Get tips to enhance your sales processes with sales and distribution (SD) configuration techniques that ensure your business requirements, partner preferences, and process steps are reflected from the sales order through shipment delivery. Step through a demo that shows you how to set up partner roles and functions starting with the customer master, and define relationships within your sales transactions. Find out how to capture and carry text not only at the sales order level, but through to the carrier for shipment. Learn how to leverage copy control functionality with simple-to-add ABAP™ code, so it not only controls data flow between processes, but also functions as a process check for sales order fulfillment. Learn, via a demo, how to decipher SAP customization settings to optimize your sales order cycle.

• Session presented by: Rajen Iyer, Kryaa/Krypt, Inc.

Determine if and how you could use SAP Business Planning and Consolidation to consolidate your company’s planning cycles and increase forecast accuracy with an integrated planning approach. Learn how SAP Business Planning and Consolidation integrates data from your SAP ERP software to synchronize 7 individual planning processes — portfolio, sales, supply, capacity, profitability, investment, and cost center planning. Walk through 5 steps, starting with the definition of a common planning hierarchy, for aligning these 7 planning processes with your overall forecasting, financial planning, and budgeting activities. See how to integrate portfolio planning to include new product sales projections and sales history. Understand how to configure SAP Business Planning and Consolidation to translate logistical plans in real-time into a rolling sales forecast based on capacity restraints. Learn how the adjusted forecast compares to actuals and then translates the logistical forecast into a sales plan to determine ongoing profitability margins.

• Session presented by: Jan Wouters, Capgemini

This session offers a new look at strategies and SAP tools for sales and operations planning (S&OP). Hear how S&OP activities are now being used for strategic processes, as a tactical planning tool, and to support broader integrated business planning (IBP) activities. Examine an S&OP framework as part of the IBP process to learn how SAP applications can support your S&OP activities as your processes grow and change over time. Find out how SAP SCM functionality can be used to achieve the right balance between supply and demand. Determine whether SAP tools for supply chain performance management would help you better monitor your supply chain activities. Preview new capabilities for S&OP that enable the integration of sales forecasting and demand, supply, and financial planning within a single application. Get a glimpse into soon-to-be-released collaborative tools for consensus demand and to generate an associated supply plan at an aggregate level.

• Session presented by: Tod Stenger, SAP Labs

This special 3-hour session highlights the capabilities, requirements, advantages, and potential savings of using SAP functionality for transportation management. Examine the core capabilities available through your SAP ERP environment, including functions within the logistics execution suite (LES) and the sales and distribution module. Learn how these differ from SAP APO functionality for transportation planning and vehicle scheduling and what capabilities are offered in SAP Transportation Management (SAP TM). Find out how freight negotiations, transportation planning, transportation monitoring, and freight payment are mapped and configured within these applications. Step through criteria to help you determine if you should fund a transportation management project. Learn how to create a strategic implementation roadmap based on your transportation management maturity level and other SAP solutions in your landscape. Understand the possibilities, requirements, and challenges of integrating SAP functionality for transportation management with the systems of your suppliers and customers. Leave this session with valuable tips for project success, such as addressing master data concerns before you start.

• Session presented by: Chris Moose, IBM and David DeStefano, IBM

Take a detailed look at the functionality that is now available with SAP TM. Assess whether or not it could serve as your full service transportation platform, whether you are a shipper from the manufacturing industry, a logistics service provider, or a freight forwarder. Learn how the new SAP TM industry-independent approach could save you time, lower costs, increase visibility, and improve business partner collaboration. Understand SAP TM rule-based planning and how it ensures the optimal management of freight contracts, ordering, tendering, booking options, dispatch and execution — automatically. Step through a demo that shows you how SAP TM tracks goods as they move through the supply chain with a shipment-based export scenario. Find out how the new standard SAP TM interface enables users to compare, enter and integrate external freight rates (no more storing rates!) into the planning process. Take a look at the future roadmap for SAP TM, including plans to integrate it with the SAP Business Suite.

• Session presented by: Bjoern Bernard, SAP Labs

This special 3-hour session offers a comprehensive introduction to SAP functionality for supply network planning (SNP) and expert recommendations for optimizing your SAP set-up. See demonstrations and explore the features, operation, and data requirements of SAP functions for heuristic- and optimization-based planning, capacity leveling, capable-to-match (CTM), multi-level supply and demand matching, and vendor managed inventory (VMI). Understand how SAP functionality for supply network planning interacts with SAP functionality for demand planning (and with other SAP applications). Learn what roles and skills to include when implementing SNP functionality. Examine hardware sizing, implementation, and cross-system integration requirements. Get best practices to prepare users for working with SNP functionality. Delve into lessons learned from customers who have implemented, and are now using, SAP solutions for supply network planning.

• Session presented by: Vinay Sumant, BearingPoint

Assess the latest version of SAP Easy Document Management, delivered with SAP Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) 7.0, and determine whether its new user-friendly interface could help your team simplify document handling. See how new features, like the new file monitor, offer increased stability and improved performance while navigating between folders and documents. Step through a demo that shows you the integration that is now possible between SAP Easy Document Management and Microsoft® Outlook®. You will see steps for storing emails and attachments as original documents, as well as storing Microsoft Outlook metadata through document classification. Learn how to use an access control list to ensure data is secure and controlled. Preview new features, including a built-in rollout process that is designed to reduce implementation time.

• Session presented by: Renato Zadro, SAP

Find out how to configure SAP APO to create an effective safety stock strategy that ensures you have physical safety stock available without exhausting your resources and that results in better managed capacity. Get expert tips for leveraging SAP APO functionality for safety stock calculations and for incorporating forecasting data into these calculations. You will also learn the best ways to manipulate and edit advanced safety stock calculations based on demand and supply variations and how to better meet your customer service-level targets. Learn how to configure SAP APO algorithms so that safety stock production is automatically updated whenever demand changes. See a demo that shows you how to configure “what-if” inputs, such as how many weeks of stock to carry over and for how long.

• Session presented by: Saroj Tripathi, Bristlecone

Learn how to use the global ATP product allocation capabilities within SAP APO to prioritize inventory and ensure it goes to the right customer at the right time. Understand how product allocations within SAP APO demand planning tables integrate with global ATP functionality to give you a real-time view of what will be available to your customers. Learn how to handle “no supply” situations by using capable-to-promise functionality to seamlessly integrate shop-floor capacity with order commitment. Find out how to simulate temporary planned shop-floor orders, which are assessed against the available capacity of the manufacturing plant, in order to trigger an accurate commitment date for the customer order. Understand the master data architecture requirements to ensure your SAP APO and SAP ERP software are properly integrated.

• Session presented by: Parijat Chakraborty, Falcon Prime

Examine different constrained and non-constrained subcontracting scenarios that use SAP APO functionality for supply network planning (SNP) to increase visibility into material and vendor capacity constraints. Review a standard sub-contracting process starting with the master data integration from your back-end system via the core interface (CIF) to SAP APO. View a demo of a heuristics planning run and capacity leveling that models a subcontractor production capacity scenario, and follow the entire process through execution in SAP ERP, as the requisition is then converted into a purchase order. What if components are supplied to the subcontractor by a third-party vendor? See how to set this up in SAP APO by modeling the transportation lane between the vendor and subcontractor. Look at another scenario that compares CTM and optimizer planning engines. Get modeling tips to constrain and allocate hard-to-find components to create finished goods in outsourced assembly situations and to prioritize selected types of demand.

• Session presented by: Matt Campbell, K2 Professional Services

This session explores sales and operations planning (S&OP) and its impact on risk management activities, profitability, forecast accuracy, inventory turns, customer service levels, and capacity utilization. This session also offers you the opportunity to study the common pitfalls that lead to costly inventory write-offs, under-utilized assets, and unhappy customers. Step through a demo that shows you how two SAP solutions support S&OP — SAP APO and SAP Sales and Operations Planning (SAP SOP). Learn how the two can be used together to support a best-practice, integrated S&OP process. Evaluate SAP SOP functionality for central collection and analysis of planning data. Learn how to use these SAP solutions to address key S&OP issues, including unsynchronized forecasts and unaligned supply plans. Look at best practices your peers have used to support S&OP. Leave this session with 8 best practices for deployment and process optimization.

• Session presented by: Tom Cassell, IBM Global Business Services

Step through a roadmap for implementing SAP RPM and cProjects as a combined toolset to support the review, approval, and prioritization of new products for production. Get tips for jointly leveraging these applications to consistently track and evaluate staff resources across multiple projects and business lines. Find out how to deploy SAP RPM dashboards and analytics, which can incorporate intelligence from disparate systems to enable continuous monitoring of your portfolio’s performance. Understand how SAP NetWeaver Business Intelligence (SAP NetWeaver BI) can be used in conjunction with these applications to report on key product, production, and business information and drive effective product portfolio management and critical decisions. Explore best practices to incorporate project-cost actuals, forecasts, baselines, and other key performance indicators (KPIs) from across your entire portfolio into your strategic product decision-making process.

• Session presented by: Parag Joshi, LeverX

Learn how to make the leap from being a good company — one able to sustain high customer service levels by ensuring there is always extra inventory on hand to fulfill orders — to a great company that is able to meet and exceed customer service levels while reducing inventories. Learn to balance these competing forces by taking charge of your SAP master data settings in order to successfully manipulate the rules that govern this balance. Learn how to use standard SAP integrated service-level monitors, reports, and MRP functionality as a practical way to manage and measure lead times against inventory. Obtain ideas for using SAP solutions to extend your supply chain, put product information at your customers’ fingertips, and consequently drive and sustain increased service levels.

• Session presented by: Martin Rowan, Reveal

While the integration of sales, inventory, finance, and controlling components within your SAP installation is of great value, it is often not clear how to assign responsibility for processes that are integrated across these components. Learn how material movements impact general ledger postings, and how to assign proper ownership to ensure that these postings are clean. Examine which fields drive financial postings made by sales and distribution (SD) and materials management (MM) transactions. Understand how the key sources of material movement postings — sales order deliveries, purchasing goods receipts, and plant material movements — all impact general ledger postings, and find out how to control these postings by automatic assignments. Understand how financial, SD, and MM transactions can sometimes get out of sync, and learn how to detect and correct such problems. Take home useful lists, including sources of SAP documentation, key SAP reports, and supplementary resources that you can use to better integrate your financial and operational processes.

• Session presented by: Rick Anderson, Deloitte

Ensuring an accurate, real-time view of projects and supply chain data in your SAP ERP system requires the timely entry of data from numerous points in the system, which can be tedious, time consuming, and prone to errors. Discover how StyleMark applied Winshuttle software to offer a streamlined way for business users to load Microsoft Excel data into its SAP environment without the need for any custom programming. Find out how the company was able to maintain IT control and data security. Learn how the easy integration of Microsoft Excel data into SAP applications could result in benefits such as easier creation of transactional data, reduction in demands for manual data entry and application development resources, and availability of timely and accurate data for project and supply chain planning, logistics, and execution.

• Session presented by: Gene VanCleave, StyleMark

Walk through a business process matrix for sorting out and mapping your business process requirements to SAP software that support inbound, outbound, and intercompany transportation. Understand key similarities, differences, benefits, and tradeoffs of:

• Logistics execution functionality that is available with SAP ERP
• Transportation planning and vehicle scheduling functionality that is available with SAP APO
• Transportation management functionality that is available with SAP TM

Learn how these capabilities work independently or together and the technical and implementation requirements of each. Understand how SAP absorbed transportation management offerings into a standalone solution with the goal of improving delivery performance, capacity utilization, carrier tracking, and freight costing. Leave this session with a knowledge of the SAP roadmap and support strategy for existing and future transportation capabilities.

• Session presented by: Debbie Kaplan, SAP

Gain a better understanding of the ways SAP Advanced Planning & Optimization (SAP APO) supports demand planning. Examine the data structures, architectural and technical dependencies, forecasting tools and models, and techniques used to execute forecasts. See how SAP models for statistical, causal, consensus, and exception-based demand planning work, and understand the strengths and limitations of each model. Learn the best ways to leverage SAP functionality to accurately forecast demand for new product introductions, life cycle and promotional planning, and phase-in and phase-out products. Look at the different forecasting methods — univariate, causal analysis, and composite — and understand how your choice affects the sizing and configuration of SAP APO. Step through a demo that shows you how to use SAP statistical forecasting models and macros to forecast demand for a product throughout its life cycle.

• Session presented by: Tod Stenger, SAP Labs

Component substitution poses a critical challenge to the ongoing accuracy of your forecast and procurement planning. This session presents a rarely used but highly effective method to stabilize the material requirements planning (MRP) process by using BOM explosion numbers at the time of the demand inputs. See how to use MRP functionality to customize a BOM. Find out how to assign the same BOM explosion numbers created during the forecast to the manufacturing BOMs at the time of actual production, instead of after numerous engineering changes. Understand how this ensures that components used during actual manufacturing are exactly the same as those procured based on a forecast, thus eliminating obsolescence and shotgun procurements. See a demo that shows you how to configure the MRP planning process in SAP ERP and where to assign the BOM so that your forecast is based on the explosion number instead of on the planned order start or finish date. Find out how to customize reports to view the production plan and orders based on the BOM explosion number.

• Session presented by: Sobhan Vemulapalli, RadInnova

Compare the procurement functionality with three SAP solutions:

•   SAP SRM
• SAP E-Sourcing
• SAP ERP functionality for materials management purchasing (MM-PUR)

  Determine the best choice for your organization as you examine key differences, similarities, and functional overlaps and the potential impact each poses to your business strategies and IT infrastructure. Step through a demo that compares MM-PUR purchase order processing with the SAP SRM shopping cart. Walk through the source-to-contract process in SAP E-Sourcing from a user perspective, and compare its SAP ERP to those of SAP SRM. Explore implementation pre-requisites and issues for each solution, including hardware and landscape requirements, common user adoption issues, and performance management concerns. Compare master data management protocols and integration implications for each option. Come away armed with the facts needed to build a reliable and realistic business case for the right SAP procurement solution.

• Session presented by: Dan Harmon, CIBER

Determine if and how you could use SAP Spend Analytics to get a clear picture of how much you are spending with different suppliers, and on what materials. Learn how to aggregate spend-relevant data from multiple heterogeneous systems and load the data into SAP Spend Analytics using a simple user interface. View a demo of how to easily build reports from a cache of 150-plus templates, and get a look at the dashboards that present performance metrics. See how spend data is cleansed and classified against multiple product hierarchies for in-depth analysis. Find out how the briefing book, displayed in a dashboard, enables you to drill down and refresh hierarchies automatically. Learn how to set up user-defined metrics, conditions, and alerts to track KPIs that are critical to the success of your sourcing strategy. Understand system dependencies between SAP Spend Analytics and other applications, such as SAP SRM and SAP NetWeaver Business Intetlligence (SAP NetWeaver BI).

• Session presented by: Emily Rakowski, SAP Labs

This session describes in detail how two leading companies are utilizing SAP software to make significant planning, forecasting, manufacturing, and supply chain improvements within their business. Find out how Chemtura, a major chemicals company, uses SAP Supply Network Collaboration (SAP SNC) and SAP Advanced Planning & Optimization (SAP APO) to increase forecast accuracy by planning collaboratively with suppliers. Get real-world insights from how lighting manufacturer Philips Lumileds uses SAP Manufacturing Integration and Intelligence (SAP MII) to compile real-time data from 400 machines and multiple IT systems into accurate reports, all without any custom development. See how SAP MII delivers plant visibility and integration to help customers focus on the concept of the perfect plant by optimizing manufacturing assets and increasing performance in alignment with your business objectives.

• Session presented by: Mahesh Nagar, Sperry Swiss Business Consulting

This session provides instruction for setting up and using SAP Event Management to track the status of sales orders, from order creation through fulfillment and billing. Understand how (and when) SAP Event Management receives notification of unplanned deviations and issues an alert in the form of an email or workflow trigger. See how you can review and analyze the status of sales orders using the web-based reporting features of SAP Event Management. Examine your options for deploying SAP Event Management. Examine an implementation template that can help you set up SAP Event Management to monitor your end-to-end order-to-cash activities, from order creation to proof-of-delivery, taking into account unexpected events, such as credit on credit off. Ensure your implementation is successful with useful tips presented in this session and leave with recommendations for defining reporting needs and resolving performance issues.

• Session presented by: Kevin Wilson, Q Data USA

This session offers an updated overview of the three SNP methods available with SAP APO: optimization, heuristic, and capable-to-match (CTM). Examine their capabilities, requirements, and differences. Take a detailed look at the SNP optimizer and the capabilities it offers to create cost-effective purchasing, production, and distribution plans. Gain insights that will help you determine when to use linear or discrete optimization to solve potential planning problems. Step through a demo that shows you how to implement SNP functionality and learn the best ways to set up safety stock levels and lot sizes, calculate set-up times, and determine the cost implications of the choices you make. Leave this session with modeling tips and expert recommendations to solve performance and sizing challenges.

• Session presented by: Eric Simonson, SAP Labs

This session offers you the opportunity to evaluate practices and metrics that other companies are using to measure the efficiency of processes in the areas of:

• Perfect order attainment
• Demand accuracy
• Order cycle time
• Order fill rate
• Adoption of transportation management technologies
• Warehouse management technologies
• New product development
• Supply chain costs
• B2B collaboration
• Logistics agility
• Outsourcing of freight
• Reconciliation and payment
• Supply chain synchronization

Review industry averages and get guidance to help you assess your own organization’s performance. Take home worksheets to build and monitor your own key performance indicators.

• Session presented by: Chris Moose, IBM

Evaluate SAP’s strategy and capabilities for Continuous Product and Service Innovation (CPSI). CPSI represents a set of extended business processes that can help companies improve responsiveness to market trends and customer needs, leverage the right resources and expertise across the enterprise and business network, execute efficiently, and consistently manage performance. This session also offers you the opportunity to examine applications from Business Objects, an SAP company, and to see how they can be used to aggregate and analyze product performance measurements, project pipeline information, operational metrics, market trends, and competitive and customer intelligence. Learn new ways to improve the ongoing selection, scoring, monitoring, and review of interdependent project ideas, schedules, resources, and workflow. Find out how to support integrated concept development, which transforms an idea into a product. View a demo of a product and service performance dashboard, and determine whether you could use it to assess the strategic impact of your new product initiatives and investments.

• Session presented by: Rob Bush, SAP

This session highlights the SAP settings and purchasing-automation decisions that can improve warehouse service levels and reduce operational costs. Learn how inventory averages can decline, inventory turns can improve, and service levels can increase when applying standard material requirements planning (MRP) and purchasing functionality from SAP. Most businesses push for the automation of purchasing transactions while the responsibility for inventory levels is left to the warehouse director or manager, with limited success. Find out how to use ABC analysis and dual classification, standard SAP functionality to quickly identify the materials that best achieve these results. Learn to leverage standard SAP tools to analyze your inventory and identify fast-moving, high-average materials. Find out how to implement MRP policies in SAP solutions that can help you control lot sizes and frequencies. See how standard consumption graphics from SAP can be used to measure and control results. Learn new ways to pinpoint the exceptions to the rules you have established on a daily basis.

• Session presented by: Joseph Grobler, Reveal

Explore how the full scope of SAP APO production planning and detailed scheduling software can be used to create a medium-term production plan where supply matches demand, as well as to create feasible short-term production plans. Learn how to use this component’s optimization techniques to minimize production delays and improve resource utilization. See how the production planning and detailed scheduling functionality integrates with detailed scheduling for material requirements planning to minimize master data set-up in SAP APO. Understand the implications of using capable-to-promise processing when creating a production order. Look at the new industry-specific functionality that allows you to reserve capacity on bottlenecked resources, depending on the specific criteria of your business. Get a sneak peek into planned SAP APO features, including resource networks, modeling and planning with task restrictions, and characteristics-based cross-location planning.

• Session presented by: Eric Simonson, SAP Labs

Most companies enjoy a short honeymoon phase after their SAP implementation or upgrade goes live and then fall into the mode of maintaining the status quo rather than continuing with improvement and value optimization. This session offers countermeasures to avoid this fate, and instead integrate your SAP solutions into the strategy for running your supply chain and your business. Uncover little-known tips and tricks to effectively use SAP ERP functionality to plan, analyze, and execute a truly integrated supply chain. Examine an easy-to-use model that will allow you to assess your own business’s SAP maturity and understand how to bring supply chain management processes into congruence with the SAP functionality that supports them. See how you can consistently use SAP solutions to get a handle on inventory, improve service levels, reduce operating costs, achieve better end-to-end visibility, and increase user adoption and confidence. Walk away with the tools to nurture a continuous SAP optimization mindset to achieve long-term return on investment (ROI).

• Session presented by: Martin Rowan, Reveal

Find out how SAP LPO connects your customers’ real-time demand forecasts to shop-floor systems. See how SAP LPO provides visibility into your manufacturing operations to pinpoint high-value and wasteful activities according to lean principles. Learn how to apply lean push-pull philosophy to adjust the production rate and synchronize your core SAP ERP production planning solutions with the rest of the supply chain. Understand how these processes reduce volatility in the upstream internal and external supply chain. Find out how your peers leverage SAP LPO to reduce lead times, increase response times, and rapidly match supply and demand across multiple manufacturing scenarios — from high-volume/low-mix to low-volume/high-mix and from build-to-stock to build-to-order. Understand how SAP LPO and SAP MII can enable communication with your back-end system to get real-time updates on master data and inventory, demand, and production transactions.

• Session presented by: Sunil Roy, SAP Labs

This session evaluates three mobile technologies that can be used to collect warehouse data in real-time and offers advice to help you pick the best option for your needs. Find out how to leverage SAPConsole in conjunction with industrial data collection applications. See how this can help you avoid the complexity of browser-based screens. Discover how the Mobile Web Dynpro Java development environment uses a model-based approach for automating code generation, reducing development time while still providing design flexibility. Understand how this solution is targeted for Web-based business applications and supports real-time mobile data collection. Learn the requirements to successfully implement a data collection solution, including proper application design, an effective user interface, and tight integration between the host and mobile system.

• Session presented by: Calvin Fidler and Chris Schultz, PEAK Technologies

Learn how to optimize supply chain performance with standard SAP decision support tools and reports for stock analysis and for monitoring supply chain exceptions and process performance. Hint: Standard is the emphasis — these SAP tools come out-of-the-box. You have them, you’ve paid for them, now use them! See how your counterparts are able to extract value from their SAP ERP software to ensure that supply chain exceptions are reported at shorter intervals, making problems easier to address. Drill down into standard analytic reports that reflect the historic results of process and exception actions to identify inventory that is fast moving, slow moving, or dead. Learn how SAP supports the setting and monitoring of KPIs as a way to measure performance improvements at an organizational and individual level.

• Session presented by: Keith Searls, Reveal

Implementing SAP ERP functionality for warehouse management (WM)? This session provides sound input and proven recommendations for leveraging and implementing WM functionality. Take away project tips on how to prepare your organization, and select and sustain your implementation team. Understand how to create a warehouse blueprint in order to optimize your implementation and ensure you extract the full value from day one. Examine the WM core functions and elements of the warehouse structure such as, warehouse control, material movement, planning and storage types, and sections and bins. Get expert advice on how to avoid the pitfalls that many first-time implementation projects face. Leave this session knowing the critical elements of a successful WM implementation so that you can start early and finish on time!

• Session presented by: Chrishawn Spackman, Solutions On Site (SOS)

A well-designed bill of materials is key if you plan to use SAP ERP functionality for variant configuration. This session provides a step-by-step technique to do this. You will also learn how to deploy variant configuration functionality in accordance with your requirements for production planning, sales and distribution, costing, and engineering operations. Learn when and why you should examine these questions:

• Do you need a BOM for single usage, a flat BOM (single configurable level), or one with multiple configurable levels?
• Should it be a group BOM across plants, or should it be plant-specific?
• Do you want to keep sales and manufacturing as separate BOMs?

Take away an evaluation matrix to help you map your landscape, requirements, and business processes to the right BOM configuration. Put it all together and learn how to properly configure variant configuration rules to support these options. Learn methods for BOM consolidation, setting up a prototype, and testing against requirements using simulation capabilities.

• Session presented by: Sobhan Vemulapalli, RadInnova

Walk through ways to model different scheduling constraints for your multi-variable planning environment using the production planning and detailed scheduling functionality (often referred to as the PP/DS component) in SAP APO. Understand the multiple product attributes or bill of materials (BOM) variables to consider when configuring the set-up matrix for these optimization tools. Step through a real-world consumer products industry implementation of this functionality. Understand how to use common parameters to formulate the algorithm for combined, multiple scheduling constraints. Examine the different options for constraint planning, such as block planning, heuristics, or optimizer, as well as master data configuration requirements. Get tips to help determine which techniques to use and how to combine them depending on shop-floor scheduling rules. Learn the master data architecture, dependencies, and prerequisites for integration with your logistics data within SAP ERP.

• Session presented by: Parijat Chakraborty, Falcon Prime

This session shares implementation challenges and configuration techniques from the project team responsible for deploying SAP EWM at a multi-site organization. Look at the obstacles the team encountered as it configured the system to enabled efficient operational support for distribution to retailers and end customers. Understand how these two vastly different channels required the system to support both full pallet shipping and picking for parcel shipping. Examine the integration challenges faced by the project team in order to integrate a third-party manifest system with 4 different ERP systems. View a demo that shows you how the RF transactions operate to support picking. You will also have the opportunity to look at the operational reports that are available with SAP EWM.

• Session presented by: Chris Moose, IBM

Do you know where you are going with your supply chain career? Are you setting your own career direction, or is it being dictated to you? Did you unexpectedly stay too long in a project and, now that major tasks are winding down or your company increases outsourcing, you’re exposed to changes that require you to reestablish your career direction? Do you see current industry trends threatening your relevance to the organization? This session provides a background to the business and technology trends that could affect you and a framework to help you analyze your career. Set the guideposts to determine where to take your career and how to get there in light of the present and future business and technology climate. Find out how to objectively analyze the business environment and align your future goals with the latest trends. Take home new ideas for keeping your skills fresh and staying afloat in an increasingly competitive global talent pool.

• Session presented by: Chris Moose, IBM

The very nature of an SAP project requires a team that works well together from the very beginning to the end of the project. Understand the dynamics of individuals as opposed to teams, and learn how you can use these dynamics to increase productivity and ultimately ensure the success of your SAP project. Improve your personal effectiveness by increasing your knowledge of your individual working and communication styles, and learn to assess and understand the style of the people with whom you work. Examine the ways in which people interact with each other on SAP projects and how these interactions can impact their personal effectiveness. Take home a practical model and simple language for understanding workplace dynamics, communication differences, and other skills critical for team success. Use these principles to reach your SAP finish line with a strong, energized, and winning team.

• Session presented by: Doug D. Whittle, Whittle Consulting Group

Find out how to leverage short-term (even daily!) forecasting and replenishment functionality using SAP SNC within a VMI environment to ensure your product is in the customer’s hands when needed. This session lays out the options for using VMI for replenishment across an SAP landscape, with a focus on VMI mapping using SAP SNC. Walk through scenarios for automatic replenishment, measurement of transit quantities, and increased degrees of stock level visibility. Understand how supplier data is integrated with VMI using the SAP NetWeaver platform. Understand the pros and cons of data integration options, such as the limitations of EDI within an SAP ERP landscape, and determine the best option for you. See how to use VMI to map outsourcing scenarios, such as release processing, purchase order collaboration, and agreement confirmations.

• Session presented by: Ashwini Gautam, Value Consulting

Step through a VMI implementation scenario that shows how a vendor continuously and automatically replenishes a trading partner’s inventory, streamlining collaborative inventory and order fulfillment. Learn how SAP APO functionality for demand planning and supply network planning integrates with SAP ERP and vendor systems via EDI to replenish stocks, generate purchase orders, and enable truck load building. Learn, via a demo, how to forecast demand, plan promotions, and manage the product life cycle based on the shipment history. Learn how to set up replenishment planning steps, including net requirement calculation, deployment, and the load building process. See how the purchase order is automatically issued by the supplier to the customer for approval. Get tips to measure and consistently improve forecast accuracy. Learn how to set up alerts that trigger planners to position inventory to remain in the green zone. Take home a guide to map 8-step Collaborative Planning, Forecasting and Replenishment (CPFR) process within SAP APO for more effective collaboration.

• Session presented by: Saroj Tripathi, Bristlecone

Whether you’re new to SAP APO, considering an upgrade or expanded usage, or simply want to fortify your understanding of SAP APO, this session will prove invaluable. Get an up-to-date look into the many components within SAP APO — how they are used individually, together, and in conjunction with SAP ERP for supply chain planning. Learn how statistical techniques for demand planning can be used to create forecasts based on various causal factors, such as demand history. Hear how SAP APO functionality for supply network planning is used to model a supply network that can fulfill estimated sales volumes according to demand planning forecasts. Take a new look at SAP APO functionality for production planning and detailed scheduling (often referred to as PP/DS component) and SAP software for creating executable production plans and schedules. Understand what capabilities are now available for global available-to-promise (global ATP). Determine whether SAP APO reports, analytics, and alerts could provide greater insight into your supply chain activities and performance. Get a sneak peek at new SAP APO functionality that will be available with the latest release of SAP Supply Chain Management.

• Session presented by: Eric Simonson, SAP Labs

Determine whether the latest version of SAP RPM could be used to provide better support for your Phase-Gate product development process. See how the new SAP RPM architecture improves product data flows within your system by closing the loop between portfolio management, operational project management, and staffing of resources. Take a detailed tour of new features and functions delivered with SAP RPM, including:

• Improved closed-loop resource management
• Labor cost planning
• Generation of operational role demand
• A metrics tracker
• SAP Interactive forms by Adobe fact sheets
• Template support
• Change documents

Learn how to better manage and govern the front end of continuous product and service innovation using decision flow management. Step through a demo that illustrates how new closed-loop resource management supports efficient staffing processes and the optimal management of Stage-Gate processes.

• Session presented by: Markus Rosemann, SAP AG