R/3 Functional Modules:

R/3′s applications are modules. They can be used either alone or combined with other solutions. The integration capability of these applications increases the benefits derived for any company.

Logistics

Logistics comprises all processes involved in purchasing, materials management, manufacturing, warehousing, quality management, plant maintenance, service management and sales and distribution. All applications access a shared consistent database, supported by production data management.

• SD: Sales & Distribution – SD actively supports sales and distribution activities with outstanding functions for pricing, prompt order processing, and on-time delivery, interactive variant configuration, and a direct interface to profitability analysis and production.

• PP: Production Planning and Control – PP provides comprehensive process for all types of manufacturing: from repetitive, make-to-order, and assemble-to-order production, through process, lot and make-to-stock manufacturing, to integrated supply chain management with functions extended MRP || and electronic kanban, plus optional interfaces to PDC, process control systems, CAD and PDM.

• PS: Project System – PS coordinates and controls all phases of a project, in direct cooperation with Purchasing and Controlling, from quotation to design and approval, to resource management and cost settlement.

• MM: Materials Management – MM optimizes all purchasing processes with workflow-driven processing functions, enables automated supplier evaluation, lowers procurement and warehousing costs with accurate inventory and warehouse management, and integrates invoice verification.

• QM: Quality Management – QM monitors, captures, and manages all processes relevant to quality assurance along the entire supply chain, coordinates inspection processing, initiates corrective measures, and integrates laboratory information systems.

• PM: Plant Maintenance – PM provides planning, control, and processing of scheduled maintenance, inspection, damage-related maintenance, and service management to ensure availability of operational systems, including plants and equipment delivered to customers.

• SM: Service Management – SM provides highly integrated customer service functionality to compete in today’s global markets.

• PDM: Product Data Management – PDM supports in creating and managing product data throughout the product life cycle.

Financials

Financials is a suite of integrated financial application components encompasses all aspects of financial accounting, investment management, controlling, treasury management, and enterprise controlling.

• FI: Financial Accounting – FI collects all the data in company relevant to accounting, providing complete documentation and comprehensive information, and is at the same an up-to-the-minute basis for enterprise-wide control and planning.

• CO: Controlling – CO is a complete array of compatible planning and control instruments for company-wide controlling systems, with a uniform reporting system for coordinating the contents and procedures of company’s internal processes.

• IM: Investment Management – IM offers integrated management and processing of investment measures and projects from planning to settlement, including pre-investment analysis and depreciation simulation.

• TR: Treasury – TR is a complete solution for efficient financial management that ensures the liquidity of worldwide company, its structures, financial assets, profitability and minimizes risks.

• EC: Enterprise Controlling – EC continuously monitors company’s success factors and performance indicators on the basis of specially prepared management information.

Human Resources

HR provides solutions planning and managing company’s human resources, using integrated applications that cover all personnel management tasks and help simplify and speed the process.

• PM: Personnel Management – PM is a complete solution for personnel administration, recruitment management, travel management, benefits administration and salary administration.

• OM: Organizational Management – OM assists in maintaining an accurate picture of organization’s structure, no matter how fast it changes. It is systematic and forward planning tool that considers the final effects of all personnel events, thus it’s complete solution for personnel cost planning.

• PA: Payroll Accounting – PA addresses payroll functions from a global point-of-view and gives the capability to centralize payroll processing or decentralize the data based on country or legal entities.

• TM: Time Management – TM is integrated with payroll accounting, controlling, production planning, plant maintenance, project system, external services and shift planning. It provides with a variety of standard reports that will assist in tracking and analyzing employee time with completeness and accuracy.

• PD: Personnel Development – PD assists with planning, monitoring, and analyzing scheduled seminars, training courses, and business events, registration and booking, price determination and invoicing

Further Descriptions and Explanations

In the past, many program teams were organized along module lines, so that you would have a FI/CO, an MM and a HR team, for example. Training courses were often prepared and delivered along module lines too. The result of this was that solutions were frequently optimized along module lines, with less focus on higher-level integration. Users were pretty much trained up in a module and left to get on with it post go-live. Fortunately those days are mostly passed, and more and more programs (from design to build to training) are being organized along process lines such as:

Order to Cash (including parts of SD, FI-AR and probably TY as well)

Purchase to Pay (including MM-Purchasing and FI-AP)

Record to Report (FI-GL etc)
SAP is now moving away from describing their system as a set of modules, and now are using the term ‘solutions’, which seems to be more accurate. If you visit SAP’s website (as we recommend you to do) you will find that they have structured their Solutions tab as follows:

•  Financials

•  Human Resources

•  Customer Relationship Management

•  Supplier Relationship Management

•  Product Lifecycle Management

•  Supply Chain Management

•  Business Intelligence

Here is the list of modules as described by SAP:

FI Financial Accounting – essentially your regulatory ‘books of record’, including

•  General ledger

•  Book close

•  Tax

•  Accounts receivable

•  Accounts payable

•  Consolidation

•  Special ledgers

CO Controlling – basically your internal cost/management accounting, including

•  Cost elements

•  Cost centers

•  Profit centers

•  Internal orders

•  Activity based costing

•  Product costing

AM Asset Management – track, value and depreciate your assets, including

•  Purchase

•  Sale

•  Depreciation

•  Tracking

PS Project Systems – manage your projects, large and small, including

•  Make to order

•  Plant shut downs (as a project)

•  Third party billing (on the back of a project)

HR Human Resources – your people, including

•  Employment history

•  Payroll

•  Training

•  Career management

•  Succession planning

PM Plant Maintenance – maintain your equipment (e.g. a machine, an oil rig, an aircraft etc), including

•  Labor

•  Material

•  Down time and outages

MM Materials Management – underpins the supply chain, including

•  Requisitions

•  Purchase orders

•  Goods receipts

•  Accounts payable

•  Inventory management

•  BOM’s

•  Master raw materials, finished goods etc

QM Quality Management – improve the quality of your goods, including

•  Planning

•  Execution

•  Inspections

•  Certificates

PP Production Planning – manages your production process, including

•  Capacity planning

•  Master production scheduling

•  Material requirements planning

•  Shop floor

SD Sales and Distribution – from order to delivery, including

•  RFQ

•  Sales orders

•  Pricing

•  Picking (and other warehouse processes)

•  Packing

•  Shipping

CA Cross Application – these lie on top of the individual modules, and include

•  WF – workflow

•  BW – business information warehouse

•  Office – for email

•  Workplace

•  Industry solutions

•  New Dimension products such as CRM, PLM, SRM, APO etc

For further information, see the following links:

http://www.sapfans.com/sapfans/sapfmod.htm

http://isds.bus.lsu.edu/cvoc/learn/bpr/cprojects/spring1998/dotd/page5.html