Help needed to understand business process irrespective of SAP

[Former Member]

Hello all,

I am an engineer with specialization in electronics and telecommunication. The topic of RFID is thus fascinating for me hence,I have been reading SAP AII for some time now. The components of RFID like tags, readers and communication between them is known to me upto some extend but the business process that SAP AII supports/ implements/ automates are new to me because of which I miss the big picture of SAP AII.

The material I have been reading on SAP AII describes many such process e.g. goods issue, goods return, slap and Ship, logistic process etc. I find it difficult to comprehend these business processes as I think they are described mainly in jargons/ terms (jargon for me) like "delivery processing", "delivery document", "Shipping document", "handling unit", "outbound and inbound process", "goods posting" and numerous similar terms. Moreover I think the explanation is SAP specific.

I feel I should take a top down approach to understand SAP AII and for this I first need to understand the business process in generic/ standard terms. Once they are clear I guess I would be able to understand SAP RFID solution.

I request you all to guide me. Am I taking the right approach? If yes please help me understand the basic business process. Pointers to some good douments or any other resource explaining standard business process will definately help.

Thank You

[Former Member]

You can understand business processes in general from help.sap.com itself.

For eg go to help.sap.com and key in Outbound Delivery Processing. And there you go. You can get good documentation on the basic stuff from there.

Thnks

[Former Member]

Hi Gaurav,

You are very correct that being a technical person you find difficulty in understanding jargon terms of SAP.

Let me explain you the scenario:

There are two sides to SAP

1) Functional - Understanding of Business Processes

Here there are two parts:

a) Business Process With Respect To SAP AII - These processes generally deals with RFID technology that happens in warehouses, disribution centers and are close to technological world. These deal only with SAP AII

b) Business Process With Respect To SAP R/3 - These processes deals with SAP AII when integrated with backend systems like SAP R/3, SAP WM or other systems. These talk about the end to end scenario of RFID. Like you pointed out, delivery processing, etc.

Understanding of Core that is part a above and a bit basics about b will be very helpful.

2) Technical - Understanding SAP AII

Here also two parts are there:

a) Understanding RFID as a technology with SAP AII - Deals with understaning technological viewpoints on RFID and mapping it to SAP AII. Example Devices, Tags, Device Controllers, Middlewares and their representation in SAP AII.

Most important is above part

b) Understanding Technological part of SAP itself - For example, ABAP, BAPI, BADI etc.

So this is how it works. You are going very correct and follow above things.

Please revert if you have any specific questions.

Thnks