“We are integrating all the Dichtomatik sites into the Freudenberg world and turning them into complete Freudenberg Sealing Technologies (FST) units.” That sentence reflects the core message of a “Sealing World” article that appeared in the spring of 2020. At that point, Landskrona, Sweden, was the first of the former Dichtomatik locations to migrate into FST’s SAP system under the overarching business integration project and to legally merge with the FST subsidiary in that country. Other ex-Dichtomatik facilities have now followed suit. The Industrial Services project team has made a positive interim assessment of the closely timed projects.
“Industrial Services merges the DNA of FST and Dichtomatik:
Sebastian Grünschloß | Project Team Leader
on the one hand, the far-reaching engineering, material, production and product know-how of Freudenberg. On the other, the commercial and service activities, the speed, flexibility and high availability of Dichtomatik.”
The SAIL project team at the Industrial Services Division currently consists of:
Grünschloß
Leader
The fundamental pattern of every migration is always the same. We have a clearly structured process,” said Daniela Schiebel of the SAIL project team. “At the same time, we consider local characteristics,” added her colleague Jonas Kersten. The team doing this work is superbly qualified: Its members combine the knowledge of specific business processes at Industrial Services with SAP expertise. The combination has a positive effect on cooperation with CPIM and the global process owners, accelerating the progression of SAP projects and ensuring the quality of the migrations.
Before the “hot” three-month project phase, a rough appraisal takes place – this was still occurring on site at the first locations. Later, due to the pandemic, it took place remotely. In the second phase of the project, the available data is cleaned up and enriched. To put it simply, this involved keeping data clutter out of the SAP system. That means no erroneous or out-of-date master data relating to customers, suppliers and materials. There are also efforts to ensure that all the SAP-relevant data is present, including data that was not needed in the legacy system that was previously used. “This collection and alignment of data always requires a great deal of communication,” Schiebel said.
The introduction of SAP
The most interesting phase of the SAP introduction starts with data enrichment and launch of the test system to validate the cleaned data that has been put into an SAP format. The project team incorporates local characteristics into the system and trains users. With the connection to FST’s landscape, the process becomes quite intense as tested data is uploaded into the live system. The positive aspect: All the previous “go-lives” have worked without customer service and the flow of goods being impaired. “We have grown as a team and have worked well with our consultants, although we have only been able to collaborate virtually since the start of the pandemic. Furthermore, facilities everywhere did a great job of joining the effort,” Kersten said.
The work was especially challenging last year as two migrations loomed. The United Kingdom was on the agenda, as was the first transatlantic site in Canada. Kersten pointed to one of the challenges over and above the time difference. “The facilities in North America used a legacy system that was different from those in Europe. In those cases, we had to get inside it first,” he said. For the migration into the United States, it was essential to simultaneously bring three locations into the “new era” at the same time.
Some other details: The standard portfolio and the product names and identifications have been different in North America and in Europe to this point. They had to be adapted to a globally uniform nomenclature, and selected articles had to be brought into the global standard portfolio, along with product data sheets, images, etc. – and thus into the company’s e-catalog and the accompanying ordering platform EASY.
The entire FST portfolio
With the migration into the uniform SAP system, the customers of all the ex-Dichtomatik locations can use this convenient online system for orders and queries. With EASY’s help, a customer in Austria or Hungary now has direct access to the inventory at the central warehouse in Germany. The ex-Dichtomatik subsidiaries can now arrange so-called drop shipments when they don’t have an item available in their warehouse. This gives them the opportunity to sell the entire FST portfolio, including both the Dichtomatik and the Freudenberg brands.
The migration into the Netherlands was still waiting in late 2021 – with two special characteristics. In contrast to the rest of the ex-Dichtomatik locations, FST had manufacturing operations (Freudenberg Xpress®) there. These processes also had to be mapped in the SAP system. In addition, integration into an existing FST subsidiary in the SAP system was impossible: There had not been one to this point. So a start-up in SAP was required on the system side.
“Industrial Services combines the DNA of FST and Dichtomatik: on one hand, the far-reaching engineering, material, production and product know-how of Freudenberg. On the other, the commercial and service activities, the speed, flexibility and high availability of Dichtomatik. Customers benefit from this concentrated expertise,” Team Leader Grünschloß summed up.
