SAP BTP: Making SAP^® System Adaptation Faster, More Flexible and Efficient

In a world where speed and the ability to adapt are decisive for success along the value chain, you might wonder: How can companies remain agile and take dynamic action while designing their IT landscape to be future-proof? For any company banking on an SAP^® IT strategy, SAP BTP is the key. We took a closer look at what’s behind this SAP^® applications platform and how SAP BTP Services can be used to design logistical processes to your advantage.

As you can see, SAP BTP has numerous advantages. But how can it benefit logistics? With SAP BTP Services, you have everything at hand from analyses and AI to app development, automation and integration, all in a single environment. Let’s have a look at some specific use cases in logistics.

Expanding with automation technology always bears a certain risk when it comes to embedding it in your existing SAP^® systems. It can affect software solutions and code, regardless of whether the original implementation partner or a new SAP^® provider carries out the adaptations.

However, with SAP BTP, you can implement new applications seamlessly and maintain a clean core – no far-reaching changes required. This allows you to continue using your existing IT systems and thanks to the PaaS environment of SAP BTP, the required developments are all in one place and can be connected to the SAP^® system using standardized services. Simplified regression tests in the existing SAP^® system make it possible to implement your applications faster, more flexibly and with lower risk, significantly improving project execution planning.

At KNAPP, we offer SAP BTP Services for the integration of a range of simple automation technologies, such as our Open Shuttle AMR system or InduStore automated picking system.

SAP BTP offers a range of options for the targeted use of generative artificial intelligence, including pre-developed AI services for recurring business scenarios and tools for managing data as well as for developing and effectively managing intelligent applications.

In logistics, there are many ways AI can help. Due to the increasing complexity caused by a number of known and sometimes unanticipated factors influencing everyday logistics processes, designing process logic has become all the more difficult. But this is where AI comes into play. After creating an AI model using historical data, it provides valuable support to operations managers in their day-to-day work by helping them make decisions. At KNAPP, for instance, we have offered solutions for ideal slotting and optimizing order start in picking for quite some time.

For allocating storage locations, AI models not only factor in classic parameters such as rotation and storage capacity, but also the seasonal demand for specific goods, including weekly fluctuations due to holidays, for instance. When it comes to starting orders, the right timing is crucial to improving picking performance and reducing the overall transit time in the warehouse. AI models can help as they use the data collected while continuously monitoring the manual and automated picking areas’ capacities, thereby ensuring that orders are ideally sequenced, which improves the utilization of resources, picking times, lead times and other critical factors.

The SAP BTP Services are based on the basic AI services, which are available in SAP BTP as customized and pre-trained services. The AI services are integrated into the SAP^® system landscape according to the business case. While the clean core strategy is at the forefront in slotting, order start logic needs go deeper into the logistics processes and procedures. Instead of mapping or replicating the order start logic in SAP BTP, the customized AI-based SAP BTP Services are seamlessly interlinked with the order start logic in SAP^® EWM, providing next-level optimization. Rounding out the solution are dashboards depicting warehouse performance and maintenance, which are also supported by AI.

Our range of KNAPP solutions on SAP BTP is continually growing, not only for the integration of automation technologies but also with regard to logistics services that you can include in your value chain seamlessly. However, this development does not mean that SAP^® software modules will soon become obsolete. On the contrary, they are as relevant as ever, even though the three advantages of SAP BTP – clean core, easy integration and availability of micro services (including AI) – might make you think otherwise. In actual fact, SAP BTP Services offer clever ways to extend SAP^® software modules such as SAP^® EWM. ERP systems, WMS and WCS will never be replaced in their entirety, but SAP BTP Services reduce risk when extending modules and embed artificial intelligence in everyday operations.