SAP Aligns New Solutions With "Industry 4.0" Innovation to Steer Customers Through Improved Production Process

HANNOVER, Germany, April 8, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- Underscoring a commitment to innovating the manufacturing process as part of "Industry 4.0," SAP AG (NYSE: SAP) today announced new releases of manufacturing solutions and updates for existing solutions covering engineering, manufacturing and sustainable operations. The announcement was made at Hannover Messe 2013, being held April 8-12 in Hannover, Germany.

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The manufacturing industry today is facing a technological milestone. Machines, production facilities and warehousing systems are able to autonomously exchange information, trigger actions and control each other, promising huge improvements in the industrial processes involved in manufacturing, engineering and service. This fourth industrial revolution, called Industry 4.0, offers the promise of bringing two worlds together — industrial manufacturing and next-generation IT — to create a new level of efficiency and effectiveness.

SAP is adapting Industry 4.0 principles through the development of "Idea to Performance," a holistic business approach to increase product and service performance. The approach enables full management of a product's entire life cycle from design to service within distinct scenarios. For example, "Responsive Manufacturing" delivers end-to-end processes integrating the plan-to-produce process. Embedded quality and compliance controls enable manufacturers to address nonconformance through corrective and preventive actions while simultaneously setting more predictable and shorter cycle times, helping to both improve asset utilization and support on-time delivery.

"Idea to Performance" incorporates enablement of new and existing solutions by SAP® Business Suite software powered by the SAP HANA® platform, first introduced in January 2013. "Responsive Manufacturing" is planned to be underpinned by offerings powered by SAP HANA, including the SAP® Overall Equipment Effectiveness Management (SAP OEE Management) application, which is planned to collect machine data via machine-to-machine (M2M) communication and transform it into analytical insights; the material requirement planning capability within the SAP® ERP application, which aims to deliver high-speed reads for a 50 percent reduction in run time; and the SAP® Product Portfolio Management application, which is intended to help improve the run time of critical project management transactions.

"At Elster, we see Industry 4.0 as an opportunity to engage with products that steer themselves intelligently through the production process and save all relevant data," said Roland Essmann, project lead MES, Elster GmbH. "SAP is one of the few IT companies who can cover all relevant processes end-to-end from R&D, engineering, construction, to sales in one standard system. With SAP Manufacturing Execution and SAP Manufacturing Integration and Intelligence, data are well prepared to be transferred to a product and vice versa, and the solutions are web based, which is important to realize Industry 4.0 as well."

User Experience: Anytime, Anywhere Insight
To improve user experience across all applications, SAP is investing in making solutions more intuitive and appealing to users. Planned updates include:

• SAP OEE Management, which aims to enable enterprise-wide production analytics comparing assets and performance across multiple sites. This enables comparable operations according to unified standards using HTML5 based, touch enabled cockpit on desktops and on tablets. A shop floor dispatching and monitoring tool for SAP, which will enable manufacturing production orders to be efficiently and flexibly scheduled on a graphical user interface.
• New synchronized releases of the SAP® Manufacturing Execution application, the SAP® Manufacturing Integration and Intelligence (SAP MII) application and SAP® Plant Connectivity software, which will provide efficient manufacturing execution and visibility into shop floor operations.

Core Applications: Improving Quality
SAP's focus on Industry 4.0 centers on both new innovation and strategic updates to core applications, including those available via mobile app, helping ensure greater efficiency and increase product quality. Updates include:

• The SAP® Quality Issue Management (SAP QIM) application, which is intended to complement the quality management capabilities of SAP Business Suite by managing quality issues across the entire value chain.
• The SAP® ERP Quality Issue mobile app, which enables employees to log a quality issue with a mobile device, to create a quality notification, and to monitor the resolution process.
• The SAP® Complex Manufacturing Accelerator mobile app, which helps increase shop floor efficiency for manufacturing across the entire process, from issue identification to resolution.

Rapid-Deployment Solutions: Delivering Results Faster
SAP® Rapid Deployment solutions deliver preconfigured software and implementation services in one package, enabling customers to realize specialized business benefits within a shortened timeframe while laying the foundation for future expansion. Updates include:

• The SAP® Multiresource Scheduling rapid-deployment solution, a fast way to implement a powerful resource planning solution that helps companies promptly fulfill service requests from one graphical planning tool.
• The SAP® Asset Data Quality rapid-deployment solution, which gives customers the ability to assess, validate and continuously monitor the quality of their asset master data.
• The SAP® Condition-Based Maintenance rapid-deployment solution, which allows for the streamlined implementation of a fixed-price, fixed-scope offering so customers can quickly begin optimizing a maintenance strategy.

"In today's competitive business environment, there is renewed focus on manufacturing as a space for innovation and revolution; IT provides significant potential for business process innovation in manufacturing," said Kerstin Geiger, senior vice president, Solution Management, Discrete and Process Industries, SAP. "By investing in predictive analytics and new technologies to help users in maintenance and after-market service, we are better able to serve the manufacturing industry as it continues to grow and evolve."

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About SAP
As market leader in enterprise application software, SAP (NYSE: SAP) helps companies of all sizes and industries run better. From back office to boardroom, warehouse to storefront, desktop to mobile device – SAP empowers people and organizations to work together more efficiently and use business insight more effectively to stay ahead of the competition. SAP applications and services enable more than 232,000 customers to operate profitably, adapt continuously, and grow sustainably. For more information, visit www.sap.com.

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