Merchandise Distribution (WF10) Modifications Anyone?

Question

Hi everyone,
As the subject suggests, i'm trying to figure out if anyone has been involved in or has modifiied WF10?
Below i've highlighted 3 areas we want to improve, but please let me know of any changes you've made.
We've been using Merchandise Distribution now for over 12 months and find the standard functionality just isn't delivering expected results as it's fairly limited / under developed compared with most Retail functionality.
1)  Not being able to select input STO document types into the collective process, thus generating a distinct output collective document type.  (Input type driving output type)
  -  At our organisation we've a number of document types to segregate demand types (Allocation, Replen, Range review etc), the standard solution just groups them together into a single collective, therefore loose this segregation at out DC where they provide value added services (special labelling / packing etc).
  -  Ideally we would want to do multiple runs of WF10 for each DC to generate a Collective By Doc Type.  Has anyone done this?
2)  The Delivery Due Date on the collective is not related to the STO Delivery Due Date, it's separately calculated at the DC level.
  -  If we happen to create an STO with an allocation with a due date of a months time (pre ordering for a range review maybe), then the collective is generated with the standard lead time, which then requires manually changing, if we don't it gets closed far too early in relation to the STO's.
  -  Also we exclude the weekends from out store level due date calculation when ordering internal from the DC, collectives don't have any awareness of this or config available, so the two documents are always out of sync.
  -  Ideally we would want this to be based upon the STO(s) Net of the lead time between the DC and Store, to allow for the inventory to be processed prior to the store requiring it.
3)  There is no real way to group STO's by delivery due dates, to create a Collective that has "clean" STO due dates contained within.  You can select the procurement period and schedule line interval etc, but this doesn't group STO's into collective.  We could run WF10 many many times going into the future for individual days, but this doesn't sounds viable really and even still wouldn't produce the right result.
  - We basically find we group all sorts of stuff together, all of which actually need delivering on different days, which in our fairly complex and flexible supply chain just doesn't work well.
  -  Ideally it would be a single collective run(by doc type), which grouped STO's and split collectives by the STO due dates
Any thoughts or suggestions?
Many thanks,
Dave

Answer 1

Hi Prabhu,
Thats been most helpful indeed, thank you!
We met with SAP today and discussed, they recommended that for the selection by document type would need to be a modification and recommended that they should do this as a customer development, rather than develop in-house.  In truth i think this is the best approach due to ongoing support.
I would be really interested to find out a little more, as there are so few organisations using WF10 and it's a fairly underdeveloped area of SAP retail.
Two things i'd be particularly interested in is:
1)  Do you have anymore information on the other changes you said were similar to what i mentioned (i'm assuming splitting by due date and due date calculation changes?)?
2)  If possible would you be able to share with me on email which organisation it is that had these change made, as our organisation would be keen to speak with them on this. I know this isn't always possible for a number of reasons. If this is ok let me know and i'll send you my email address.
Kind regards,
Dave