Case studies / Manufacturing
Case studyMigrating a legacy SAP landscape to S/4HANA for a global manufacturer
A manufacturer with plants on three continents moved an ageing SAP landscape to S/4HANA, cleaning custom code and master data and cutting over plant by plant with limited disruption.
Overview
A listed manufacturer of industrial components and assemblies with plants in Europe, North America and Asia. It had run SAP for more than two decades, and each region had added its own developments over that time.
Scale. About 60 interfaces, custom code accumulated over many years, several legal entities and seven plants running production around the clock.
The challenge
The vendor's maintenance deadlines for the existing release were approaching. Staying put meant paying more for extended support on a system that was becoming harder to change every year.
Custom code had grown unmanageable. Over two decades, each region had built its own reports, enhancements and workarounds, many of them for people who had long since left. Nobody could say with confidence which developments were still used and which could be removed.
The interface landscape was similar. Dozens of connections to manufacturing execution systems, warehouses, banks, customers and suppliers had been built in different styles, and some ran on technology that was itself out of support.
Reporting required many manual extracts. Finance and operations teams pulled data into spreadsheets to answer routine questions, and group consolidation depended on a monthly series of downloads and adjustments.
The business could not afford a disruptive cut-over. Plants supplied automotive and industrial customers on tight schedules, and a lost week of shipping would carry penalties and reputational damage.
Leadership also wanted the migration to leave the business simpler, not just newer. A like-for-like technical move would have carried twenty years of complexity into a new platform.
The solution
S/4HANA now runs finance and logistics for every entity on a common template. The universal journal brings financial and management accounting together, so period-end reconciliation between ledgers has largely disappeared.
Production planning and quality management follow the same design in every plant. Plants keep the routings, work centres and inspection plans their products need, within a shared structure that makes cross-plant comparison meaningful.
Master data governance controls how materials, customers, suppliers and bills of materials are created and changed. Requests follow a workflow with defined owners, and duplicates are caught before they enter the system.
Custom code was cut back hard. Unused developments were retired, standard functions replaced many others and what remains is documented and owned. Priority interfaces were rebuilt on one integration layer with monitoring.
Embedded analytics replace many of the manual extracts. Operational and financial reports run on live data, and group consolidation draws directly from the entities.
The engagement
- Twenty-two months
- Eighteen specialists alongside the client's SAP team
- Landscape and custom code assessment, business case, S/4HANA finance, logistics, production planning and quality, master data governance, interface rebuild, mock migrations, testing and a plant-by-plant cut-over.
Integrations
- Manufacturing execution systems
- Supplier and customer EDI
- Banks
- Warehouse systems
- Group consolidation
How we delivered it
- 01
Assess and decide
Three months
We assessed the landscape, analysed custom code usage and removed what was unused before any migration began. With the leadership team we agreed a migration path and a business case that included the clean-up, not just the technical move.
- 02
Design the template
Five months
We designed a common template for finance, logistics, production planning and quality, and rebuilt priority interfaces on a consistent integration layer. Regional variations were kept only where they were justified.
- 03
Mock migrations and testing
Seven months
We ran four full mock migrations, each one measuring data quality, duration and reconciliation. Extensive integration testing covered every interface and every plant's critical processes.
- 04
Plant-by-plant cut-over
Seven months
Plants cut over one at a time, timed around production schedules. A hypercare team supported each plant until it was stable, and lessons were applied to the next cut-over.
Results
- Plant-by-plant cut-over with limited disruption
- Cleaner master data under formal governance
- Less custom code and lower upgrade effort
- Embedded analytics in place of manual extracts
Cut-over completed with limited disruption. Plants shipped to customers through each cut-over, and the issues that did arise were resolved by the hypercare team within days.
Data quality improved after cleansing and governance. The mock migrations found and fixed problems in materials, bills of materials and open items that had sat unnoticed for years, and the governance process keeps them from returning.
Custom code has been significantly reduced, lowering the effort and risk of future upgrades. The SAP team now spends more time on improvements and less on keeping old developments alive.
Reporting no longer depends on manual extracts for routine questions. Finance closes faster, and operational managers see plant performance without waiting for a spreadsheet.
The common template has also changed how the regions work together. Process changes are now proposed once and applied everywhere, and plant managers compare performance on the same measures rather than arguing about definitions.
Each mock migration was cleaner than the last. By the time we cut over for real, the data held no surprises.
What made the difference
Mock migrations found data issues early enough to fix them.
