The Munich-based SAP consulting company CONSILIO organised a superlative event in the notorious Allianz Arena in Munich - the home stadium of the German record champion FC Bayern.
The focus of the "SPOT ON Supply Chain Planning" event was the complete spectrum of rough and detailed planning that can be realised with the SAP solutions Integrated Business Planning (IBP) and Production and Detailed Planning (PP/DS). Helge Sanden, editor-in-chief and managing director of the IT online magazine, led the day.
A masterful environment also requires masterful presentations. That is why CONSILIO garnished the event with top-class speakers from SAP and exciting presentations from industry giants such as Teekanne, ZF and MTU. The experts from the respective companies reported on their projects, which they are carrying out together with the Munich-based company, which stages have already been taken and where the future will take them. In doing so, they "almost" didn't mince their words and provided deep insights into the challenges of their projects, some of which differed greatly depending on the industry and the initial situation.
The first speaker was Matthias Vogel, Digital Supply Chain Solution Principal at SAP. In his keynote speech, he summarised the challenges companies are facing in these volatile times. The economic war that has broken out between West and East and the aftermath of the pandemic - especially in Asia - are constantly putting previously established supply chains to the test. Against the background that supply chains are elementary for the supply and prosperity of Germany and its neighbours, Matthias Vogel emphasised that it is essential for companies to simulate a "Plan B" at an early stage in order to be able to adapt agilely to the constantly changing conditions in the supply networks. With IBP and PP/DS, among others, SAP has tools in its portfolio with which the problems cannot be prevented, but they can be mitigated.
CONSILIO customers Teekanne, ZF and MTU gave presentations on how the tools can be implemented in different industries and what they bring to the customers.
In his presentation for the long-established company Teekanne, Harald Liedtke, Head of Corporate Process Management at Teekanne, showed how the holistic implementation and control of transformation programmes succeeds. He emphasised that the topic of supply chain planning, with its networking of sales, production and purchasing, is a prime example of cross-departmental and cross-location cooperation. This challenge is also found in other corporate divisions and end-to-end processes such as the innovate-to-market process, which also requires the interdisciplinary interaction of different departments. In his presentation, Harald Liedtke also pointed out that the procedure he demonstrated can be transferred to other areas via the dimensions "organisation/process/application" as well as the two-phase approach "preparation phase and introduction of the target platform".
The automotive supplier ZF was represented by Daniel Stöckler, Manager Corporate IT - Advanced Supply Chain Planning, ZF Friedrichshafen and Michael Pfeifer, Global Process Expert Logistics Division CVS, Supply Chain Engineering - SC Trends & Process Standards, Template built, ZF Schweinfurt. The speakers focused on how ZF uses SAP detailed planning heuristics to increase production efficiency and thus achieve realistic demand plausibility and capacity levelling. They explained the importance and implementation of the plausibility check of customer requirements and finite capacity planning in APO DP + PPDS for ZF Friedrichshafen AG.
Many customers are looking for improvement opportunities in detailed planning during the S/4HANA changeover. S/4HANA Manufacturing for Planning and Scheduling (aka ePPDS) is known to some customers from the APO environment. But what is the significance of S/4HANA Manufacturing for Planning and Scheduling in the context of SAP's planning and manufacturing solutions? What are the most important innovations of ePPDS in S/4HANA Release 2021 and what does the roadmap for ePPDS look like in the next 3 years? In their presentation, Ulrich Mast, Solution Manager, SAP SE and Bernhard Trebels, Product Manager, SAP SE focused on precisely these aspects.
In addition, CONSILIO experts such as Georg Klinger, Partner, Senior SCM Architect, CONSILIO GmbH and Christoph Habla, Partner, Head of IBP, CONSILIO GmbH and their teams presented CONSILIO solutions that cover the supply chain end-to-end. These include topics such as sustainability, analytics in detailed production planning and optimisation, order-based and synchronised planning, efficient capacity maintenance and workforce planning, effective planning of multi-level cross-plant bottlenecks, simulative and interactive demand and capacity planning, and the optimisation of assembly and production lines with S/4HANA model-mix planning.
But fun was not neglected either. The participants had the opportunity to explore the stadium on a guided tour and to compete in goal wall shooting.