Challenges in the Apparel Industry and SAP’s Solutions for them – Article 2

By S.Suren

As promised in my previous posts I have posted this article to give you more insight into the challenges faced by companies in the Apparel & Footwear Industry and how SAP AFS Industry Solution caters to them.

Excess/redundant inventory or Stock shortages/out of stock

This is quite a familiar occurring scenario in the AFS Industry. It is understood that given the variations in demand patterns in this industry it is likely that the related functions of apparel manufacturers such as procurement and production will have to cater to these variations as much as possible in the most efficient manner.

Given this condition SAP AFS has some useful functionality that caters to these needs:

Material Substitution – This is a function in SAP Sales & Distribution that allows substitution of one material for another within a sales order. The importance of this functionality is that by allowing for substitutions during times of more than expected customer demands, the company can avoid lost sales and helps increase and maintain/or customer satisfaction with on time deliveries.

Availability Check – This is standard function in SAP which helps to identify if there is are available stocks to satisfy the schedule line’s requirements based on the delivery date. If there is not enough stocks it would then check when there will be enough stocks available and will confirm a new delivery date based on the availability.

Over/Under delivery tolerance levels is a standard functionality that SAP provides to avoid having shortages or excess stocks in your inventory. With SAP AFS this can be monitored at SKU level.

ATP Check with the AFS Component – With this function you can view whenever the item is either not available or not completely available in the system. With SAP AFS you can view this information from the system on an AFS Overview Screen that shows the availability status at the SKU levels. With the AFS component multiple schedule lines can be checked during ATP runs at SKU Levels.

Reservation in MM – This standard function allows you to make reservations on certain materials so that it can be used at a later date for a special purpose. This way you can avoid the stock outs that could occur in the future when demand is higher than expected and there is not enough specific stocks to meet the demand. With SAP AFS this processing of reservations can be done at SKU Level.

I shall keep posting more on this area in the future. Hope you found this posts informative.

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Have a nice day !!