SAP template rollout in Singapore

The technology of the German aviation company Diehl Aerospace can be found in the aircraft of the aircraft manufacturer Airbus, for example in the A 350 XWB, the A400 M and the A380.

Diehl has several international locations. Its shareholders include the Diehl Group with its subgroup Diehl Aerosystems and the French Thales Group.

Support for customers in the Asia-Pacific region (APAC) is provided from Singapore. Until the end of 2016, this support was provided by the Airbus subsidiary Satair.

The contract expired and the decision was made to continue customer support in this important growth region under its own management. Diehl Aerospace Pte. Ltd. was founded for this purpose.

This new subsidiary of Diehl Aerospace GmbH will operate from Singapore as a Customer Support Center (CSC) in the Asia-Pacific region for the entire Diehl Aerosystems subgroup with its four individual companies.

The work of the new CSC APAC required the establishment of its own IT and SAP environment. cbs Corporate Business Solutions was responsible for setting up the template and rollout in Singapore for Diehl Aerospace.

To minimize risk and optimize the value chain, it was agreed that certain services would be provided in the background by the local partner Thales.

At the same time, however, Diehl Aerospace was to operate independently in the market with IT-supported background utilization of these services. This new company therefore forms the foundation for a new Customer Support Center (CSC) in the Asia-Pacific region (APAC). The aim is to be able to optimally serve all the needs of the Diehl Aerosystems subgroup at the new location.

From the very beginning, the subgroup's sister companies Diehl Aircabin and Diehl Comfort Modules have also taken advantage of local opportunities with customers from the region. The services include spare parts, repairs, technical assistance and similar services.

These services must run smoothly, both in reality and on the IT system side. The project team had just seven months to define and implement the highly integrative and complex processes.

"The intensive and smooth cooperation between Thales Singapore and CSC APAC had to be reflected in the IT and the SAP template"

says Diehl project manager Reinhard Gessinger.

"This requires automated interfaces and the avoidance of double entries."

CSC APAC and Thales Singapore are strongly interlinked. Thales has been active in Singapore for over 40 years, providing services to customers in the aviation, defense and transportation industries.

The company handles warehousing and some repairs on site for CSC APAC. This close integration of the two companies had to be taken into account when programming the interfaces.

At the same time, it was important to take into account the legal requirements of the city state of Singapore. In addition, the aim was to standardize processes and adapt the IT landscape to the processes of the homesites. This was also intended to reduce complexity and heterogeneity. Third-party processes should no longer be necessary.

Service and support fully represented in SAP

There was a constant exchange between cbs and the Diehl project members. In the end, many processes were redefined. First, the processes relevant to the site were defined.

Due to the numerous interfaces between the project partners, this work required the utmost attention. This applied, for example, to the repair process. Diehl requested specific requirements for the template design.

The team used the established M-cbs methodology for this project. The M-cbs methodology includes dedicated project plans, process lists, the involvement of end users and the "Business Process Model and Notation" (BPMN), which can be used to model and document business processes and workflows.

It was important to get the relevant stakeholders, i.e. key users and process owners, on board. In fit-gap workshops, the project team repeatedly compared the current process with the desired objectives and the legal requirements in Singapore. The local partners at Thales and the Diehl key users were regularly trained on site.

All processes were implemented in SAP. These included procurement and purchasing, intercompany procurement, dropship process, sales order processing, complaint management and customer returns.

The core of the template is the SAP ERP module Customer Service (CS) with the additional modules Sales and Distribution (SD), Materials Management (MM), Financial Accounting (FI) and Controlling (CO).

After a test cycle, the template was handed over to Diehl. The migration and a second test cycle then took place under Diehl's responsibility. The system was then accepted by the local business.

Interlocking between business partners

The particular challenge of this project lay in the complex customer service process requirements with interfaces to Thales' external SAP system.

New EDI interfaces were needed to better integrate the partner. The project team also had to start developing the system before CSC APAC was even founded.

It was also important that the project members at Diehl were able to maintain day-to-day business, i.e. support. The short project duration of around seven months also posed a challenge.

The project team was able to draw on its extensive experience with complex international rollout scenarios. Singapore also has numerous local legal requirements, which the project team took into account when developing the system.

Thanks to the project team's special expertise in the Singapore business and in setting up templates, cbs was able to successfully carry out the rollout in the city state. An interdisciplinary and integrative understanding of the customer's processes helped in the process.

Smooth start to business

The particularly complex customer service processes between the various Diehl and Thales systems were successfully integrated into the new system. The new CSC APAC can now carry out all after-sales processes smoothly on its own.

During the work on the system, day-to-day business was able to continue without restrictions. A third-party provider is no longer required.

"With the new system, we now have a solid basis with which our Customer Support Center can work very efficiently"

says Diehl project manager Reinhard Gessinger.

"We now have the necessary processes in our own hands. The template we have created enables us to achieve significantly better IT governance and comprehensive IT controlling."

Intercompany business has also been simplified thanks to invoices transferred automatically via EDI. Previously, external invoices were involved, which had to be entered manually.

The project team has managed to create an extensive template business alignment - in other words, exactly those processes are mapped that are required for the work of the new Support Center.

This was made possible in particular by the detailed and concentrated work on the template concept. Diehl Aerospace's CSC APAC got off to a promising start with the new SAP template. Following the successful go-live, Diehl Aerospace is now planning further projects with cbs.