SAP MM (SAP Materials Management)
SAP MM (Materials Management) is a module in SAP ERP Central Component (ECC) that provides companies with materials, inventory and warehouse management capabilities. The primary goal of SAP MM is to make sure that materials are always kept in proper quantities and without shortages or gaps in the organization's supply chain. It also helps supply chain professionals and other SAP users complete the purchasing of goods in a timely and cost-effective way and to be able to deal with day-to-day changes in these processes.
One of the critical modules in SAP ECC, SAP MM is part of SAP ECC's logistics function and plays a vital role in a manufacturer's supply chain. It integrates with other ECC components like Production Planning (PP), Sales and Distribution (SD), Plant Maintenance (PM), Quality Management (QM), Finance and Controlling (FICO) and Human Capital Management (HCM).
Support for SAP ECC is scheduled to stop in 2025, at which point it will be replaced by SAP S/4HANA. It's not clear from SAP how the functions of MM will transition to S/4HANA, although the newer platform has components to address the core issues behind MM.
SAP MM submodules
SAP MM's functions include material management, procurement process management, master data management (material and vendor master), inventory management, material requirements planning and invoice verification.
All of these MM submodules have functions that perform specific business processes for those modules. These are executed through transactions, the method that SAP ECC uses to complete business processes. MM also supports other logistics functions that require materials information, such as plant maintenance and project management.
Business benefits of SAP MM
Everything in MM revolves around master data, which is stored and manipulated in centralized master-data tables. Master data types include materials master, work center, bill of materials and routing. The master data is used to create transactional data in SAP ECC.
For example, when a production order is created in PP, it uses master data from MM about the raw materials needed to produce the finished product, which will subsequently be used to create a sales order in SD.
