SAP Apparel and Footwear Solution

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SAP brings best practises back in to fashion

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SAP has announced its new product for Apparel and Footwear Companies http://www.news-sap.com/sap-brings-best-practices-back-into-fashion/ This entry was posted in AFS General on January 24, 2014.

AFS : VAS In TPO

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When VAS information is present in TPO and PTO, the same information shall be copied into TPO/PTO Item text as VAS text. This shall include VAS information for the item and VAS information specific to schedule lines. This VAS text shall flow in follow-on documents Purchase Requisition and Purchase Order respectively. VAS information shall be present in print output as well as purchase order IDOC TPO VAS This entry was posted in AFS MM and tagged VAS on June 5, 2013.

AFS VAS in Purchase Order

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The attached document shows how to maintain VAS in Purchase order for SAP AFS VAS In PO This entry was posted in AFS MM and tagged AFS, Purchase Orders, VAS on June 5, 2013.

AFS 6.6 Released

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AFS 6.6 was released to the market and is available for download in service market place. Service.sap.com -> Software Downloads -> Industry-specific Components SAP APPAREL AND FOOTWEAR SAP APPAREL AND FOOTWEAR 6.6

This entry was posted in AFS General and tagged AFS General on May 24, 2012.

AFS Material Conversion

Leave a reply AFS Material size conversion enables you to display the grid values determined in the system differently. It changes how the grid values are displayed in AFS grids or applications. It is customizable with the following parameters

User Parameter (J31 is the user parameter) Customer / vendor Id Material Id

Sales order, Purchase order, Sales Requirement List etc are some applications where conversions are applicable.

Customizing

In the Customizing step you define the conversion logic for dimension values. This means that you can define different rules regarding when the conversion should take place and how the system should convert each individual dimension value with a specific conversion type.

You can execute the conversion based on one of the following criteria or on a combination thereof:

Customer/Vendor User Parameter Material (only for item-dependent conversion)

Note

Remember that the conversion is also dependent on the characteristics of the grids and the dimension values.

Customizing in SPRO

Define conversion indicators -> New entries

In this step you must first define the conversion types and then the dimension value conversion.

That means that you create a connection based on a conversion type between the dimension values and the conversion value during the line and grid entries.

Save

-> Define Conversion Indicators

New Entries

In this step you first define the conversion indicator and then assign the conversion types.

1. Defining the Conversion Indicators

You define the conversion indicators and specify whether each is a material indicator or a customer/vendor indicator.

Hint

You do not have to explicitly maintain the user indicator, but rather you can define it in the user parameter J31.

2. Assigning Conversion Types

Define which conversion types can be used depending on the combination of the material, customer/vendor, and user indicators.

Using the sequence number you can define several conversion options for the same combination of indicators and specify an option as the default with the sequence number 0.

The system uses the following sequence during the search: Sequence 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Legend: x = exists, = does not exist Material ID x x x x Cust./Vendor ID x x x x User ID x x x x -

Note The combination of indicators with the number 0 is always the default value. The system automatically uses the default conversion types in AFS applications. That means that you have to select non-default conversion types manually in order to see the values with these conversion types. The dimension value conversion can only use the conversion types that have been assigned for one of the above mentioned combinations of indicators.

Note : We can maintain conversion depending on three factors

1. Material Id 1. Vendor Id 2. Customer Id

Currently Material id is not supported from AFS for 5.0, 6.0 and 6.3 as standard. But we provide modification notes for customers for this functionality. From 6.4 onwards, it is again made as standard.

Assign Conversion Types -> new Entries

(Here we associate the vendor Id and the conversion type)

The conversion Id which is maintained need to be associated with the vendor.

XK02 -> Purchasing organization data

In the purchasing data screen,

Menu -> Environment -> AFS Zusatzdaten

Maintain the vendor Id here.

Create characteristics

In change mode, click on Conversion

New Entries

Maintain the conversion values for the characteristic values

Create a grid. In J3ah , the conversion should be ticked.

Material SL_MATERIAL created.

Create purchase order with vendor KK_VENDOR

The conversion SK_CONV is picked by default.

values also

from the conversion button.

Maintaining Material Conversion using Customer ID

For maintaining Customer ID, the conversion indicator should be of type Customer and the id need to be maintained at customer master

XD02 -> AFS Additional data

Maintaining Material Conversion using Material Id

Material id is maintained in Material master

Maintaining Material Conversion using User ID.

1)

2)

3)

4) Maintain Conversion Type

5)

6) Maintain data as follows:

7) CT04 -> kk_size -> Conversion

8)

9)

This entry was posted in AFS General on December 11, 2011.

Value Added Service

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VAS stands for Value-added Service. It is an operation performed on materials, which

enhances their value, worth, functionality or usefulness.

In a customer scenario, the customer might request some specific service to the goods before they are delivered.

Some examples being

1. Company logo printed in a t-shirt 2. Special packing of the shirt 3. Labeling the material
For meeting the demands of such customer requirements, Value-added services are created in the AFS system. At any point of the sales cycle, VAS information is required and should be displayed to the user.

Mainly there are two types of VAS information

1. VAS Data not tangible 2. VAS Item tangible item

Creating a VAS item

Creating a value-added material is similar to creating a normal AFS material with item category Group set to J3AV. (In sales order 2 tab)

When creating a Sales order for the Material (the normal material, not the VAS material), we will have to consider VAS items also.

The Actual application of value added service for a particular material or customer happens in the warehouse, the warehouse personnel needs to be informed about the value added service that needs to go in for a particular order. This is done through determination of VAS in the delivery note.

VAS Types

There are three types of VAS

Ticketing / Labelling Packing Special Services

We will have to use Conditioning technique for VAS Information.( Tx : J3A9 Maintain condition data for VAS. Select Sales organization and customer and maintain the data. )

Ticketing / Labelling

Enter the details and also maintain the text. one to one mapping of main material and the VAS material

Packing

Not one to one mapping Maintain PO2, Material and also the increment

Special Services

Same as that of ticketing It could be some services together with a tangible item

Condition Records

Attaching VAS data to an AFS material

Tx : J3A9 , Condition Type : VAST , Select : Sales Area , Customer . Enter the sales area, and then customer number and press Tick/Labelling. Enter the VAS Material. Select the check box SD indicator so that item wil be created when entered in the sales order Also Select Select : Sales Area , Customer and material and enter the VAS material

SD indicator is set. Which means that VAS item will be created when saving a sales order.

VAS In sales order

VA01 -> enter the customer and material, the VAS data will be picked from the material depending on the condition records which are maintained.

Save the sales order. Standard Order 13478 has been saved.

It can be seen that VAS data is picked. This depends on the customizing maintained in the customer master and also in the order type.

Note : In order to create VAS items, Select the item, Navigate to Menu -> Goto -> Value Added Services -> Create New item J_3ABDSI requirements are created

In AFS MD04 , we can see that requirements are created for VAS items also

VAS Data

VAS data is not MRP relevant. The customers dont keep track of VAS data.

Create a sales order and maintain VAS data

Database

table

J_3AVATL

Allocate the order and create delivery.

In the delivery document, Select the tab AFS Item overview and select GoTo -> Value added services -> Ticketing. VAS data will be displayed. Now the database table will have two entries.

Customizing for VAS

1. Customizing in Customer master need to be maintained for the VAS data to be picked up
automatically

1. Customizing in order level

SPRO

For order type : OR

1. Item Categories

For TAN,

Help.Sap.com link for VAS

http://help.sap.com/saphelp_erp2005/helpdata/en/96/f317f1fdeaad4fa0c2275f68af5a1f/frameset.htm

This entry was posted in AFS General, AFS SD on December 10, 2011.

Master Data in AFS

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SAP AFS has enhanced standard SAP R/3 data structures to facilitate the handling of potentially very large volumes of data. These enhancements derive largely from the size and seasonal requirements of the industry and relate to the building of product levels based on style/color/size as used throughout the logistical cycle.

A grid has been developed to support these specific enhancements and safeguard high levels of performance. This tool ensures that as styles change from season to season, the enormous number of stock keeping units (SKUs) can still be maintained quickly and easily. In addition to grid dimensions, you can further specify product characteristics by categories. Categories provide an additional layer of detail, allowing you to segregate levels of quality, customer segments, country of origin, and so on. The SAP AFS management of categories has been further enhanced so that category fields can be flagged as being relevant to certain applications in SAP AFS (for example, for planned requirements consumption, bill of material maintenance, or sales status). Material Grid An AFS Material grid can be visualized as follows.

More information about Grids can be found at the post AFS Master Grid. This entry was posted in AFS General and tagged AFS, Master Grid, SAP Apparel and Footwear onNovember 21, 2011.

MTO (Make To Order) scenario

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Make-to-order production is a production cycle that guarantees that a material is produced exactly according to the requirements of one customer. In the case of AFS , MTO scenario is more or less similar to standard, with one exception of an ARun happening at background for the sales order. A special customizing need to be set to mark that explicit ARun is not necessary for MTO orders, rather it will happen during delivery creation. First we will see how an MTO order is created. Create Sales order Execute transaction VA01 and create a sales order of Order OR. After entering the material change the Item Category to JMT2.

Enter all the remaining fields which are necessary and then save it. Lets see the status of the orders requirement in AFS MD04. Enter the material, plant and Order number and press enter

We can see that the order is in Blocked status now.

Execute MRP We will have to carry out MRP (/AFS/MD02) to proceed with the processing of the sales order. Depending on the business process, the Items of the sales order will be manufactured in house or

procured from outside. And depending on the setting, AFS MRP will be create a Planned order or a Purchase Requisition. In this case explained today, we are going to talk about in-house production. Which means that when we execute MRP, a Planned Order will be created

We can see that for the sales order, a planned order is created. Create Production Order Now we will have to create a Production Order with this Planned order. Right click on the Line and select the entry Planned order to Production order.

Click on Generate Operation

Release and Save Order number 1012912 saved Goods Receipt The Goods which are manufactured should be entered in to the system. For that we can use Goods Receipt (Tx: MIGO)

Check and Post Once the goods receipt is done, Stock has come to our warehouse and it is assigned to the Sales Order. This can be seen in the Stock Requirement List (/AFS/MD04).

It can be seen that the stock is an E Stock (Sales order stock). This is also called Order assigned stock. This stock can be assigned only to the sales order for which it has been created. Create Delivery Once the stock is there in the warehouse, we can create a delivery using VL01N or any other similar transactions. Note : In the MTO scenario, ARun happens at background during delivery creation. As ARun is mandatory for an AFS material, we will have to maintain a customizing setting in SPRO mentioning that this order-to-cash cycle is without explicit ARun. SPRO customizing path is SPRO -> Logistics Execution -> Shipping -> Deliveries -> Define Delivery Item Categories for AFS. The flag MTO/PTO w/o ARun should be set

This entry was posted in AFS SD and tagged MTO, SAP AFS, SAP Apparel and Footwear Solution onNovember 21, 2011.

AFS Master Grid

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AFS Grid is a data structure which has been developed for the AFS solution for maintaining huge amount of SKUs. It consists of characteristics. AFS Characteristic (Dimension) is a property of the material. Dimension values are the possible values of the dimension. There are two different types of Grids 1. Master Grid 2. Application Grid Master Grid is used for entering all the grid values in which the material can occur. You define one master grid for each of your AFS materials in the AFS Basic Data view in the material master An Application Grid is always a segment from a master grid. Using application grids you specify which of the grid values that you have permitted for your material in the master grid you want to purchase or sell. When you create an application grid, you must refer directly or indirectly to a master grid.

Create a Master grid

Execute transaction J3AH Enter the Mat. Grid type as M and the name of the grid. And enter the characteristic with which the Grid should be made up of .

And press Enter. The screen AFS Create Master Grid Basic and Dimension data is displayed. You can enter the description of the grid here.

For maintaining the dimension values (or Grid values), click on the Create Dimension Values button which is displayed in the bottom left corner of the screen. A pop up window is displayed with the values of the characteristics. Select the characteristic values which you would like to select and click OK

The next screen is displayed with the selected grid values. Check the values which you need to

activate Save it.

More information on Master Grids can be found at help.sap.com This entry was posted in AFS General and tagged Master Grid, SAP Apparel and Footwear Solution onNovember 18, 2011.

AFS O2C Scenario

1 Reply We will see how Order to Cash scenario is handled in AFS. AFS works almost the same way as that of standard with an additional step of Allocation wherein we do hard allocation of stocks to the sales order. Lets see the steps one by one

1 . Creating a Sales order

Prerequisites : Customer, Sales organization and all the basic organizational data is already created in the system

Step 1 : Execute transaction VA01 and enter the Order type : OR. Create Standard Order screen is displayed.

Step 2 : Enter the Sold-to-Party, Ship-to-Party and then enter the AFS Material. For an AFS Material, the quantiry should be entered at the grid level. Hence navigate to the grid entry screen and enter the quantity.

Step 3 : Enter all the remaining data which is required for making the sales order complete.

Step 4 : Save the document. Note down the sales order number.

2. Checking the status in AFS MRP

Execute the transaction /AFS/MD04 and enter the material for which the sales order was created and the plant information. The SKU information is displayed as Blocked requirements. Which means that that much quantity of the Material SKU is blocked for the particular Sales order.

Note : If there is stock in the system, the stock will be temporarily assigned to the Sales order and it will be shown in the tab T Temporary Assigned Stock

As currently there is no stock in the system, we will have to put some stock via MB1C or similar transaction. Now if you run MRP, we can see that the stock is temporarily assigned to the sales order.

The status is T Temporarily assigned Stock.

3. Allocating the Order

ARun (or Allocation Run) is a mandatory step in the O2C scenario in AFS. Allocation was introduced to make sure that the stocks are assigned to the orders depending on the changing fashion trends. Allocation make sure that the particular stock is assigned to an order and is not consumed by any other Sales Orders.

Execute transaction J3AT and choose the allocation type. Here , I am choosing 0001. Now press enter.

Enter Plant and material in the Material tab and in the Sales tab, enter Sales order number. Give a future date in the Open to Delivery field.

Execute. Allocation Run reuslts will be displayed.

Save it and the allocation is succesfully carried out.

Now if you check the status of the order in AFS MRP, we can see that the order is changed to F Fixed Assignment. Which means that the stock is fixed to the Order.

4. Creating Outbound Delivery

Execute transaction VL01N and enter the shipping point and the Sales order number. In the case of AFS materials, delivery can be created only after Allocation Run has happened.

The delivery is created from the items of the sales order, with the grid entries created as batch split items in the delivery. Picking can be carried out here and also PGI can be done.

5. Checking the Document Flow

All the documents which are created as part of the order to cash scenario are linked as in standard and it can be displayed via Document flow in the Sales order or Delivery document.

VA02 -> (Sales Order number) -> Menu item -> Environment -> Display Document Flow. All the documents will be displayed.

In short, the Order-to-cash cycle is

1. Create Sales order (VA01) 2. If there is no stock, go Goods Receipt (MB1C) 3. MRP Run and see the status (/AFS/MD04) 4. Execute Allocation Run (J3AT) 5. Outbound delivery ( VL01N) 6. Post goods Issue. ( VL02N) 7. Billing (VF01)

This entry was posted in AFS SD and tagged AFS, Allocation Run, ARun, Sales Order, SAP Apparel and Footwear Solution on November 17, 2011.

SAP Apparel and Footwear

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Fashion is one thing that will never stop changing, there are designs being churned out just about everyday, a new design needs to go through the entire cycle from design to development to delivery at the shortest time possible to make sure the market is still there for it, thats how fast paced this industry is.

What more, with the complexity of having different customer demands from different regions and to match and satisfy this, it just makes the whole process more cumbersome and to say the least, close to creating a chaotic situation.

The many demands of the AFS industry places a crushing strain on the IT system that is to support it, which is why it is very important that the right IT System that can withstand this pressure is selected for the job.

With the general perception that any IT system that would cater to this requirement is likely to be complex too, let look at what SAP has to offer with its unique Apparel & Footwear solution. First of all, we need to understand that SAP AFS Solutions in itself is a new addition comparatively to the other SAP Industry Solutions available. However, it is one of those solutions that have come through leaps and bound to cater to the requirement of an industry that demands a lot.

Take for example a NIKE T-Shirt which has 3 different fabrics, more than 3 colors, many NIKE swooshes (by the way this initially cost the NIKE Founders $35 to get it done) with an excellent finish to it, a cool hang tag, a stunning heat seal and of course, the price tag attached to it.

Remember, all these items in the Nike T-Shirts were miles apart from each other, perhaps in different continents to say the least, just maybe a few days before it arrived at the store. Now imagine the amount of coordination and commitment that would have gone into producing this finished good, thats where SAPs AFS Solution comes into the picture.

The SAP AFS Solution provides the right tools to manage your entire supply chain from the initial purchasing of raw material to the final delivery of the finished product.

It supports the large amount of transaction processing in the system that is only normal in this industry. The Bill of Material would have at least a 6 level hierarchy for a simple one piece garment with no designs or maybe even no buttons, Ill let it to your imagination to guess the structure of a BOM for the Nike T-Shirt mentioned above.

SAPs AFS Solution helps in maintaining the right on time coordination with suppliers and customers, the different agreements laid out with them and the most effective purchasing and payment integration methods.

It is also of utmost importance that the right planning tool is made available in this environment so that production and procurement are done right on time to meet the deadlines, using SAP AFS PP, MM and SD, with the flexible master data structure it is simply a matter of defining dimensional matrices with an unlimited number of dimension combinations for purchasing, production, and sales.

Inventory & Warehouse Management are other 2 very important areas in which the SAP AFS Solution stands out, given the nature of the industry where a low value item such as a plain white button could be eating up a high amount of overhead and holding costs, it is only obvious to make sure that these items are brought in only when they are needed, if this is just for buttons, how important would it be to track 100s of layers of fabrics brought in for production, thats precisely where you would want a system to keep you on the dot !!!

With world famous brands such as Adidas, Reebok, Fornari and Triumph in their customer lists, it just goes to show how highly the SAP AFS Solution is regarded.

You can learn more about this solution at

http://www.sap.com/industries/consumer/large/businessprocesses/afs/npdi.epx

help.sap.com link

http://help.sap.com/saphelp_afs63/helpdata/en/b2/53ae56cda511d2aca20000e829fbfe/frameset.htm

This entry was posted in AFS General and tagged SAP AFS, SAP Apparel and Footwear on November 16, 2011.