Expand the SAP "Purity Law" to Include Precise Work Planning

Krones specializes in the development, manufacture, and sale of equipment and machinery for the beverage and food industries. In over 70 years, the group, headquartered in Neutraubling, has grown into one of the leading suppliers of equipment for beverage filling and packaging, with over 20,000 employees worldwide.

Krones offers solutions for process technology in beverage production, including technologies for cleaning, sterilization, and the treatment of liquids. The company also develops intralogistics solutions, such as palletizing systems, warehousing technologies, and material flow concepts, which ensure the smooth movement of materials within production facilities.

In recent years, Krones has increasingly incorporated digital solutions and Industry 4.0 technologies into its portfolio to offer customers innovative solutions for optimizing production processes. With additional manufacturing facilities in China, the U.S., Brazil, and Hungary, Krones operates far beyond its German locations and supplies customers worldwide. The focus is on providing advanced and increasingly automated solutions for beverage production and packaging. Transparent and traceable work planning with precise scheduled times is of central importance to the company. Globally, Krones requires a large number of work schedules for its machinery across more than 1,000 workstations. To ensure reliable planning and a smooth transfer of knowledge, it is of utmost importance to the company to guarantee the traceability of the calculated planning times.

In cases of succession planning or vacation cover, a standardized database must be in place to ensure that work schedules are processed smoothly by different schedulers and to enable the transfer of expertise from long-tenured employees: „The long-time employee knew just by looking at a drawing that he had to enter two minutes into the self-programmed Excel planning time template for a drilling operation on the machine in question,“ says Matthias Herzog, who is responsible for computer-aided work planning at Krones. However, it would take too long for the successor to acquire this experiential knowledge.

Experience showed that while new time entries were stored in an Excel workbook, the work schedulers tended, for various reasons, to continue using the old, familiar list, as it tended to be more widely accepted. A solution was needed that would provide a unified database for all planners in the company and facilitate collaboration. It quickly became apparent that the standard SAP system is designed primarily for mass producers and lacks flexibility. At Krones, for example, new time valuations are often needed within a few days—such as when a new material is introduced. However, work scheduling in the standard SAP system is complex and constrained by numerous restrictions. Consequently, the company began searching for an intuitive add-on to calculate traceable planning times. It was to offer simple tools for mapping custom planning logic and making it usable within SAP.

Extend the SAP Standard

For over ten years now, Krones has been relying on HSplan/IS SAP from HSi for its work scheduling. The software company develops software solutions for work scheduling, time management, and production organization in industrial settings—particularly as a supplement to the standard SAP system. The tool extends the SAP operation by adding a level of work stages, which enables the work planner to calculate times directly within the operation. To this end, the HSi solution provides the calculation procedures approved for that workstation. The parameters for planned time calculation are then entered in a separate input screen. The rule logic is processed in the background on the HSi server. The calculated main, auxiliary, and setup times, as well as the generated texts, are stored in the work stages. After exiting the stage editor, planners return to the operation overview. The calculated planned times are automatically transferred to the SAP time fields for setup and processing time in all relevant work plans. Manual entry is not required. In addition, the multilingual capability of the HSi solutions enables global deployment at Krones.

Optimized Variant Planning

„We’re implementing a comprehensive strategy for work planning and tracking the tool’s usage and acceptance,“ said Matthias Herzog. This has shown that today, approximately 50,000 new operations are evaluated using HSi each month, and over 70 percent of work plans are created automatically. The company primarily manufactures variant parts, which makes an automated approach possible.

The work scheduler no longer needs to access the individual SAP operations: A recalculation is triggered directly within the SAP environment, and updated planned times are determined in the background. During automatic work plan generation, an HSi template plan is selected; in this process, identical characteristics are used—based on predefined logic—to generate a similar plan for identical parts. These characteristics can take the form of, for example, an SAP classification or a master drawing: „Take, for example, a flat rectangular sheet metal part in a specific class. Relationship rules are stored in this class that specify: Template plan A is used if the part has specific, predefined characteristics,“ explains Christian Müller, project manager at HSi, describing the process. The HSi technology platform is also used here; it is delivered as standard with HSplan/IS SAP and contains stored data for common processes—such as turning, milling, drilling, grinding, sawing, cutting, or welding—as used at Krones.

Adaptability supports S/4

The added value of the add-on lies in its intuitive extensibility: Without any programming knowledge, it is possible—within the Customizing environment—to build upon the HSi rule set and the stored technology database. HSi provided the group with a function for predefined products that now enables Krones to calculate times for every SAP bill of materials (BOM) item, reading and taking into account the BOM characteristics and classification characteristics. Based on this function, the company was able to develop its own complex set of rules. The calculation is thus performed based on the individual parts of the bill of materials item. This optimizes, above all, the planning time calculation for large components. The adaptability of the HSi solutions was also put to good use during the S/4 migration, where the first steps are being taken with a complete new installation at the production site in Hungary.

Expand the standard rather than bend it

HSplan/IS SAP was one of the first add-ons to be approved by IT, since the standard does not offer a comparable solution. „The way HSi is integrated into SAP is helpful to many of our users during the transformation process to SAP S/4 HANA: Our tool doesn’t bend the standard, but rather extends it to include the work stages,“ says Christian Müller. When migrating to SAP S/4HANA by plant, many companies are currently using two SAP systems initially. „The HSi web application has been enhanced to enable seamless communication with multiple SAP systems,“ says Christian Müller. It provides both R3 and S/4 HANA with the same planning logic. The times are stored in the respective system. The set of rules and existing work plans can be fully transferred, since the calculations take place on the HSi server.

Ensuring a Successful S/4 Migration

Since the solution was introduced at Krones, the four-millionth operation using HSi was recorded in January 2024. And the next enhancements are already in the works: For example, the calculation of assembly times for network plan assemblies in S/4 HANA has now been expanded. A solution for component assignments in final assembly is also being planned for the new standard. Matthias Herzog sees the biggest challenge in migrating to SAP S/4 Hana as creating standardized work processes across the entire group: a large portion of the necessary preparatory measures involves process optimization. He recommends seeking support from specialized service providers. „This will make the migration to S/4 manageable for machine builders,“ he predicts. (Source: HSi)