Case Study:
SAP & Shop Floor Solutions
Problem:
A large conglomerate consumer products company planned to move various subsidiaries onto its SAP-based ERP platform over the course of several years. The strategic goal was to streamline their organization and gain synergy between their systems and reporting processes.
One of the larger subsidiaries to be included was a consumer OTC pharmaceutical manufacturer. Reconciling all the scenarios would require a multi-year initiative – the parent design included some functionalities that the subsidiary design did not and visa versa, and both had some of the same functionalities but addressed them differently. All three scenarios required a structured approach to roll out a viable design.
Solution:
The overall approach was to roll out all of the existing global design functionality, and — when there were conflicts — to always use the global design, rather than the subsidiary. This method would facilitate the desired corporate synergy and ensure all companies were working off of the same platform. However, it didn’t account for the scenario where the subsidiary design had functionality not represented in the global design — this is where Endeavor was brought in to help.
The areas in question concerned high level, complex shop floor integration and maintenance scenarios in SAP, which the initial implementation partner wasn’t well suited for. This included MES electronic batch record in SAP (PI sheet integration, including historian and batch engine), electronic logbooks for cleaning, plant maintenance, electronic calibration, and supply chain BW metrics recorded through PI sheets.
Endeavor had been the original architect of several of the designs, and was able to reconcile difficult conflicts, expand the global template to use new tools, and meet the needs of the subsidiaries in using the new functionalities. The logbooks application was custom developed in SAP, complete with highly complex and intersecting cleaning rules, which drove action and status updates for SAP equipment masters.
Benefit:
The expanded global template allowed the vital functionality of the subsidiary business to be preserved. Additionally, a one-stop “Plant Maintenance Cockpit” was created, which streamlined the entire module to a one-button screen, saving major time and keystrokes and supporting a process that provided valuable, previously unrecorded maintenance information. The Cockpit became a standard product offered by Endeavor, and included a version in Fiori as well.
