Carl Zeiss AG industrializes SAP development and operation

Mission

When Carl Zeiss developed his first microscope in 1847, he had no idea that Carl Zeiss AG, with over 43,000 employees and a turnover of ten billion euros, would today be one of the world's leading companies in the precision mechanics and optics industry. In addition to the well-known Zeiss spectacle lenses, space telescopes or the production of semiconductors as we know them today would be almost inconceivable without the innovations of Carl Zeiss.

This high demand for innovation and perfection also applies to Carl Zeiss IT: in order to regain control of SAP processes, Carl Zeiss decided a few years ago to stop outsourcing SAP transport and take control of it itself again. The aim was to increase flexibility and reduce costs at the same time.

This also meant that the company had to look for a new standard tool. A project that turned out to be more difficult than expected given the short transition period.

Although ERP providers offer transportation management tools, their long project durations of up to one year often exceed the cost and, in particular, the time frame.

 Benefits & solution

Following a market evaluation that drew his attention to the standard software Conigma™ CCM, Dr. Joachim Riegel, Head of Data Center at Carl Zeiss AG, approached its provider, Galileo Group AG. The company has over 20 years of SAP ALM experience in the market and has its own Professional Services unit. This means that standard software and global deployment can be provided from a single source if required.

 As Conigma™ CCM is adapted even by DAX30 companies through pure "customizing" and not through (ABAP) programming as with other providers, Galileo Group was able to ensure the global roll-out within a lead time of less than three months.

"We thought that a roll-out within three months was hardly possible in our complex landscape of nine system lines, which are designed in two, three or four stages with very different characteristics in the individual business areas. We therefore obtained references from other international industrial customers of the Galileo Group in advance," says Dr. Joachim Riegel. "And the Galileo Group kept its word and delivered 'on time', 'in-quality' and 'in-budget', which is rare in the industry for such ambitious SAP projects".

Procedure

After a pilot of a few days, the proof of concept (PoC) was fine-tuned and then the roll-outs were carried out across the individual heterogeneous system lines worldwide: for example, one business line has two ERP systems with a high level of integration; another business line manages with one ERP system, which is characterized by a high degree of regionalization and a high load.

Conigma™ CCM was able to map all of these requirements through pure customizing, i.e. without programming, via a central instance. Conigma™ CCM also has, for example, a four-stage overtaking management system with automatic overtaking correction instead of a single-stage overtaking warning.

This has a very strong "by-design" impact on operational stability, because in the worst-case scenario, an unresolved overrun can bring an SAP system to a standstill, for example in production or logistics. And in times of unstable supply chains, a standstill in production and logistics must be avoided at all costs.

As with the initial introduction, the subsequent maintenance effort was extremely low. When Carl Zeiss decided to move from a classic waterfall model to a more agile-oriented model at project level with sprints, the adjustments to Conigma™ CCM were minimal.

Using the concept of import containers, the former mega transports from the waterfall model can be easily packed into Spring-compatible change bundles - again through pure customizing.

"The combination of high functionality, process understanding and in-depth SAP expertise not only resulted in an approximately two-thirds faster implementation, but also has a direct impact on the total cost of ownership thanks to the low maintenance costs," says Torsten Schuber, SAP Change Manager at Carl Zeiss AG. "When we submit a technical requirement to the Galileo Group, our contacts immediately understand what is meant. So we don't need a 'translator' to explain it to a technician first. The Galileo Group usually delivers a prototype for a new requirement within two days, which is then almost the final solution. This would probably take weeks with SAP on-board resources. The great benefit is the trusting cooperation. The Galileo Group delivers what it promises."

Outlook

IT managers Dr. Joachim Riegel and Torsten Schubert are correspondingly confident that the next major change in SAP Application Lifecycle Management will also run "smoothly".

Carl Zeiss is currently in the process of further adapting its processes and the associated organization in order to become DevOps-ready. Experience with other Galileo Group customers shows that this is usually successfully achieved within five to ten days of consulting - again through pure Conigma™ CCM customizing.