With SAP S/4 Hana and T.Con: Frenzelit sets course for digital transformation
This optimization is an important prerequisite for the company to secure its competitiveness and drive forward its international expansion strategy. The demanding greenfield implementation according to the standard-first approach was supported by T.Con.
The Upper Franconian town of Bad Berneck in the Fichtelgebirge is known as a climatic health resort and Kneipp spa. Frenzelit has had its headquarters here for more than 140 years. The family-owned company develops, produces and sells innovative and high-quality seals and insulation as well as expansion joints and composite materials. It operates internationally and employs around 750 people at seven locations worldwide.
With its products, materials and finished parts, but also with customized or standardized solutions, Frenzelit covers almost every requirement in terms of sealing and insulation. They can be found in almost every industrial sector – in the chemical and petrochemical industries as well as in the energy, automotive, food and drinking water industries, but also in mechanical and plant engineering, shipbuilding and aerospace.
Greenfield with Big Bang
Constant product innovations, a high level of materials expertise, excellent advice and outstanding service, as well as the use of modern production technologies, are important building blocks for the economic success of the medium-sized company. However, in order to maintain its market position and expand internationally, business processes must also be standardized, digitalized, automated and optimized across all locations.
By implementing S/4 Hana both in Germany and at its Czech site, Frenzelit has taken a major step in this direction. With the new ERP suite from SAP, which replaces the solution from another provider, the company now maps its value chain in a consistent and integrated manner in a homogeneous IT environment: from the request for quotation to development, production planning and control, intralogistics and invoicing.
S/4 also enables the IT-supported and therefore efficient and secure exchange of order, purchase order, material and inventory data between Germany and the Czech Republic as part of intercompany processing and invoicing. The implementation was carried out according to the greenfield approach and in a big bang, so that the approximately 400 SAP users were able to benefit immediately from the innovations of the new ERP suite. For example, they complete their tasks in a process-related manner on the easy-to-use UI5 interfaces of the SAP Fiori apps, for which the browser-based SAP Fiori Launchpad provides the central access point.
The introduction of S/4 is extremely demanding, especially when it is carried out simultaneously at several locations, as is the case at Frenzelit. For this reason, those responsible decided to bring a competent IT and consulting partner on board. They found one in T.Con.
“T.Con impressed us with its proven SAP expertise, not only with regard to the implementation of SAP S/4 Hana, but also with its comprehensive process know-how in the sheet and roll processing industry,” says Heinz Jahreiß, Commercial Director at Frenzelit. This point was an important selection criterion, as Frenzelit produces and processes paper and insulation material in rolls, sheets and various formats, among other things. Above all, however, the chemistry was right from the start – both between the companies and on an interpersonal level.
Solution architects and change concept
T.Con’s Solution Architects played a major role in the success of the project, using their cross-module SAP expertise to gain an overall view of the processes and their interaction. After analyzing the existing processes, they developed a concept for the “target processes” based on preconfigured SAP best practice packages in line with the standard-first approach that Frenzelit followed during the ERP implementation. The new target processes were put to the test again as part of an optimization phase a few months after the go-live of S/4. Wherever possible, the solution architects made necessary adjustments and improvements to the processes via customizing; individual programming was only carried out in exceptional cases.
Enhance SAP standard functions in a structured way
The fact that those responsible at Frenzelit had already closely involved the workforce in this transformation project in the run-up to implementation through a change management concept contributed significantly to its success. “When redesigning the software landscape, which affects all departments and business areas, it is not just an IT project, but above all a business project, the success of which stands or falls with the acceptance of the employees,” explains Heinz Jahreiß.
The new SAP software, which remains close to the standard, does not satisfactorily support special, sometimes business-critical processes at Frenzelit in all respects. This mainly concerns Product Lifecycle Costing (PLC), i.e. the calculation of the total costs for a product from development to the end of production, and financial planning.
The SAP-based PLC Cockpit add-on from T.Con, which integrates seamlessly into SAP S/4, closes the gaps in the PLC processes. And an integrated and standardized environment based on SAP Analytics Cloud was set up for fine-grained and KPI-supported financial planning, which can be used to manage the company even more efficiently in the future.
S/4 Hana and the PLC cockpit are operated in a private cloud in T.Con’s data center. In terms of HR processes, Frenzelit is pursuing a hybrid model: HR master data is stored and managed in the cloud solution SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central in a legally compliant manner, while time management and payroll accounting are carried out in the on-prem application SAP Human Capital Management (HCM).
Heinz Jahreiß draws a positive conclusion: “With SAP S/4 Hana as an integrated and future-proof ERP suite, we are creating the conditions for the digitalization and automation of processes, but also for driving forward our international expansion strategy in a consistent and targeted manner.” The ERP suite is currently being rolled out at the US production site in Lexington, North Carolina. It is due to be completed this year.
Frenzelit also has its sights firmly set on further process optimization in production. The plan is to connect the production facilities to a Manufacturing Execution System (MES), which directly links store floor level and ERP processes, to enable more efficient control of production processes.
