SAP MM- Integrate All Tasks Associated With Material Management Process

SAP SE a German multinational software corporation is known for its enterprise software’s which help organizations to manage business operations and maintain customer relations. SAP stands for Systems, Applications and Products in data processing. SAP system is a complete software package for business which is designed to address requirements of all areas in the business. It provides end to end solutions for businesses to meet financial, logistics, manufacturing, distribution needs. All these processes are run in a unified SAP system which shares common information across each system. SAP functional modules include FICO, PP, MM, SD and HR.  SAP technical modules include ABAP, XI, Net Viewer, Basis and BIW.

Introduction to SAP MM

Materials Management deals with planning and designing the movement of materials or logistics which deals with tangible components of a supply chain. It covers the standards involved in acquisition of spare parts, replacements, purchasing, ordering, shipping and warehousing the parts.

SAP MM comes with the SAP ERP software package which is a materials management module. SAP MM is used in Inventory Management and Procurement handling. SAP MM is integrated with other SAP modules such as SD, QM and PP. The module consists of material data and vendor data. SAP implementation can be divided into following components: Client, Plant, Company Code, Storage Location and Purchase Organization. SAP MM module also covers tasks such as consumption based planning, vendor evaluation and invoice verification. It also covers warehouse and inventory management to manage the stock until the usage indicates that the cycle should restart. It also supports Electronics Kanban or Just-in-Time delivery.

Purchasing Component of SAP- Materials Management Module

The Materials Management module is designed to integrate as well as automate all the variety of tasks that are associated with materials management. The tasks include procurement of goods, inventory management, valuation of material, material requirement analysis and planning, account determination, invoice verification and payment to vendor etc.

SAP MM Modules

SAP MM can be classified into five major modules:

Each of these modules can be further subdivided into sub-components.

SAP MM module manages the resources of an organization, such as manpower and materials. Materials Management includes purchasing of materials, inventory management, evaluation of materials or product, batch assignment, other assignments and classification of materials. To learnSAP MM module, one has to know how to customize settings for purchasing, inventory management, account determination, physical inventory at organizational levels and methods to manually create material reservations. Along with this, one may have to learn the methods of Planning and performing a physical inventory.

As a whole SAP MM module consists of the following:

• Procurement Process


• Master Data


• Purchasing Optimization


• Inventory Management


• Valuation and Account Determination


• Material Requirements Planning


• Logistics Invoice Verification


• Configuration of the Enterprise Structure and the Material Master


• Solution Manager

Advantages of SAP MM

• A powerful user application which provides more sophisticated and advanced user options which are suitable for power users and complicated financial transactions.


• It includes a complete inventory management along with good issues and stock adjustment features.


• It has the ability to generate requisitions automatically based on the MRP.


• It has standard P2P reporting feature.


• Provides full access to invoice details as well as scanned images.