Survey results in SIG Automotive: June 2009

With our SIG Automotive survey we collected feedback from all participants about the information requirements for SAP knowledge in the aAutomotive industry companies. All 16 participants filled in the form and we will give you the most important 3 topics of every category resulting from our survey [in order of importance]:

SAP Products/Solutions:

• Supply Chain Management (SCM) [10 out of 16]
• Manufacturing Execution Systems (MES) [8 out of 16]
• IS Automotive [5 out of 16]

Finance/Controlling:

• Sales order cost controlling [8 out of 16]
• Product costing (general) [6 out of 16]
• Golden Tax [5 out of 16]

Logistics (general):

In the Logistics area it seems that the Planning procedures – their usage and their optimization - are very important for the participating companies, but also Variant configuration, a topic which had been touched during our first seminar, needs more attention:

• Sales operation planning [6 out of 16]
• Demand management [6 out of 16]
• Production planning [6 out of 16]
• Variant configuration [5 out of 16]

At the end of the SIG meeting the participants brainstormed about further topics which can help the automotive companies especially in China, e.g. the performance control of their deliveries, how to arrange the production order handling more flexible or how to increase the efficiency in warehouse and production with the adoption of barcodes or mobile devices. The following list gives an overview of the topics:

• Delivery performance - SAP Add-on from Bensberg GmbH, Germany
• Link Demand planning with Forecast
• Barcode Solution - Zebra Technology solution, US
• Island production; grouping work stations together, routing should be more flexible - contact SAP for proposal
• Bonded warehouse and production planning
• Golden Tax interface not flexible enough
• SAP's strategy for China

As can be seen, there are very interesting topics for the next meeting. Although SAP provided a standardized solution for the “Golden tax” interface with EhP3 of ERP 6.0, it seems not to be very flexible in practice. The Lead SIG Automotive Mr. Roberto Custodio and the SAP Liaison Dr. JunSong Peng will discuss the topics and arrange an interesting agenda for the next meeting on 23.10.2009.

In the meantime the participants and other interested persons are invited to participate in the discussion group of our ACSU Forum SIG Automotive.

If you are still not a member of our Xing Group, please don’t hesitate do become a member or ask our Marketing Assistant Angela Wang (email: angela.wang@sapuserschina.com) for help.