Does any of you have had any experience implementing space management interface?

[joelmarcelino_tristanreb1]

Starting with the efforts to connect our external planogram system (My spaceman, Nielsen) to SAP in order to manage shelf space at stores, I haven't found so much information from reatil IT users and their experince / troubles / succes about it.

Could any of you in this community has any experience to share?

I have read help.sap documentation (LO-MD-RA & LO-MD-PL) and got the big picture about the process, but I would appreciate your feedback & recomendations.

Thanks in advance.

Joel.

[amit_tunara · Accepted solution]

Hi Joel,

Can you please let us know what data your external system expects from SAP?

Generally, we enhance the article master outbound IDoc (WP_PLU or WBBDLD) with out customer segment and put the article dimensions in the IDoc so that the external system is updated with same.

Alternatively, you can also use Layout & Layout Module where you can mention the dimension, positions, front facing quantity, maximum quantity etc. in Layout Module. You can build an interface to pass this information to external system using enhancement to populate the custom segment in outbound IDoc.

So, there can be ways to pass the data, but we should know what information your external system expects for its own processing for space management.

Regards,

Amit

[joelmarcelino_tristanreb1]

Amit,

As you said, we have identified as first step to send article master data, article hierarchy, segment, subsegment, some characteristics like odor, color, etc.

Also, support people from the external system have proposed to use .XML file as means of data interchange instead of idoc, any suggestion about it?.

As second step we have to build the standard interfase to maintain Layout Modules in both ways, from SAP to external system and viceversa, is it posible to avoid idocs in the standard interfase?

SAP documentationt mention spaceman workflow for the some of  the variant numbers, it would be used for Layout maintanance for approval process?

Thanks in advance.

[amit_tunara]

http://help.sap.com/erp2005_ehp_04/helpdata/en/F8/1B1B48E321414AA6799EC7AAEFEEAD/frameset.htm

Hi Joel,

Please study the IDocs WP_PLU or WBBDLD for article master outbound using transaction code WE60. This will give you an idea about the fields covered in standard IDoc segments. All fields which are not covered in standard IDoc, can be populated in custom segment. There are various threads available on custom segments and then populate them using enhancement.

Do you use any middleware in the interface? If yes, then the IDoc from SAP can be sent this middleware (example SAP PI) which will convert this IDoc data in required XML format. If there is no middleware, then you need to take technical help for a custom program to produce the XML file from the IDoc or the text file generated by IDoc (this will happen if you use File port in the partner profile where you specify server directly where you want to write IDoc).

Layout module interface can also be maintained using a custom  program or middleware. A custom ABAp program is required which will read layout data to and fro and generate output as per both integrated system. You have to use standard BAPIs to update and fetch the layout data.

I am not very sure, but have a look on SAP's new Enterprise services interface which might be helpful to avoid IDocs. I don't know why I am not able to insert the link here, when I attached, It came on top. Please use this link to have an idea about Enterprise Services.

Sorry, I am not aware about spaceman workflow, so you will have to wait for experts to revert on this.

I hope this will help.

Regards,

Amit

[joelmarcelino_tristanreb1]

Hi Amit,

Sharing your post with abap colleagues we have agreed using PI midleware and idocs you mentioned to get XML files would be the right way.

Regarding standard spaceman interfase, we would try the same comunication schema by means of idocs.

Many thanks.

Regards

Joel