SAP Manufacturing Customers - May the FORCE Be With You

SAP has been #1 in the enterprise software market for decades. They created the first enterprise ERP system in the 1980s and have exploded into the enterprise software universe with innovations like HANA.

Still, as many SAP ERP customers bought systems like SAP R/3 and Business One in the 1990s, SAP users increasingly needed help with their older ERP systems.

The Beginning

A long time ago (1972), in a galaxy not so far away (Germany), SAP AG was launched by several former IBM engineers, including Dietmar Hopp and Hasso Plattner.

Dietmar Hopp was the CEO of SAP AG from 1988 until 1998. He is widely considered to be an enterprise software pioneer. In the SAP universe, while Hasso Plattner was (and still is) its Yoda, Dietmar Hopp was its Obi-Wan.

A Rift in the SAP Universe

Although SAP’s growth exploded through the ’90s, there were still some problems that Hopp and the other SAP Jedi knights were facing in the galactic storms of the 2000s. There was a Dark Side that threatened, particularly in the manufacturing ERP space.

• The core SAP ERP “back office” systems could be slow to show ROI because of the cost of customization and relatively lengthy ERP project cycles.
• Lower margins meant manufacturers increasingly had to implement “lean” initiatives, and ERP was anything but lean.
• Manufacturers in industries like automotive were instituting just-in-time (JIT) programs and Kanban to “pull” inventory through the shop floor, as they could no longer afford to “push” a la Henry Ford.
• SAP’s traditional material requirements planning (MRP) engine assumed “infinite resources,” which turned out to be unrealistic in some cases because of resource constraints.
• Many SAP customers did their initial ERP projects back in the ‘90s, so their applications were becoming antiquated.
• SAP users had been slow to upgrade because they feared the costs and risks of a “re-implementation.”
• Increasing automation on the shop floor meant that the focus of productivity gains turned to the machines rather than the labor. The feedback from the machines themselves was becoming more important.
• Old-style ERP software couldn’t use innovations like data visualization to assess how workers and machines were doing. In some crucial ways, SAP customers (frankly, any ERP customers) were flying blind.
• Rapidly emerging technologies like the Internet of Things, mobile applications, and cloud were threatening to leave plodding “on-premise” systems light years behind.

As SAP manufacturing customers cut costs (staff), outsourced and automated, the focus turned from efficiency on the people side to optimizing the machines. They had to squeeze more from less.

In other words, in the ‘90 it was common to have legions of C3POs raise the alarm and unleash a clone army when there was a problem. In the 2000s, however, they needed a small force of R2D2s to talk to the machines and fix the problem.

There was a widening hole in the SAP universe, a rift that needed to be filled.

A Protégé is Born

During the heady growth of the ’90s, a young Jedi named Franz Gruber had been studying under the tutelage of Dietmar Hopp. Gruber had been with Hopp at IBM in the ’80s and had come over in the ‘90s to work with the Jedi master at SAP.

Gruber had been focused on the manufacturing space and had studied other manufacturing masters like Taiichi Ono, the creator of the world-renowned Toyota Production System.

Although SAP had some functionality in the emerging Advanced Shop Floor Management field, Gruber realized it didn’t go far enough to fill the rift. What was needed was a new Manufacturing Execution System (MES).

The SAP ERP assumed labor and machine time was infinite, so a new system was needed to do finite scheduling and track actual machine utilization. Where the ERP thought machines were always productive, a new approach was required to let them talk to the operators and tell them how effective they were.

So, in 2001 Gruber left SAP with two of his colleagues to form FORCAM GmbH in Ravensburg, Germany. He did so in a wise way, without cutting ties to his Obi-Wan. In fact, Gruber’s mentor Dietmar Hopp invested in FORCAM and remains a significant investor today.

Rise of the Machines

Gruber’s vision was to fully connect the “top floor to the shop floor.” To do this, he started with the assumption that the FORCAM MES software needed to connect directly to the machines to measure their performance and bring full transparency to the plant’s Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE).

Then he needed to introduce finite scheduling to move shop floor operations around in response to rapidly changing conditions of machine downtime, operator errors, and other disruptions.

Fortunately, most modern machines were connected to PCs and the Internet via terminal controllers. FORCAM’s biggest challenge was to talk to legacy (read old) machines that weren’t computer compatible. This challenge was overcome by developing hardwired controllers that got crude measurements from the old machines, such as when they were on or off.

This data was collected along with order numbers, operations, operator times, etc., and projected on color “maps” at each machine cell. The objective was to illuminate that “black box” of how the process performed against key performance indicator (KPI) benchmarks. Then the data could be shown graphically in standard reports and charts through data visualization.

In short, the MES technology would pick up standard plans and routing information from the ERP system to assess what the process “should” be doing. Then the machines would talk back and tell the ERP what was “really” happening. Just visualizing the process was a massive step towards making the machines and the operators work more productively.

Early FORCAM customers like Daimler-Benz and Audi began to see 5-10 percent productivity improvements with ROI paybacks in 6-9 months. Because FORCAM came from SAP, there was a standard SAP adapter from the beginning. Other modern ERP systems like Infor also began to go online soon afterward.

The stage was set for the next revolution.

The Force Awakens

In 2014, FORCAM began work on the latest software version – aptly named FORCAM FORCE. In many respects, FORCAM FORCE is a complete redo of the MES system that started with SAP in the early 2000s. It takes advantage of the latest cloud, mobile, and user experience technology.

Here’s what SAP ERP customers can expect if the FORCE is with them:

• A fully integrated, real-time SAP ERP adapter.
• A web-based Graphical User Interface (GUI) that operates on any major Web Browser, like Google Chrome or Internet Explorer.
• Web apps to run the different modules on a phone or tablet with iOS or Android operating systems (sorry, you’re toast on Blackberry).
• Full multi-site capability, meaning that plants worldwide can be connected within one instance of the software.
• Multi-language capability for English, French, German, Spanish, and others.
• Public cloud deployment through the leading cloud providers, including Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services.
• The capacity for “private cloud” deployment in facilities such as Aerospace and Defense that are subject to ITAR government security requirements.
• A workflow engine that can be used to add automatic tasks, like sending an e-mail to a supervisor if machine utilization goes below 80 percent.
• A rule-based engine that can be used to set conditions for different machines, such as what constitutes “productive time.”
• A library of around 150 standard reports and dashboards that can be accessed based on the “roles” of the user.

OK, maybe an MES system can’t close the entire rift in your ERP system. Although it doesn’t replace an aging Millennium Falcon, MES can add some turbo boosters to that baby!

The Voyage Ahead

Gruber’s ultimate dream is software that can use “big data” to predict which machines can operate more efficiently, which will need corrective action, and when. Ultimately he believes that machines can become “self-aware.” They may even affect their repairs so plant managers can sleep better at night.

OK, it’s not as creepy as it sounds! Think R2D2, not the Terminator.

Today Gruber and FORCAM are at the forefront of efforts to bring innovation to manufacturing worldwide. They are working with organizations such as the Digital Manufacturing and Design Innovation Institute (DMDII) to provide an incubator for digital manufacturing in industry, government, and academia.

(This article was written in 2015.)