5 Things to Know: Materials Management with SAP S/4HANA Course

In this blog post, learn about our upcoming Rheinwerk Course entitled  Materials Management with SAP S/4HANA: Procurement, Planning, and Inventory from the course instructor, Jawad Akhtar.

1. What Topics Does This Course Cover?

This course provides an extensive coverage of materials management (MM) business processes within the SAP S/4HANA environment. It is specifically designed to cover the critical pillars of the supply chain: procurement, planning, and inventory management.

The course begins with the foundation of any SAP system—the enterprise structure—and expands into the daily operational tasks that keep a business running. You will explore how to run both essential and extended procurement business processes, including their various variants. Furthermore, the course delves into optimization through planning tools and handles complex inventory management processes, ensuring you understand how these elements integrate with the broader system.

The final sessions shift the focus toward the future of SAP, exploring reporting, analytics, and the specific SAP Fiori apps that have transformed how procurement and inventory data are visualized and managed in SAP S/4HANA.

2. Will This Course Give Me Technical Skills or Foundational Knowledge (or Both)?

You can expect a robust balance of both. The course is structured to provide a deep foundational understanding of MM business logic while simultaneously equipping you with the practical business processes and analytics skills required to understand and implement that logic in an SAP S/4HANA environment.

Participants will learn the "why" behind the foundations of MM—understanding how plants, storage locations, and purchasing organizations interact to form an enterprise structure. Once the theory is established, the course moves into the "how" by connecting these structures with master data setup and core procurement, material planning, and inventory management cycles.

To ensure learners walk away with immediate understanding and then its applicability, the course is designed to split between MM concepts and their applications in the SAP S/4HANA demo system. This approach ensures that you aren't just hearing about concepts, but also seeing them in real-time.

3. What Will I Specifically Learn in This Course?

The course is meticulously organized into five weekly sessions, each focusing on a specific area of the MM implementation lifecycle:

Day 1: MM Foundations and Enterprise Structure

You will start with the basics of logistics and supply chain management, emphasizing the flow of material, information, and finance. A major focus will be the high-level configuration of the enterprise structure and the initial setup of the material master and business partners.

Day 2: Procurement Master Data and Basic Processes

This week focuses on data maintenance. You will learn to create material masters across various views (MRP, Sales, Quality Management, etc.) and set up business partners in different roles, such as financial accounting and purchasing vendors. You will also cover initial procurement elements, such as purchase requisitions and quotation management.

Day 3: Essential and Extended Procurement Processes

We move into the core of purchasing, covering purchase order management, supplier evaluations, and outline agreements like quantity and value contracts. You will also explore special procurement types, including subcontracting, stock transport orders, consignment, and pipeline material procurement.

Day 4: Procurement Planning and Inventory Management

This session focuses on optimization. You will learn to set up and use consumption-based planning (CBP) and material requirements planning (MRP) basics. The course also dives into inventory business processes and briefly covers an early warning system (EWS) for timely alerts.

Day 5: Financial Integration and SAP Fiori Apps for MM

The final week bridges the gap between logistics and finance, covering invoice verification, inventory valuation, and account determination. Finally, you will explore the SAP Fiori user interface and learn to leverage standard analysis and analytics apps for procurement and planning.

4. What Should I Already Know Before Taking This Course?

To ensure all participants can keep up with the pace of the live demos and business process discussions, there are a few prerequisites. Prospective students should have a general understanding of supply chain topics and possess basic knowledge of procurement, planning and inventory management.

Because this is a hands-on course, having prior SAP GUI or SAP Fiori experience is highly desirable to navigate the SAP system effectively during the demo portions. It is important to note that the course covers topics at a high-level and is not intended to be a deep dive into every single backend setting. Additionally, advanced topics like batch management, document management, and demand-driven replenishment are out of scope.

5. Who Is This Course Aimed at and Who Is the Instructor?

This Rheinwerk Course is specifically aimed at professionals who need a comprehensive view of the MM component in an SAP S/4HANA context. This includes logistics consultants and architects, supply chain managers, procurement planners, and inventory managers.

I am the author of the global, long-running, bestselling book Materials Management with SAP S/4HANA. I’ve also authored books on production planning with SAP S/4HANA and quality management with SAP S/4HANA for SAP PRESS, among other books and E-Bites.

I bring in over two decades of SAP consulting expertise, a wealth of knowledge, and hands-on experience in implementing SAP solutions for procurement, planning, and inventory. In this course, I’ll guide you through the intricacies of the SAP S/4HANA system, from the foundational enterprise setup to the most recent SAP Fiori analytics.

Learn SAP MM in Our Upcoming Rheinwerk Course!

This course is your baseline for materials management in SAP S/4HANA. See procurement, planning, and inventory business processes in action and unlock their underlying configuration in SAP S/4HANA with this new course from bestselling MM author Jawad Akhtar! Click on the banner below to learn more and order your ticket.