1) SAP Materials Management
Providing inventory, materials, and warehouse management capabilities, SAP Materials Management (MM) is one of the most critical modules in SAP Manufacturing. This is the module that allows you to order, collect, purchase raw materials, and invoice, all in one place. MM is the go-to module to ensure that materials are stocked and that there are no gaps or shortages in the supply chain.
At the center of MM is your master data, which is stored and manipulated in master data tables. These master data types include work center, materials master, bill of materials, and routing information. This data is used to create transactional data in your ERP, making it easy to create sales orders.
2) SAP Production Planning
SAP Production Planning (PP) is another essential module that allows you to plan the manufacturing, sale, and distribution of goods. It can be configured for many different industries and supports specialized manufacturing types, such as discrete, process, and repetitive manufacturing.
Similar to SAP MM, PP stores and manipulates centralized master data tables. These are then used to create transactional data in your ERP, so that you can create a production order in PP, a purchase order in MM, or a sales order in SD.
Here’s an example of how that might work. Let’s say a production order is created in PP. The module takes master data from MM about the materials needed for the order, which is then used to create a sales order in SD. All that’s happening in one system with real-time data.
3) SAP Sales and Distribution
And now we arrive at SAP Sales and Distribution (SD). This core module allows you to manage and store all your customer and product data (i.e., shipping, billing, invoicing, sales orders, etc.)
SD enables the order-to-cash process. In one common setup, SD creates sales quotes before a customer order is placed. After the order is placed, the product is shipped from the warehouse and delivered to the customer, and an invoice is generated for your accounts receivable to handle the payment. SD handles all of this process, sending the required information to other modules within SAP as needed.
The essential master data types in SD include pricing, materials, and customer information, and this data can also be customized depending on your company’s requirements. The beauty of SAP is that it provides the data for every step of the manufacturing cycle, from order production to fulfillment and invoicing.
