AP&S International sharpens semiconductor performance with SAP Business All-in-One and IBM

Transcription

1 we know they know AP&S sharpens semiconductor performance with SAP Business All-in-One and IBM Overview The Challenge Existing IT infrastructure was failing to keep pace with the rising workload generated by demand for highly sophisticated fabrication systems designed and built by AP&S. Technical drawings took almost five minutes to load and system response time was slow, which impacted user productivity. Lack of reliability combined with limited disaster recovery capabilities presented significant business risk. Opportunities to extend the scope and functionality of the SAP applications were limited, as AP&S did not want to risk destabilizing production systems. The Solution AP&S migrated to the latest version of its SAP Business Allin-One solution, deployed on an IBM System x3650 M2 server. The company then extended the application to encompass new components including customer service, sales and distribution, and warehouse management in multiple languages. The Benefits Using SAP Warehouse Management, AP&S experiences less than one percent variation between reported stock and actual inventory, improving customer fulfillment rates to near 100 percent. Availability, transparency and consistency of the data provided by the SAP lead to time savings of around 5 percent in the construction department, as AP&S no longer has to spend time reconciling different reporting systems. Accelerated server performance delivers complex technical drawings in less than a minute, estimated to save more than 2,500 monthly; redundancy and internal RAIDbased data mirroring have minimized business risk. Key Solution Components Industry: Manufacturing Applications: SAP Business All-in-One including customer service, sales and distribution, and warehouse management, SAP ERP Human Capital Management, SAP Content Manager Hardware: IBM System x3650 M2, powered by Intel Xeon Processor 5500 Series processors, IBM System x3250 M2 and M3 powered by Intel Xeon 5600 Series processors Software: MaxDB, Microsoft Windows Server Services: Advanced Solutions GmbH, an IBM Business Partner and SAP Solution Partner

2 The greatest advantages come from the new SAP applications, which allow us to control an international business from a single, centralized solution. For example, by using SAP Warehouse Management we have less than one percent variation between reported stock and actual inventory, worldwide, when we run audit checks. Marko Tischler, IT Manager, AP&S AP&S designs and manufactures highly sophisticated fabrication systems, principally for clean room conditions in the global semiconductor and photovoltaics industries. The product range includes standardized and customized equipment, all of which is built to extremely high quality standards. The company operates internationally, with about 80 total staff based at sites in China, Germany, Singapore and Malaysia. There are some 60 staff at the Donaueschingen, Germany, headquarters, about half of whom access the company s businesscritical SAP applications on a daily basis. Alexandra Laufer, Business Manager, reports, For a company of our size, we place very high requirements on our business management systems, because we operate worldwide selling highly complex products. AP&S was running SAP Business Allin-One on Intel processor-based servers, which were failing to keep pace with the rising workload. For example, technical drawings took almost five minutes to load, and system response time was slow, with up to two seconds required for each SAP dialog step. Collectively, these delays impacted user productivity and cost AP&S valuable time. The servers themselves lacked reliability, and there was no simple way to introduce disaster recovery capabilities, which presented significant business risk. Opportunities to extend the scope and functionality of the SAP applications by adding new components and language support were limited, as AP&S did not want to risk destabilizing production systems. The SAP applications were due to go out of support, which added to the potential downside for AP&S should disaster strike. Comprehensive solution, rapid deployment AP&S engaged its long-term business partner, Advanced Solutions GmbH, to consider the best way to migrate to the latest SAP applications, solve the performance issues, and place the company on a secure foundation for its growing international operations. The company wished to take advantage of new SAP applications such as warehouse management, sales and distribution and customer service to help tune business processes, reduce costs and increase profitability. Advanced Solutions recommended the IBM System x platform, selecting an IBM System x3650 M2 powered by

3 dual-core Intel Xeon 5500 Series processors, 2.33GHz/1333MHz, for core SAP ERP applications. The IBM System x3650 M2 was chosen to support a new deployment of SAP Business All-in-One with the new applications alongside updated components for financials, controlling, production planning, sales and distribution and project systems. In total, AP&S uses three IBM System x3650 systems: one for SAP production applications, one for SAP Content Server, one for Microsoft Exchange Server. One IBM System x3250 is used as domain controller, and AP&S deployed an IBM System Storage EXP3000 as storage expansion for SAP application data. The Intel Xeon Processor 5600 series automatically regulates power consumption and intelligently adjusts server performance according to application needs. The processors offer up to 15 times performance per server over two-socket single-core servers, enabling up to 15:1 server consolidation ratios, up to 95 percent lower energy costs, and an estimated return on investment in as little as five months. AP&S and Advanced Solutions completed the new SAP Business Allin-One deployment within three months, from server specification to go-live, for 28 named concurrent users. The greatest advantages come from the new SAP applications, which allow us to control an international business from a single, centralized solution. For example, by using SAP Warehouse Management we have less than one percent variation between reported stock and actual inventory, worldwide, when we run audit checks. We are able to answer customer enquiries rapidly and accurately on the availability of components, the shipping price and the delivery expectations, using a secure, reliable solution that helps us run the business efficiently, says Marko Tischler. Advanced Solutions specializes in SAP solution delivery for mediumsized companies, with an optimized project methodology that covers prototyping, deployment and operations. Advanced Solutions helped AP&S achieve its project goals on time by following sensible, feasible, pre-defined steps, to an agreed quality standard, within budget. The total program involves deploying core SAP ERP components, including financials, controlling, project systems, sales and distribution, materials management, production planning and warehouse management for the Donaueschingen site. This deployment will be used as a template for the Singapore and Shanghai operations, which will connect to the same SAP core instance. The next phase will include rollout of SAP ERP Human Capital Management. Conversion to the Unicode standard had already been completed in a previous project. The company s CAD applications will be integrated into the SAP landscape, tying project drawings and specifications to customer orders, and the product range and a configurator will become available via the web directly to customers. SAP Business All-in-One provides the best comprehensive solution for AP&S, and Advanced Solutions provided excellent support. One key advantage is that the system handles reporting, data integrity and management automatically, freeing up employees to concentrate on serving customers. Thomas Weber, Technical Manager, AP&S TECHNICAL LANDSCAPE Servers: IBM System x3650 M2, powered by Intel Xeon 5500 Series processors, IBM System x3250 M2 and M3 powered by Intel Xeon 5600 Series processors Software: SAP Business All-in-One including customer service, sales and distribution, and warehouse management, SAP ERP Human Capital Management, SAP Content Manager, MaxDB, Microsoft Windows Server Users: 28 concurrent users

4 Enabling global operations All the AP&S offices connect directly to the SAP solutions, which present locallanguage user screens in each location, drawing on centralized data. Previously, sales reports from country offices were collected and consolidated manually before analysis. With all the operational data captured on the central SAP instance, AP&S is able to produce up-to-the minute sales, order, inventory and delivery data at any time without manual intervention or delay. Thomas Weber, Technical Manager, comments, We quickly realized that SAP Business All-in-One provides the best comprehensive solution for AP&S, and Advanced Solutions provided excellent support. One key advantage is that the system handles reporting, data integrity and management automatically, freeing up employees to again concentrate on serving customers. Scalable power The IBM System x3650 M2 server was selected for its ability to scale up to meet demand; as well as the core SAP ERP applications, it will also host SAP ERP Human Capital Management. To store the data generated by the additional workload, Advanced Solutions selected the robust and flexible EXP3000 storage expansion unit. The EXP3000 is a direct-attach storage solution for IBM System x servers, supporting MegaRAID and ServeRAID host bus adapters. Up to three EXP3000 units can be connected to expand up to 48 SAS and/or SATA disk drives, providing a potential 28.8TB (SAS) or 96TB (SATA) of storage capacity. For AP&S, the SAP applications access approximately 100GB of production data, managed by MaxDB, and there is a total of approximately 120GB of drawing and technical data managed by IBM Content Manager. The IBM System x3650 M2 integrated systems management tools automatically warn the technical team of likely failures, and AP&S has selected the IBM Carepak service, offering response with four hours. Marko Tischler, IT Manager, says, What pleased us particularly is the combination of the SAP solution, the EXP3000 expansion unit and SAP Content Server. Choosing IBM has given us an integrated solution providing highly reliable operations without any challenges around compatibility issues. For example, users in the construction department frequently used to wait for four or five minutes for CAD documents to open, whereas with IBM Content Server on the IBM System x3650 M2 it takes less than a minute. With 15 users saving ten minutes a day, at an hourly charge rate of e.g. 50, we are saving some 2,500 a month simply through reduced waiting times. Availability, transparency and consistency of the data provided by the SAP lead to time savings of about 5 percent in relation to total working hours in the construction department. If you add time saved during logins, SAP dialog steps and other performance improvements, I suspect our savings are actually higher than this. For example, users in the construction department frequently used to wait for four or five minutes for CAD documents to open, whereas with IBM Content Server on the IBM System x3650 M2 it takes less than a minute. With 15 users saving ten minutes a day, at an hourly charge rate of e.g. 50, we are saving some 2,500 a month simply through reduced waiting times. Marko Tischler, IT Manager, AP&S

5 Supporting global growth Previously hindered by older hardware and applications, AP&S is now ideally placed to continue on its journey to improve its sales, logistics and warehouse processes, based on the automated worldwide fact-gathering capabilities of the integrated SAP applications. The system was very well accepted by everyone, says Thomas Weber. The availability, transparency and consistency of the data provided by the SAP solution lead to substantial time savings, as we no longer have to spend time reconciling different reporting systems. With the standardized processes in place, AP&S is looking to grow its sales channels by extending the full product catalog to the web. Using the SAP internet sales order component, AP&S enables customer to create personalized orders based on templates that give them control over key data, such as delivery addresses, and requested delivery dates. The SAP internet sales component does not require additional pieces of integration software, the product catalog is drawn from the existing SAP databases, and it provides a rapid way to provide comprehensive access to the complete AP&S product range. Finally, AP&S executives monitor sales and production progress using QlikView, an SAP-Certified solution from QlikTech. Dashboard reports, drawing from data stored on the IBM systems, are made available to managers as PDFs and via , as well as on PDAs including iphones and ipads. Sales teams are able to keep customers up-to-date, while executives can analyze the business performance by geography, product, revenue and more. Alexandra Laufer concludes, SAP s excellent reputation gives us, our banking partners and our customers additional confidence in the company strategy. We are able to standardize several of our products with templatebased ordering, and enable easy configuration using the SAP Variant Configuration Tool. This allows AP&S to offer customized products to our customers over the internet, a quick and easy way to reach new markets and ensure that the product configurations are valid. This kind of flexibility, supported by SAP applications on the IBM System x platform, positions AP&S well for the coming years. SAP s excellent reputation gives us, our banking partners and our customers additional confidence in the company strategy... This kind of flexibility, supported by SAP applications on the IBM System x platform, positions AP&S well for the coming years. Alexandra Laufer, Business Manager, AP&S The internet sales order feature is linked to the SAP variant configuration solution, which allows customers to specify variations to their orders. The variations are captured for the customer order and are returned to the manufacturing processes, ensuring the fabrication control systems match the product specifications required.

6 IBM Deutschland GmbH D Stuttgart ibm.com/solutions/sap IBM, the IBM logo, and ibm.com are trademarks of Business Machines Corporation, registered in many jurisdictions worldwide. A current list of other IBM trademarks is available on the Web at Copyright and trademark information at copytrade.shtml Intel, the Intel logo, Intel Xeon and the Intel Xeon logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Intel Corporation or its subsidiaries in the United States and other countries. UNIX is a registered trademark of The Open Group in the United States and other countries. Linux is a trademark of Linus Torvalds in the United States, other countries, or both. Microsoft, Windows, Windows NT, and the Windows logo are trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States, other countries, or both. Other company, product or service names may be trademarks, or service marks of others. This case study illustrates how one IBM customer uses IBM and/or IBM Business Partner technologies/services. Many factors have contributed to the results and benefits described. IBM does not guarantee comparable results. All information contained herein was provided by the featured customer and/or IBM Business Partner. IBM does not attest to its accuracy. All customer examples cited represent how some customers have used IBM products and the results they may have achieved. Actual environmental costs and performance characteristics will vary depending on individual customer configurations and conditions. This publication is for general guidance only. Photographs may show design models. Copyright IBM Corp All rights reserved. Copyright 2010 SAP AG SAP AG Dietmar-Hopp-Allee 16 D Walldorf SAP, the SAP logo, SAP and all other SAP products and services mentioned herein are trademarks or registered trademarks of SAP AG in Germany and several other countries. SPC03297-DEEN-00 (December 2010)