BHS has been successfully using a comprehensive SAP interface from APICON since 2008. Thanks to its modular architecture, it has always been easy to adapt to new and expanded business requirements. It therefore made sense for Bernd Lange, Senior Director Central Services, to ask APICON about a master data management issue. The solution was implemented with the APICON Data Master, which had already been implemented for other applications.
The material status indicates whether there are restrictions on the usability of a material and what these are. For example, a material may be under development or a discontinued material.
During creation, the material initially only has a cross-plant material status in the basic data. Later, a plant-specific material status is maintained for costing, scheduling and other functions. Incorrect material statuses have fatal consequences in subsequent business processes.
If Engineering now makes changes in the PLM system (SAP ECTR), e.g. the creation of a new drawing, the cross-plant material status in SAP is automatically changed.
The APICON Data Master recognizes this change and automatically checks the basic data of the material master and the data of a specific plant view in defined cycles. The rules stored in the Data Master are used for this.
Defined status changes in the cross-plant material status, the special procurement type and the purchasing group are checked.
If the conditions of the rules are met, the plant-specific material status is automatically updated in SAP.
In the past, this process was carried out manually with a great deal of effort and is now fully automated in Data Master. This saves time and avoids errors caused by manual processing.
The APICON Data Master has been supporting master data management at BHS since 2017. The logic for updating the material status was implemented within a very short time. It took less than four weeks from the first telephone inquiry to going live.
The automatic updating of the plant-specific material status in the event of design changes is one aspect of an overall concept for “release and change management”. Among other things, the overall concept includes the introduction of the SAP change service, which is to be used to change various basic production data (e.g. parts lists, materials, documents) with history (with date validity). Another topic is the synchronization of material statuses (cross-plant material status, plant-specific material status and sales status) in order to control the usability of materials from the perspectives of engineering, supply chain and sales. There are also plans to organize change notifications via task management in the Data Master in order to address changes made in the engineering area to the responsible parties in the supply chain in a more targeted manner.
BHS-Sonthofen is an owner-managed group of mechanical and plant engineering companies headquartered in Sonthofen (Germany). True to our mission “TRANSFORMING MATERIALS INTO VALUE”, we offer innovative technical solutions and consulting services in the field of mechanical and thermal process engineering. Our success is based on our experts who specialize in filtration, drying, mixing, shredding and recycling. With around 600 employees, three production sites and nine subsidiaries, our company has a global presence.
"We were looking for a solution that would safeguard our order handling process in the event of changes to drawings and parts lists for orders that have already been dispatched or for growing parts lists. As we have been using Apicon Data Master for years and are very familiar with its range of functions, it made sense to implement this use case with it too." Bernd Lange, Senior Director Central Services