Supply Chain Execution Convergence and Functionalities

Transportation, a critical link in the supply chain, is costly, time-consuming, and sometimes difficult to manage. Hence, transportation management systems (TMS) are used to streamline the transportation component of the supply chain. Transportation may have been an isolated business process in the past, but it is now increasingly considered within the context of overall supply chain and logistics processes.

There are significant changes going on in supply chain offering of SAP and the most important changes are the movement of Extended Warehouse Management (eWM) and Transportation Management (TM) into the S/4 HANA box. eWM moved into S/4 HANA box as part of the 1610 release whereas TM moved as part of the 1709 release. During this transition phase, most of us are in a state of ambiguity as both the options (Business Suite SAP TM 9.5 and SAP S/4HANA Supply Chain for Transportation Management a.k.a embedded TM) are available in the market. Before explaining the differences and analyzing the functionalities (inclusions and exclusions) of embedded TM, it is imperative to understand the concept of ‘Supply Chain Execution convergence’.