SAP S/4HANA - making purchasing activities easier, efficient and transparent

Plants, which will have SAP S/4HANA rollout (firstly Momo, Italy and Hirschaid, Germany), will use only Business Partner ID as supplier number – new 7-digit supplier number.

Material numbers in the new solution will have new 10-digit format. Along with subsequent rollouts of SAP S/4HANA, all existing and active materials for specific plant or location will be migrated to the new system and will have new material numbers. Please find the details in the attached file.

New material number concept

New supplier and material numbers

New supplier number

New material number

With the implementation of SAP S/4HANA using fax as communication method will no longer be possible. All suppliers using fax will be switched to e-mail communication. Please make sure you provided the right e-mail address to Schaeffler.

Rollouts of SAP S/4HANA will be conducted gradually in the next plants. During this process, there will be a Coexistence phase, where some locations are using the new S/4 system and some are using the current R/3 system. For suppliers delivering to different Schaeffler locations, it means receiving different data from different plants (e.g. handling two different types of the material numbers). Please take it under consideration and prepare if necessary.

CoEx phase will have the most influence on suppliers using EDI. If you are an EDI supplier, please enter the attached file.

EDI messages - solution

Information about the packaging will still be provided in the packaging data sheet, which layout changes slightly. Please find details about the packaging material numbers and PDS in the attached file.

Packaging material numbers and packaging data sheet

Purchase order and scheduling agreement numbers will have different range (no impact on EDI/SupplyOn connection). Newly created PO numbers will now start with “45”, SA numbers will start with “55”. The new ranges don’t affect the existing process flow. With every new scheduling agreement you will receive once an initial document including the new scheduling agreement number.

The process of sending the documents stays the same. However, purchase orders and schedule lines will no longer be stored as PDFs in the Document Manager. The link in the PO, which guided to the document in pdf will not be active. Still, purchase orders can be displayed and downloaded as PDFs to see the details or to print out. It can be done using the standard functionality of SupplyOn Supply Chain Collaboration, which is available also currently.

Please find SupplyOn training materials here:

Infoportal | SupplyOn

Please send one invoice for one delivery note and one purchase order.

For suppliers delivering to many Schaeffler locations: as document number ranges and material numbers change, please read the part “Coexistence Phase”.

Invoices should contain only one PO - it will enable processing them.