ACSU successfully performed the second SIG Automotive seminar on 23.10.2009; again we thank the company United Automotive Electronic Systems Co., Ltd. (UAES) sponsoring the rooms for this seminar. With more than 25 participants companies like ZF, Schaeffler, Kostal-Huangyan, Shanghai SIIC Transportation Electric, SAP,UAES and Marquardt Switches attended the meeting, showing an increasing interest in this workshop series.

With 25 attendants in this seminar we had convinced more people than last time participating in this seminar, meaning that the seminar is on the right track bringing advantages for the ACSU members in the automotive industry. Based on the first seminars survey we selected topics chosen by the automotive seminar in May 2009.

Accordingly this seminar’s topic was “Supply Chain Management” and started with an overview of SAP’s newest SAP-SCM 7.0 solution, presented by Mrs. Li Fan and Mrs. Zhao Yun, both Solution Manager at SAP Labs Shanghai. A special interest in Mrs. Zhao’s presentation was their new product solution SAP EWM (Extended Warehouse Management), which introduced the functionalities of this totally newly developed product to the attendants. The new capabilities enable higher process and stock visibility, better planning of warehouse operations and a highly efficient operation of distribution and storage processes. These capabilities in turn, allow for flexible and adaptive planning and coordination, in addition to execution of inbound and outbound processing, thereby integrating the process flow across the entire supply network.

The second contribution was about “Forecast & Planning for replenishment strategies of decentralized subsidiaries”, held by Mr. Bohe (Managing Director of Orbis Consulting), which had been introduced for one their client. Following the 2-step implementation approach of the project, a comparison of the forecast and replenishment planning with the usage of only SAP ERP and under in combination of SAP-SCM was discussed. Whereas with only SAP ERP you can manage only the planning of the demand for the central warehouse and production, with leveraging SAP SCM functionalities you can get a global view on all subsidiary stocks, automatic integration of planning for new products, automatic alerts creation and thus realize forecast and planning for a whole network of warehouses and distribution centers.

A lively discussion was held including real pain points of ACSU member companies like ZF and Schaeffler. Discussion topics included “Planning and order confirmation on different product levels”, “Prioritized procurement and usage of Global-ATP checks”, “Optimized communication in supply chain networks”, “Traceability of products in the whole supply chain” and “Decreasing of inventory stock levels by increasing customer satisfaction”.

The last contribution about “Sales order scheduling agreement with EDI integration” was held by Andy Shi (Logistics consultant at Westernacher Consulting China), who introduced the concept of EDI with the focus on component suppliers. An overview of the most important EDI processes and their realization with the usage of EDI technology was given.

Pictures:

1. Introduction by Roberto Custodio (ZF China Investment), leader of the SIG Automotive group.

2. Overview presentation of SAP SCM solution by Mrs. Li Fan (Solution Manager SAP SCM, SAP Labs Shanghai)

3. Mr. Jiang (Process Specialist Production Planning, Schaeffler Holding (China) Co., Ltd.) discussing  Supply chain issues in their global company.