Reintegration

Plant manufacturer thyssenkrupp implements complex SAP transformation

Essen-based thyssenkrupp Industrial Solutions is a leading partner for the design and construction of industrial plants and systems. The Group faced a particular challenge in terms of structure and organization. The large Service unit, which was fully integrated in the company's SAP system, was to be transferred to the three product areas Cement, Mining and Chemical Plant. In order to reestablish a more product-oriented structure, increase transparency and also be better positioned for a possible sale of individual business units at a later date, the task was to split the joint division into the respective three segments in the same SAP system, and even in the same company code. Together with the consulting partner cbs, the responsible IT department realized this demanding reintegration back into a product-oriented overall responsibility of the individual areas in a tight time frame of only nine months.

Carve-outs or mergers are more common in the industrial environment. In this case, the situation was quite different. The Service division, which was fully integrated in the ERP system, was to be split up and integrated into the three product divisions Cement, Mining and Chemical Plant, which at the same time were mapped as independent business units by their own segments in SAP and were also operational.

Kay-Michael Goertz, Head of Commercial Processes and Applications and responsible project manager at tkIS: "Implementing this requirement did not allow for a typical migration approach in the familiar sense: I have my old system, I define my migration rules, I fill a new system, and I do a three-way split in the process. Rather, we migrated all the data in the running system, and in the same company code at that. So we also took into account 17 years of company history - five of them in the existing system - and used legacy data that we had already migrated to the current system. This was a special challenge. Some data had already been migrated three or four times due to internal organizational changes. As a rule, frequent migrations don't make the data any better."

In a system that is subject to segment-oriented reporting, splitting a segment into three segments even though the individual documents were not clearly attributable to a target segment was the primary challenge for the project team.

Enterprise Transformer

The concept phase at the beginning was crucial for those responsible. "What do we even want, what does that mean for us? What document data do we see that we need to consistently separate? Here, we first had to have clarity internally in order to then also have a defined starting point for the discussions."Goertz explains the procedure. As a result, tkIS quickly got into deeper design discussions. Technically, there were not many choices, because migration within a company code leaves hardly any options. There is no simple copy-clean approach, as in the real SLO business, and no classic approach that could address the unique situation. Therefore, it was a challenge to make the complexity of the transformation tangible and comprehensible and to find an independent solution approach.

cbs Enterprise Transformer was used as comprehensive standard software for holistic SAP data transformation. A hybrid transformation approach with maximum process continuity was selected. On the one hand, this made it possible to transform documents and entire document chains, in some cases fully historically, to the new segments, divisions and profit centers using direct update technology and, on the other hand, to use automated update methods. These were integrated into the complex validation framework of tkIS. With the help of cbs ET, a minimally disruptive approach was taken, which made it possible to transform master and transaction data in any process status without having to close open purchase orders, deliveries, billing documents or projects in advance and reopen them afterwards.

Transformation processes with high complexity

With a project like this, there is a danger of underestimating the effort involved. Kay-Michael Goertz: "We had gone the other way the year before and merged three units into one segment - that went relatively smoothly. Initially, we thought it couldn't be that hard the other way around."

In practice, however, things were different. In the end, it was not trivial to handle this full-historical migration from the point of view of certain issues. "We had to clean up first of all. We had to trace back certain chains, and that was not so easy, especially with documents that were older and had already been migrated once or even several times, but under different aspects, with a completely different background, in a different direction"explains Goertz.

Furthermore, Goertz says: "The fact that the new breakdown in the summations of the three areas in the overall balance sheet of the Group again becomes the same picture, that is then already highly demanding, because large value portions are also included there, for example the new construction projects. But we have succeeded in doing so." tkIS has now created a data situation in SAP that corresponds to the organizational situation. And the company has thus created the technical prerequisite for the upcoming sales negotiations in order to enable system separation.

"The transformation project was successful throughout: in-time, in-quality, in-budget. We are very satisfied, everything was completed in the allotted time. We have found a reliable partner in cbs, with whom we are already implementing the next project at the moment".Goertz is pleased. The three business units are to be sold in the medium to long term or expanded in partnerships with other market players. "Then we will have to detach the area in question from this system and install it in a new system. The advantage: We can now grab each area cleanly and thus have a significantly lower effort. Because each business area sits in exactly one segment, and no longer spread across several segments"the project manager specifies.

The recipe for success? Early involvement of all levels on the business side, from the board to the employees who are to participate in the project. Because it's about data sharing, and behind that, of course, it's also about corresponding aspects, profit shares and similar things. "It was important to us that you have the same understanding early on of the goal you want to achieve and, of course, the framework that such an endeavor is subject to"says Goertz.

thyssenkrupp Industrial Solutions

thyssenkrupp Industrial Solutions (tkIS) is a partner for the design, construction and service of industrial plants and systems. Together with its customers, the long-established company develops solutions at the highest level and delivers efficiency and sustainability along the complete life cycle. The focus is on cement plants, chemical plants and plants for mining. In addition, there are, for example, remote-controlled ship unloaders or solutions for digital inventory management. A global network makes it possible to supply turnkey plants worldwide which feature particularly resource-saving technologies. In fiscal year 2018/2019, the successful global player generated sales of 2.94 billion euros with 11,400 employees.