Success Story: CeramTec

You are here:

Home
References
Success Story: CeramTec

Turning old into new – an SAP upgrade with challenges

conarum ensures greater transparency

How do you update a functioning system – in the shortest possible time – so that ongoing processes are not disrupted? What’s more, how do you improve transparency and efficiency in the company at the same time? As an SAP consulting company, conarum has successfully met these challenges in cooperation with its customer CeramTec.

The global supplier of technical ceramics urgently needed to upgrade its SAP SRM Supplier Relationship Management 5.0 to 7.0 in order to continue benefiting from SAP standard maintenance and to keep its procurement processes technically up to date. Well over 10,000 products, components and parts made of various ceramic materials are used worldwide. There was still a great need for improvement in the procurement of catalog parts for maintenance orders. A clear case for conarum.

Objective

The necessary upgrade from SAP SRM 5.0 to 7.0 should be realized as quickly as possible.
The core requirement was clearly defined: The online catalogs, the so-called PunchOut catalogs, and the orders had to be perfectly accessible even after the release change.
There was an urgent request from the departments to make ordered items from the catalogs visible in the maintenance order.

Upgrade

As the existing system was kept close to the standard, conarum was able to carry out the upgrade quickly. As SAP made a technology change for 7.0, conarum realized a new introduction rather than a classic upgrade during the changeover. The release change was made from the previous SAP ITS (Internet Transaction Server) to the new Web Dynpro UI technology. This has the advantage for the IT and business departments that the web interfaces have been standardized across all systems. It was also possible to significantly reduce the number of adaptations to standard SAP UI objects. The time and thus also economic advantage is clearly given by the reduced effort when importing support packages and EHPs.

PunchOut catalogs

The biggest challenge for conarum during the changeover was to make the many externally connected PunchOut catalogs available again without disruption. As CeramTec connects a large number of PunchOut catalogs that are not hosted and managed in-house, this involved a high level of technical coordination with the suppliers. Following the changeover, around 50 percent of the PunchOut catalog systems initially had difficulties with processing. Major time delays were the result. After this initial functional dry spell, conarum was also able to overcome these hurdles very quickly and successfully, thus fulfilling CeramTec’s core requirement.

Transparency

Items from the catalogs for maintenance orders were not visible in the order during procurement via the SAP SRM Employee Self Service scenario used. By integrating the new SRM Component Planning process into Plant Maintenance, the article is included in the order as a component and is therefore visible in SAP ECC PM (EAM). This has significantly improved the transparency of procurement for Plant Maintenance.

What conarum promises…

For CeramTec, the decision in favor of conarum as an SAP consulting company was exactly right. The following elementary facts were decisive:

conarum has a great deal of expertise, which was presented very convincingly by the company.
The good SAP contacts and knowledge are a decisive advantage.
Other specialist topics were also answered competently.
The price-performance ratio corresponded exactly to CeramTec’s expectations.
conarum acted cost-consciously, in the interests of the customer.

… is also held!

“Competent, fast and always available, both before and after the project,” is how one IT employee enthusiastically summed up the successful collaboration with conarum. “A great relationship of trust has also been established with the specialist department. All topics were explained very clearly and well.” CeramTec responded promptly and competently to all questions and uncertainties. The project ran within the agreed budget. All initial stumbling blocks were resolved very satisfactorily and quickly. “It would have been difficult for us without conarum, because it was also a major challenge for conarum.” A challenge that was mastered brilliantly: Component planning has been running productively since 01.01.2015 – with complete success!

conarum accompanies you. Competent and solution-oriented to success.