SAP Digital Manufacturing - from Korbach to the world ContiTech relies on SAP DM for the global digitalization of its production

ContiTech is pressing ahead with its digital transformation at full speed. With the introduction of the cloud-based next-level MES solution SAP Digital Manufacturing (SAP DM) in its Industrial Solutions business unit, the technology company has reached an important milestone on the road to the smart factory. Following the successful go-live at the Korbach site at the beginning of 2024, the standard software will be rolled out to the other production sites and business units this year.

ContiTech AG is a subsidiary within the Continental Corporation. Its Industrial Solutions business unit specializes in the production of sophisticated industrial hoses and hose lines, among other things. The product range is used in the extraction of oil and gas, in the food industry, water management, chemicals, mining, mechanical engineering and many other sectors.

The trigger for introducing a new MES were historically grown structures such as the still heavily paper-based way of working, a fragmented IT landscape and the risky, manual data transfer between systems and several Excel-based evaluations. Due to the lack of horizontal integration of the third-party systems, they functioned as a black box and there was no cross-system "single point of truth" in production for the employees. In addition, information on production progress was difficult to see and the consumption of components was only posted with a very long delay. Disruptions could only be rectified when they occurred and could not be proactively prevented. The prioritization or rescheduling of orders at store floor level was also carried out manually and without system support. Among other things, this meant that production employees had to spend a non-negligible proportion of their working time on non-value-adding activities. The aim was therefore to systematically move away from paper in order to increase production reliability and efficiency.

A company-wide scalable MES system that interacts closely with the ERP system and store floor was to solve the weak points listed. The digitalization of the production processes that could be achieved in this way should prevent deficiencies in data acquisition and put an end to the amount of paper. One of ContiTech 's major wishes in this context was to optimize order throughput times through fully integrated end-2-end process modeling in terms of detailed planning, scheduling, production, testing and acceptance. Standardized machine integration was also to enable warning messages, fault recording and classification as well as continuous process data acquisition and target value specifications in the future. On top of this, full traceability of all components, products and processes as well as the development of a reproducible template as a template for the further global roll-out were desired.

A preliminary analysis at process level showed that the project objectives could be achieved with SAP DM. Herrmann Illian, project manager at ContiTech's Korbach plant, reports: "We asked IGZ, a long-standing partner of Continental and ContiTech, to do this. In addition to the SAP ME solution already in use within the Group, the new cloud-based MES system 'SAP Digital Manufacturing' was also evaluated. The application analysis showed that our requirements can already be covered to a high degree by 'SAP DM' as standard and that we benefit from the advantages of an innovative cloud solution at the same time."

ContiTech decided to establish SAP DM as its future strategic MES platform - not least because of the system's high level of future-proofing. Based on the positive experience gained during the deployment analysis, the decision to cooperate with IGZ again was unanimous. In addition to the partnership-based cooperation, the company's proven in-depth understanding of processes and expertise with SAP MES and template projects also spoke in its favor.

An important feature of the SAP DM solution implemented with the pilot is the fine-tuning of orders at shift supervisor level - also known as the SAP DM "Dispatching & Monitoring" app. Using a central interface, orders can be flexibly scheduled and rescheduled via drag & drop or automatically with AI support, taking actual capacities into account. By collecting SAP DM live data from production, order progress can be monitored in real time and a direct response can be made to unforeseen events in production.

After fine-tuning the orders, a worklist is displayed digitally for the workers directly on the line on the user-friendly Production Operator Dashboards (PODs), eliminating time-consuming tasks such as printing, distributing, searching, exchanging and scanning production documents. Another advantage of paperless production is that sources of error are minimized, as there is no longer any time-consuming document handling.

Data is now entered via user-friendly "Production Operator Dashboards" - simple, self-explanatory to use and in a central system with selected plausibility checks for even greater process reliability. In addition, digital deviation recording in SAP DM increases product quality. As soon as a worker documents a deviation, a standardized rework process is triggered in the MES system, depending on the type of anomaly. Once the error has been rectified, a digital approval process with a defined authorization concept is carried out to ensure the flawless quality of the product. All deviations and the subsequent work processes triggered by them can be tracked in SAP DM.

This flexible way of working is made possible by the "Process Designer" integrated in SAP DM, a tool with which new processes can be easily configured without in-depth programming knowledge using a low-code/no-code approach.

Thanks to the company-wide modelling and integration of dynamic process and notification workflows, ContiTech also achieves an increasing degree of automation across locations and can drive forward the global standardization of processes and workflows. The bidirectional machine connection via OPC/UA standard ensures a fully integrated architecture. This online integration means that process values, performance data and fault information are all integrated, resulting in a significantly higher level of performance and availability. The transparency created in conjunction with a consistent data basis for individual evaluations enables ContiTech to derive targeted improvement measures in accordance with the CIP principle.