Grainger's SAP EWM Implementation at a Large,

Highly Automated Distribution Center

James Kress - Business Systems Manager, Grainger
M. Brian Carter - EWM Practice Manager, SAP America, Inc

Goals For Today

Provide an overview of SAPs Extended Warehouse

Management Solution
Understand who Grainger is and how our story may be
relevant to you.
Present opportunities to learn from our successes, our
oversights and overall experiences with the implementation
of EWM in large, complex distribution center environments.
Create connections that last beyond this event to enable us to
help each other moving forward.

History of SAP Warehouse Management

Extended Warehouse Management Overview

Outbound Processing

Material Flow System Architecture

About Grainger

$9 billion
in sales in 2012

2.0MILLION

Global Operations

ACTIVE CUSTOMERS

United States
Latin America

715
branches
27
distribution
centers
22,400
team members

Canada
Europe
Asia

Named to 2013 FORTUNE 100

Best Companies to Work For
list

15th Largest e-retailer in

US and Canada

2.7 Billion
IN E-COMMERCE SALES IN 2012

Access to 1 million +
Products

Grainger Products

Logistics Network

Systems Landscape

Systems Landscape

EWM Instance 1

ERP

EWM Instance 2
EWM Instance 3

Performance

Maintenance

Risk Mitigation

11

EWM to WCS Integration

EWM & MFS

Starting point for us with our

first install
Overall MFS is very robust
but was overkill for our
design. Our strategy was to
focus on the WMS and allow
the Hardware Vendor to
focus on the WCS
Utilized MFS for
communications (telegrams)

EWM & Web Services/PI

For our Goods To Person

(GTP) we migrated to Web
Services for a better fit
Volume
Ability to bundle records
into a single message

Recovery /Speed
Improved restart ability
Real-time (No delay)
communications after
outages

Why SAP EWM?

Supports strategy for a stable and agile

Warehouse Management System
(WMS) platform
Ability to leverage strategic SAP
partnership
Allows native integration with other
SAP components and modules
Capability to take advantage of SAPs
continued product investment
Maintains long term hardware and
software vendor relationships

Project Approach

Blueprinted a US Distribution Center

baseline template with phased in
functionality
Completed the SAP EWM installation at a single pilot
distribution center (Greenfield)
Went live with a SAP EWM solution that integrated with
Goods To Person (Currently in ramp up)
In the process of Rolling out to the remaining network
(Converting existing facilities)

Graingers EWM Installations

Patterson, CA

Both Greenfield Locations

Conversion of existing
facilities in process now

Minooka, IL

EWM DCs Key Statistics

Patterson DC

800,000 sq ft
4.5 miles of conveyor
200,000+ items

Minooka DC
1,000,000 sq ft
5+ miles of conveyor
Good to Person integration
500,000 items projected

Major Warehouse Processes

Bin Module (Small Parts Storage)
Integrated with the conveyor to
move items
Leveraged zone put away and
picking

Bin Carton
Utilized hundreds of
thousands of bin locations
Used a mixture of fixed and
non-fixed locations

Major Warehouse Processes cont.

Reach/Pallet
Reach One item
per location
Pallet Multiple
cartons per pallet

Packing and Consolidation

Optimized work areas
characteristics
Enabled the ability to
dynamically add or reduce
stations

Major Warehouse Processes cont.

Shipping Label (Print and Apply)
Enhanced documentation
handling
Enabled fully automated labeling

Small Package Trailer Loading

Permitted multiple small parcel
trailers to be shipped daily
Utilized automated conveyor
extensions

Goods To Person

Development Approach
No core modifications to base SAP EWM code
Utilized on-shore and off-shore developers
Conducted technical code review with SAPs Max Attention
for some of our more complex enhancements
Key EWM Enhancements for Grainger

Wave Management (Flowco)

Streamlined Receiving
Picking and Outputs
Slotting

Successes - Training

Successes - Testing

Successes - Testing
Integration Testing
Executed 100+ test scripts
Performed multiple tested cycles with all test scripts
Volume Performance
Executed using automated testing tool
Performed multiple cycles at 200% of peak volume
Performed with SAP SMEs monitoring (Max Attention)

Production Validation
Production test with live data
Testing Included:
Conveyor system
Printers/Output Management
RF Devices

Oversights Key Learning

We underestimated the transition of regular SAP ABAP
developers learning the object oriented ABAP utilized by EWM
More emphasis should have been placed up front on the
In House knowledge and understanding of the
configuration options
Would have benefited from tighter
controls over customization and
scope changes post Blueprint
Lack of master data management
caused delays in testing and resulted
in additional rework

Best Practices

Connections

Additional Resources

LEARNING POINTS

THANK YOU FOR PARTICIPATING

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SESSION CODE: 3103
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