Trimmed for the future with SAP DM and SAP EWM

The automotive industry is currently undergoing profound change, driven by factors such as digitalization, electromobility, automation and the increasing importance of software in vehicles. For traditional suppliers and system partners such as ElringKlinger, such upheavals are part of their corporate identity.

With a turnover of around 1.8 billion euros (2024), the automotive supplier develops and manufactures highly sought-after lightweight solutions, important components for electromobility and tool technologies for the automotive industry, among other things. However, due to the ever-increasing demands of customers and ever-shorter product life cycles, the company was increasingly faced with the challenge of organizing production and intralogistics even faster, more flexibly and more transparently.

„As part of the Shape30 corporate strategy, the aim is to create the foundations and prerequisites for the digitalization of corporate processes,“ explains Maximilian Krohmer, IT specialist at ElringKlinger. „We therefore need to expand our new system landscape to include modern production and logistics solutions from SAP in order to benefit even more from current developments in these areas.“

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"Thanks to the interaction between EWM and DM, we have a modern production and intralogistics system that is more effective, more transparent and more customer-centric."

Maximilian Krohmer,
IT specialist,
ElringKlinger

From the outset, it was clear that the planned introduction of SAP Digital Manufacturing (SAP DM) and SAP Extended Warehouse Management (SAP EWM) would not just be technical projects; rather, they would form the technological basis for new, more flexible manufacturing and intralogistics processes. However, ElringKlinger still needed a suitable partner to introduce the new solutions and design new processes based on them.

This person should have extensive expertise in project management, excellent knowledge of SAP solutions and be able to carry out the implementation close to the SAP standard within the company's IT architecture. Maximilian Krohmer comments: „SAP solutions are powerful and highly flexible tools. It was therefore clear to us that we needed a partner who could cover the entire spectrum!“

Digital factory in two steps

The search for the right match led ElringKlinger to the management and IT consultancy MHP. MHP's many years of project experience and its holistic approach, which takes into account both technical and business aspects, were particularly convincing.
In summer 2023, the specially formed project team from both companies initially worked out the future course of the project and defined two key milestones:

Firstly, the roll-out of SAP DM, accompanied by the introduction of new production processes - initially at the Dettingen an der Erms plant.
Secondly, the implementation of SAP EWM including a connection to SAP Digital Manufacturing at the Neuffen plant due to customer projects with increased traceability requirements.

When introducing SAP DM, the project team primarily aimed to reduce the workload of employees on the store floor, reduce error rates and make production more transparent. In addition, paper-based processes were to be eliminated as far as possible in future to enable more environmentally sustainable production.

SAP Digital Manufacturing

To achieve this, the project team equipped workstations with modern terminals. Among other things, employees can use them to record feedback and view all the necessary information for the next production step. After the introduction of SAP EWM, they should also be able to use it to transmit material provision requests to intralogistics.

The new system is also a great advantage for production management: feedback functions on rejects give them a much better overview of frequent sources of error. The close connection of the machinery to SAP DM via OPC UA also ensures additional data transparency.

Store floor and intralogistics

„SAP DM offers many advantages on its own. However, if it is combined with SAP EWM, cross-departmental end-to-end processes are also possible; in this case between production and material supply through intralogistics,“ says Kai Roßnagel, Senior Manager SAP Production & Logistics at MHP, emphasizing the benefits of the combined solutions.

To achieve this, the project team implemented integrative material supply processes in which the functions of SAP DM and SAP EWM are closely networked - for example:
When the workers have completed the production of a product, they can initiate the feedback from production via the integrated interfaces of the packaging system.
Thanks to the system integration, SAP Digital Manufacturing has already recorded all the serial numbers of the packaged products and generated a separate handling unit number.

If the handling unit is completed on the system side via the system interface, the automatic posting in SAP EWM, including the automatic creation of the warehouse task, is carried out by the system integration. The logistics employees automatically receive this warehouse task for collection on their handheld scanners and can complete it directly. SAP EWM also supports them in this process, for example by specifying the exact pick-up locations and storage bins for putaway.

„The close interaction between SAP DM and SAP EWM creates a smooth end-to-end process between warehouse and production, which ensures rapid putaway and enables simple, cross-departmental coordination and highly efficient production,“ says Kai Roßnagel, describing the result of the integrative process.

A big step forward

A comparison with the past shows: Thanks to the introduction of a new IT landscape - based on SAP ERP and the SAP DM and SAP EWM add-on solutions - ElringKlinger now has a highly flexible, easily scalable and data-based production system, including the associated intralogistics. The elimination of paper is also an important contribution to greater sustainability in the company and CO2-neutral production. The project impressively demonstrates how intelligent interaction between several systems can also improve processes across departments. And thus sends a clear signal against inhibiting silo thinking.

Maximilian Krohmer is correspondingly satisfied: „Thanks to the intelligent interaction between SAP EWM and SAP DM, we now finally have a modern production and intralogistics system that is significantly more effective, transparent and customer-centric than before. Together with MHP, we will continue along this path and implement the new concept in our other plants as well. I am already very much looking forward to the upcoming collaboration.“

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