulky parts, hazardous materials, fast-moving or slow-moving items), used during putaway. |
| Storage bin | The smallest addressable unit of space in the warehouse: the exact location where a product is stored. |
| Activity area | A logical grouping of bins, independent of storage type, per activity: picking, putaway, or physical inventory. Activity areas define bin sorting when warehouse orders are created, and one bin can belong to several activity areas. |
| Quant | The record of the stock of a product in a storage bin. |
The link between inventory management and EWM is made by assigning combinations of plant and storage location to a warehouse number. When the picking storage location of a delivery item belongs to a warehouse number, picking must be done in the warehouse management system (section 7.5).
Worked Example: Designing the Structure
A company has plant 1010 (production) and plant 1020 (distribution center) on the same site, with one warehouse building.
- One shipping point serves both plants because they are close together; a second shipping point in plant 1010 handles crane loading for heavy machines, because it needs different loading equipment and times.
- The first shipping point has three loading points for three ramps, assigned in the delivery header by the shipping clerk.
- Plant 1020, storage location 101S, is assigned to EWM warehouse number 1710. The warehouse is divided into a high-rack storage type, a fixed-bin picking storage type, and a goods receipt area; activity areas sort the picking bins along the picker's route.
- A sales order item from plant 1020 is delivered from the shared shipping point. Because its picking storage location belongs to warehouse number 1710, EWM creates the warehouse tasks for picking.
Tip
Remember the cardinalities: one delivery has one shipping point; one shipping point can serve several nearby plants; one plant can have several shipping points; one loading point belongs to one shipping point.
How are loading points used in delivery processing?
Assigned manually in the delivery header; each belongs to exactly one shipping point.
They are maintained in the material master and copied into each delivery item automatically.
They are determined automatically from the route and can belong to several shipping points.
They replace the shipping point in the delivery header.
In SAP EWM, what is a quant?
A logical grouping of bins for picking
The smallest addressable unit of space in the warehouse
A subdivision of a storage type for heavy or bulky parts
The stock of a product in a storage bin
Which statement about shipping points is correct according to the official course?
A shipping point belongs to exactly one plant and cannot serve other plants.
Each delivery has one shipping point, determined at item level in the sales order.
An outbound delivery can contain items from several shipping points if they share a route.
Shipping points are assigned manually in the delivery header by the shipping clerk.
Sections you finish are checked off in the contents.