Abstract
The handoff between the warehouse and the shop floor is one of the most important design areas in an SAP Extended Warehouse Management (EWM) implementation, but it also receives little attention. This paper considers how EWM supports manufacturing replenishment and production staging and connects these capabilities with existing research on assembly line feeding and warehouse replenishment. It looks at two EWM integration approaches: delivery-based production supply and advanced production integration using the Production Material Request (PMR). The paper compares these approaches and examines how their master data and process designs fit the needs of process and discrete manufacturing. It also looks at established concepts such as kitting, line stocking, just-in-time supermarkets, and forward-reserve replenishment. This comparison shows that EWM configuration is not simply a collection of system settings, but a practical way to address well-studied logistics and material-flow problems. The paper concludes by looking at the operational benefits of moving from paper-based processes to system-directed staging supported by radio-frequency confirmation. These changes can lead to productivity improvements of around a quarter and safety-stock reductions of roughly a fifth to a third.