A look at TM master data in SAP - SAP ERP Tutorial

- [Instructor] So this lesson is a brief overview of something Master Data that's required for a TM implementation. So master Data includes, since it's not an all-inclusive list, a location, the physical address of the locations you're shipping to or shipping from. They're closely related to what SAP calls business partners and they may be customers, players or even drivers. There typically is a pre-hard link between a say I ship to customer and a location, so that's pretty important. Products, what you're actually shipping, that's required Master Data in TM, you points and shipping points, what SAP calls are the actual typically shipped from location if you're doing outbound shipping or they may be the receiving locations if you're doing inbound shipping. Freight rates. Very important Master Data in TM. Vehicles can be your own trucks, shipping containers, the actual items that you use to ship things. We're going to talk about lanes, how TM can allow you to get your products from here to there and then some geographic attributes, zones and zone hierarchy. So quick mention of this tool called CIF. CIF is the tool to keep your Master Data in sync. So it is important to run this syncing tool to keep your customers and vendors, carriers and materials in sync. Now concept is at your R3 or S4 system is the master. You keep your data in there, make up dates to that system as you need to. When CIF runs, it actually replicates the location data or the business partner data to TM. So you run CIF in typically in background jobs to keep things in sync. How often you run those jobs to keep things in sync depends on your business. The good news is that CIF, it was kind of a crazy concept to start with but it's been around for many years, it needs to go away. It will go away, it does go away in the embedded solution. And that's a very, very good thing but if you choose to run the standalone option, you still have to have it. And I am maybe putting stuff done, maybe I shouldn't be the technology is old but it does work. And it doesn't usually cause heartburn for companies that are running the standalone option. It's just I'm never a fan of data replication when you don't have to replicate data. Location. So this where the specific physical address comes in place. TM is not happy if you give it a Post Office box. So a physical address of typically a customer or a vendor if you're doing inbound, does allow for what SAP calls one-time ship to's if you're shipping to individual consumers. You capture their address one time, you don't need to maintain a formal master of record for that. You also associated plant with a physical location. Again that key shipping address is important. By the way that physical location of plants or warehouses say across the street from each other, that becomes a very key aspect of your design. How do you deal with that? Do you consider that to be a multiple locations or one location? The question, no easy answer but it just has to be part of your discussion. A location typically one should include geocoding. If you have a GIS system, that system one of the things it will do, is populate this data automatically in your location and then that geocoding then works like Google Maps. It tells you distance based on parameters that you set up. And a location often ismapped to what we call hours of operation. So for this customer, Bliss Home, we can set up goods receiving hour so that we can only schedule deliveries for Bliss Home from say two to four p.m. on Mondays and Wednesdays and GM will recognize that and build its loads Around that constraint.