Diehl Aerospace Establishes Support Center in Singapore

Transcription

1 SAP Template-Rollout Diehl Aerospace Establishes Support Center in Singapore Aviation company Diehl Aerospace has established a new customer support center in Singapore. This called for a dedicated IT environment. New processes had to be defined and a suitable SAP template designed and rolled out in just seven months.

2 About Diehl Aerospace Cockpit and display systems from Diehl Aerospace are used not only in Airbus aircraft. The company s customers also include Boeing, Canadian airplane and train manufacturer Bombardier, and Brazilian aircraft manufacturer Embraer. Diehl Aerospace is part of the Diehl Group, which operates in the metal, controls, metering, and defense segments. The company has its origins in an artistic foundry established by Margarete and Heinrich Diehl in In 1905, the husband and wife team acquired the artistic foundry where Heinrich Diehl had earlier learned his trade. The company now offered not only a foundry and processing workshop, but also fittings, door knobs, and art castings. Today, the Diehl Group is an international technology group with more than 16,000 employees worldwide and annual revenue of some EUR 3 billion. The group is based in Nuremberg.

3 By Markus Seip, cbs Corporate Business Solutions Manager Markus Seip is responsible for M-cbs project management at cbs Corporate Business Solutions GmbH. Diehl Aerospace GmbH is a successful German company in the aviation industry with many locations around the world. Its shareholders include the Diehl Group, with its subgroup Diehl Aerosystems, and the French Thales Group. Support for customers in the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region is provided from Singapore. Until the end of 2016, Airbus subsidiary SATAIR handled this support. The agreement expired, and it was decided that the company would itself assume responsibility for customer support in this key growth region. To this end, Diehl Aerospace Pte. Ltd. was founded. Based in Singapore, this new Diehl Aerospace GmbH subsidiary is intended to function as a customer support center (CSC) in the Asia-Pacific region for the entire Diehl subgroup with its four individual companies. As a basis for the work of the new CSC APAC, it was necessary to establish a dedicated IT and SAP environment. cbs Corporate Business Solutions handled template creation and rollout for Diehl Aerospace in Singapore. The team s extensive experience with international rollouts and its wide-ranging expertise were helpful when it came to deploying SAP in Singapore. To minimize risk and optimize the value chain, it was agreed that certain service elements would be provided locally in the background by partner Thales. At the same time, however, Diehl Aerospace Pte. Ltd. was to operate independently in the market while using these service elements via IT solutions. Optimum Support The aim is to deliver optimum support for all the requirements of the Diehl Aerosystems subgroup at the new location. From the outset, the affiliated companies of the subgroup Diehl Aircabin and Diehl Comfort Modules have also been using the local options with customers from the region. The services include, for example, replacement parts, repairs, technical assistance, and similar offerings. These services have to run smoothly in the real world as well as in the IT system. The project team had just seven months to define and implement the tightly integrated and complex processes. The close, trouble-free cooperation between Thales Singapore and CSC APAC had to be reflected in the IT and in the SAP template, says Diehl project manager Reinhard Gessinger. To achieve this, it s essential to have automated interfaces and avoid duplicate entries. Legal requirements of Singapore CSC APAC and Thales Singapore are tightly meshed with each other. Thales has been operating in Singapore for more than 40 years and handles services for customers from the aviation, defense, and transport industries. The company takes care of warehousing for the CSC APAC as well as some repairs in the region. This close interplay between the two companies had to be taken into account when programming interfaces. At the same time, it was important to consider the legal requirements of the city state of Singapore. Processes Displayed Entirely in SAP In addition, the goal was to standardize processes and adapt the IT landscape in line with the processes at company head-

4 quarters. This was also intended to reduce complexity and heterogeneity, and eliminate the need for third-party providers processes. cbs and the Diehl project members were in constant contact. Many new processes were defined. First, the processes relevant for the location were specified. Because of the project partners many interfaces, this task called for the utmost attention. This was the case, for example, for the repairs process. Diehl wanted specific requirements for the template design for this purpose. The team used the triedand-tested M-cbs methodology for this project. The M-cbs methodology includes dedicated project plans, process lists, involvement of end-users, and the Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN), which enables business processes and working procedures to be modeled and documented. It was important to get the relevant stakeholders in other words, key users and process owners on board. In fit/gap workshops, the project team repeatedly compared the actual process with the desired goals and the legal requirements in Singapore. The local partners at Thales and Diehl s key users were regularly trained on-site. All processes were implemented in SAP. These included procurement and purchasing, intercompany procurement, the dropshipping process, sales order processing, complaints management, and customer returns. At the heart of the template is the SAP ERP Customer Service (CS) module, with the additional modules Sales and Distribution (SD), Materials Management (MM), Financial Accounting (FI), and Controlling (CO). Following a test cycle, the template was handed over to Diehl. After this, the migration and a second test cycle, for which Diehl was responsible, were performed. In a next step, the local business accepted the system.

5 Close Interplay Between the 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 intended to better integrate the partner. In addition, the project team had to start developing the system before CSC APAC had even been established. It was also important that the project members at Diehl were able to continue their day-today business in other words, support without interruptions. The short project duration of around seven months was also challenging. Here, the project team contributed its extensive experience of complex international rollout scenarios. Additionally, there are many local legal requirements in Singapore that the project team considered when developing the system. The project team s specific expertise in Singapore business and in creating templates enabled cbs to successfully complete the rollout in the

6 city state. An interdisciplinary and integrative understanding of the client s processes proved helpful in this context. Smooth Start to Business Operations The particularly complex customer service processes between the various systems at Diehl and Thales were successfully integrated into the new system. The new CSC APAC can now perform all after sales processes smoothly and independently. During work on the system, day-to-day business continued unhindered. A third-party supplier is no longer necessary. With the new system, we have a solid basis on which our customer support center can work extremely efficiently, says Diehl project manager Reinhard Gessinger. The necessary processes are now in our hands. The template created enables us to perform significantly enhanced IT governance and comprehensive IT controlling. Moreover, intercompany business

7 is now easier thanks to automatic transfer of invoices via EDI. In the past, external invoices were also involved, which had to be entered separately by hand. The project team succeeded in creating an extensive business alignment template that models precisely those processes necessary for the new support center s work. This was made possible in particular by the detailed and focused work on the template design. Diehl Aerospace s CSC APAC has got off to a promising start with the SAP template. Following the successful go live, Diehl Aerospace is now planning further projects with cbs.

8 cbs Corporate Business Solutions The Materna Group Management Consultancy HQ: Im Breitspiel Heidelberg - Germany P contact@cbs-consulting.com