SAP Event Management (EM) builds on the framework provided by SAP Transportation Management (TM). SAP TM handles the core transportation planning and charge calculations while SAP EM monitors and evaluates the execution of the real-time shipment. Without SAP EM to keep score, SAP TM offers few tools to efficiently evaluate the actual success of the planned shipments. By auditing SAP TM’s proposed shipping plan with the actual trip record, SAP EM captures a minutia of information that enables a company to evaluate a carrier's on-time delivery record, ability to meet appointment times, lane efficiencies, carrier and route risks and a myriad of other metrics needed to properly manage moving the product to its final destination.
The original concept for SAP EM arose from industries like transportation that needed the ability to formulate a plan, capture the plan's milestone points, record the external activities once the events commenced and compare the plan's milestone points to the events as they occurred. The system needed to provide a virtual set of eyes to monitor the activities and the ability to report the progress of the actual events against the planned events as they occurred. This practice is a proactive approach to management of the supply chain because the reaction to correct any adverse condition is immediate. The problem, or constraint, to the ongoing flow of the supply chain is quickly alleviated, and processes quickly return to normal. Only software, with the functionality found in SAP EM, can perform these types of operations.
SAP EM provides a mechanism to monitor — in real time — events, violations and KPIs that may adversely affect a supply chain. Constant checking of the supply chain activities provides the foresight that warns of events that may eventually disrupt the ongoing processes. The company is empowered to be pro-active instead of reactive.
SAP EM reduces the time it takes to resolve an adverse condition — the rationale being that the longer an undesired event continues undetected and unresolved, the greater the disruption to the supply chain. These times are often referred to as the “Time to Insight” (the time it takes to realize there is an issue) and the “Time to Action” (the time it takes to correct the action).
SAP EM provides a problem detection engine that allows processes to be monitored by exception and to perform automatic remedial actions. In other words, if the process performs as intended, SAP EM captures the data for historical reporting purposes. If the process fails, SAP EM intervenes to alert someone to take corrective action.
SAP EM provides an alert framework that is intended to provide the right information at the right time to the right person. Detecting a problem and sending it to the wrong person to resolve is a waste of time and resources.
SAP EM is about minimizing risks. SAP EM is key to mitigating the inherent liabilities of a poorly performing supply chain.
Without well-documented, sufficiently analyzed historical data, any transportation planning system will not be supplied with the best information for optimizing shipments. SAP EM provides the ability to produce reliable data analytics for the optimization of transportation planning. SAP EM can interface with any transportation management system, not just SAP's. The power of effective transportation planning lies not in the plan produced by the optimizer, but in the measurement of the plan's effectiveness against the actual trip data.
The criteria for establishing a Real-Time Supply Chain is to:
guarantee efficiency (the right goods arrive at the right location at the right time)
ensure that the supply chain is demand-driven
provide for the logistics pieces of the supply chain, both inbound and outbound deliveries and shipments, to function as integral parts of the business, even if these departments have been outsourced to a third party
for Electronic Logging Devices (ELD) to be recording the movements of goods through the supply chain.
SAP Transportation Management and SAP Event Management, together, contribute to the successful creation of the real-time Supply Chain.