Where could your warehouse save time and avoid extra work? These seven SAP EWM practices help you identify what to change and how to check the results.
You’ve been asked to make your warehouse more efficient: process more orders, keep shipments on schedule, and keep costs under control. Where do you start?
Ask the team to take on more work? Overtime may help you get through a busy week, but relying on it adds to labor costs and can leave employees looking for a less demanding job. Hire more people or buy more equipment? Both can add capacity, but if work is held up by missing stock or crowded packing areas, you could end up paying more while the delays continue.
Before adding resources, look at how the warehouse uses those it already has. This is where SAP Extended Warehouse Management (SAP EWM) can help. It uses information about stock, storage locations, and warehouse tasks to guide goods movements and organize work.
If you already use SAP EWM, review whether its capabilities could help address the problems your team faces each day. If you are planning an implementation, those problems can help you decide which capabilities you need and how to set them up. In both cases, start by understanding what SAP EWM can do for your warehouse.
What SAP EWM Can Do for Your Warehouse
SAP Extended Warehouse Management (SAP EWM) manages stock and goods movements inside a warehouse. It records where products are stored, creates tasks for receiving, putaway, picking, and shipping, and updates their status as employees confirm the work. Supervisors use that information to see what is complete and where help is needed.
The complexity of this work determines which capabilities a warehouse needs. Basic EWM covers core execution and inventory control. Advanced EWM adds functions for coordinating larger workloads, determining product placement, analyzing labor time, and controlling automated equipment.
For embedded EWM, which runs within SAP S/4HANA, the main differences are:
|
Functional area |
Basic EWM |
Advanced EWM |
|
Receiving, storage, picking, packing, and shipping |
✅ |
✅ |
|
Stock tracking and inventory counts |
✅ |
✅ |
|
Mobile scanning and operational monitoring |
✅ |
✅ |
|
Picking waves: grouping work and scheduling its release |
❌ |
✅ |
|
Slotting: determining suitable storage parameters |
❌ |
✅ |
|
Labor planning and performance analysis |
❌ |
✅ |
|
Direct control of automated warehouse equipment |
❌ |
✅ |
|
Yard management |
❌ |
✅ |
For embedded EWM, the choice between Basic and Advanced EWM depends on the functionality each warehouse needs. Advanced capabilities require the appropriate license and configuration, and availability may vary by SAP S/4HANA release.
A site with straightforward receiving, storage, and shipping processes can use Basic, while another that needs wave planning or equipment automation can use Advanced. This helps you focus configuration, training, and support on the capabilities each team will actually use.
Here’s how these capabilities can help your team get more work done with fewer delays and errors.
Receiving and shipping
Creates tasks from delivery requirements and tracks completion, helping teams coordinate handovers and identify unfinished work.
Inventory control and mobile scanning
Captures movement confirmations and count results where employees work, reducing manual entry and helping keep stock locations accurate.
Product placement and rearrangement
Uses product and demand data to guide storage decisions and relocation, helping reduce picking travel and use suitable space.
Replenishment
Creates work to supply picking locations from reserve stock, reducing interruptions when replenishment is completed before goods are needed.
Wave management
Groups work and schedules its release, helping planners balance picking demand with packing capacity and dispatch deadlines.
Warehouse management monitor
Shows stock, tasks, and delivery progress together, helping supervisors investigate delays without gathering information from several teams.
Labor management
Compares planned and actual effort, helping managers refine staffing plans and investigate activities that take longer than expected.
Value-added service
Documents instructions for labeling, repacking, and kitting, helping employees meet customer requirements with less rework.
Quality inspections
Connects inspection results to subsequent goods handling, helping prevent unapproved stock from moving into use or shipment.
Yard management
Tracks transportation units between checkpoints, parking areas, and doors, helping teams coordinate loading and unloading.
Automated material flow
Sends instructions to equipment controllers and responds to reported faults or capacity limits, reducing manual coordination of automated movements.
These capabilities rely on accurate data, realistic settings, and consistent execution. A replenishment task will not prevent a picking delay if it is created too late or left unfinished. The best practices below explain how to make those conditions part of daily warehouse work.
7 Best Practices to Make SAP EWM Work for Your Warehouse
The practices below help you align SAP EWM’s data and settings with daily warehouse operations and maintain that alignment as products, workloads, and requirements change.
#1 Agree on the process before configuring it
Before configuring SAP EWM, walk through the warehouse with the people responsible for receiving, storing, picking, and shipping goods. Ask them to explain each step, including where work stops and why. This helps you determine which steps are necessary and which create avoidable work.
A pallet may wait at a transfer point because different equipment serves the next area. In that case, keep the handover and agree who collects the pallet, how they know it is ready, and how they confirm the move. If the stop has no operational purpose, check whether it can be removed.
Use this review to agree on the process SAP EWM should support. For each step you keep, define the responsible person, the completion confirmation, and the response when the work cannot proceed as planned.
#2 Give warehouse data clear ownership
SAP EWM uses product and warehouse data to make operational decisions. If this data isn't correct, it may lead to misleading instructions or wrong decisions. Moreover, these errors can recur across many tasks until someone corrects the source.
Validate the data against physical products and locations before using it in daily work. Focus on:
- Units of measure and conversions between pieces, cartons, and pallets.
- Product and packaging dimensions.
- Storage settings, bin identifiers, and labels.
- Batch and shelf-life information where relevant.
Warehouse product data and packaging specifications influence storage, stock removal, and other warehouse processes, so ownership needs to continue after implementation.
Assign an owner to each data group and define who checks and updates it when products, packaging, or storage conditions change. Warehouse staff should also know whom to contact when system data does not match what they see on the floor. Regular cycle counting also helps identify differences between physical stock and SAP EWM records. Assign responsibility for investigating recurring discrepancies and addressing their root causes.
#3 Design storage and picking routes around the work
Imagine your warehouse handles several popular products, such as coffee, tea, and sugar. You place them close to dispatch so employees can pick them without walking far. Because these products sell quickly, their picking locations need frequent replenishment. Pickers and replenishment vehicles now share the same busy aisles. If there is too little room for both, the shorter walk comes with a new delay: waiting to reach the goods.
To avoid this congestion, consider placing popular products in several accessible picking areas so employees do not all need the same aisle. If space is limited, schedule replenishment before the busiest picking periods where stock capacity allows. The choice depends on whether you have more flexibility in product placement or replenishment timing.
Once the physical arrangement works, reflect it in SAP EWM’s activity areas and bin sorting so task sequences follow the routes you have tested. If you use slotting to propose storage parameters, review the results against the same space and access constraints before activating them. This helps keep system-directed work practical on the warehouse floor.
#4 Give receiving teams usable information before arrival
Receiving teams need advance shipment details to prepare space, equipment, and people. If that information is missing or inaccurate, goods can wait at the dock while employees resolve questions that could have been answered before arrival.
Build receiving preparation around three checks:
- Delivery information: Agree with suppliers on which details must arrive in advance and how changes will be communicated. Where advance shipping notices are used, check that quantities and packaging identifiers reach the inbound delivery correctly. SAP EWM uses this document to support receiving, so errors can disrupt both preparation and execution.
- Discrepancy handling: Assign responsibility for unexpected quantities, unreadable labels, and missing documents. Receiving staff can then contact the right person immediately instead of leaving goods waiting while they search for help.
- Inspection requirements: Define where goods awaiting inspection should go and what follows acceptance or rejection. Clear handling instructions and appropriate stock statuses help prevent those goods from being treated as ready for use.
#5 Coordinate replenishment with picking demand
Review replenishment settings before promotions or other expected increases in orders. SAP EWM can calculate replenishment from minimum and maximum stock levels or from open order requirements. Settings that cover a normal shift may leave too little stock available during a peak.
If the picking area has room, increase the quantity held there to cover the expected demand. If space is limited, plan several replenishment trips and reserve staff and equipment for them. Also check the time needed to complete each trip so replenishment starts while there is still enough stock for picking.
#6 Plan work through to dispatch
This is a pretty common situation when a picking wave is already finished but the shipment still leaves late because packing or loading cannot keep up.
SAP EWM wave templates support release timing and capacity limits. Set these using the capacity of the whole outbound flow, including:
- Operators and handling equipment available for the shift.
- Replenishment needed before picking.
- Packing, labeling, and checking requirements.
- Staging space and loading time.
If completed picks accumulate at packing, releasing more work may increase the queue without increasing shipments. That's why you should check the configured limits against observed performance.
Where the Labor Management module is used, compare planned and actual effort to refine future releases. Additionally, account for differences in travel, products, and handling requirements so the comparison helps explain delays.
#7 Connect monitoring to a clear response
When picking falls behind before a shipping deadline, the supervisor needs to find out what is holding it up. Configure the Warehouse Management Monitor to help them move from the affected delivery to its unfinished tasks. This makes it easier to identify where intervention is needed.
For this purpose, agree on who handles each type of problem and when to escalate it. If picking is waiting for replenishment, for example, the supervisor needs a clear contact who can check the pending move and arrange its completion. Without that responsibility, the delay may remain visible on the screen while no one resolves it.
Also record the cause and action taken so repeated delays can inform future planning. If replenishment regularly holds up the same dispatch window, review its timing and available resources.
Warehouse KPIs: How To Check That Performance Is Actually Improving
Read these KPIs together to check whether an improvement in one activity benefits the whole operation.
|
KPI |
ASCM reference point |
How to use it |
|
Order fill rate |
97–98% |
If it falls, check stock availability and replenishment before assuming the picking team is too slow. |
|
Picking productivity |
120–175 pieces or cases per hour for an average picker |
Compare similar products, picking methods, and equipment. Check that higher speed does not increase errors. |
|
Order accuracy |
99.5–99.9% for top-performing operations in the source |
Track incorrect products and quantities alongside output to identify work that later requires correction. |
|
On-time in full (OTIF) |
98–99% |
Separate warehouse delays from transport delays: dispatching on time does not guarantee delivery on time. |
These benchmarks are provided by the Association for Supply Chain Management (ASCM). But you should consider that their applicability depends on warehouse type, order mix, measurement definitions, and operating conditions.
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Conclusion
Getting more from your warehouse starts with understanding where time is lost and what causes the extra work. SAP EWM can help address those problems when its data, settings, and workflows reflect how your team operates.
LeverX helps you connect those operational needs to SAP EWM, whether you are planning an implementation or improving an existing system. Our team can configure warehouse processes, integrate the systems involved, and help employees adopt the new workflows.
Talk to LeverX about the warehouse challenges you want to solve and the changes needed to address them.
