Reducing complexity in SAP master data
Master data governance and automation: reducing SAP registration complexity at Palfinger
- Domains
- Material
- Applied product
- MDM + BRO
- Segment
- Industry
Founded in 1932, the PALFINGER group is one of the world's leaders in the technology and production of hydraulic equipment for load handling, installed on commercial vehicles and ships. A multinational headquartered in Salzburg, Austria, Palfinger operates 32 manufacturing and assembly units in Europe, South and North America and Asia.
Since the SAP deployment in 2009, Palfinger Brazil, focused on product innovation, dealt with a huge volume of material creation and maintenance, BOMs and routings — the material master base is currently more than 100,000 items.
Poor information quality, inconsistent data and high process cost were the most evident issues at the time.
The company was looking for a solution to reduce the workforce involved, streamline master data creation and maintenance, improve information quality, automate the process flow, avoid duplicated records, restrict user access to the fields they own and standardize descriptions.
Palfinger chose to use the SAP add-on MDM+ BRO. The SAP IT team mapped the business rules involved in material registration and configured them in MDM+ BRO. Before this solution, a single material required more than 180 fields across 3 plants; with the rule base, it went down to no more than 6 required fields. Material extension across plants was also automated: a single entry replicates the information to the remaining plants, respecting each plant's specifics.
- 77% automation in material registration
- Reduction from 180+ down to as few as 6 fields per material
- Automatic material extension across plants
- Task distribution across areas focused on the process, not the department
- Master data governance across the entire Palfinger Group
- End of Excel spreadsheets for registration control
- Restricted access to fields owned by each user
- Standardization and quality of information
“The power of BRO allowed us to automate the rules that qualified and ensured accuracy in creating materials under a workflow directly in SAP. Inconsistencies and their consequences are a thing of the past. BRO prevents problems at the point of information creation and significantly reduces the cost of this process. It's an investment that has already paid for itself many times over.”
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