Process and data foundation for digital business

at Mayer & Cie. GmbH & Co. KG

Consistent PLM philosophy and digital support of business processes with central data management

The innovative spirit of Mayer & Cie has triggered a full-scale digitalization journey, aimed at expanding and securing market leadership in the years to come. In part, Mayer & Cie’s digitalization voyage resulted from the company’s decision to adopt a consistent PLM philosophy that would provide a digital thread stretching along the entire value chain – pure “DESIGN TO OPERATE”, in effect. Among other goals, the company wanted to eliminate the hard media and data break that separated its engineering and production segments. The connection between the PDM system and the SAP ERP system was essentially a manual one. These “separate worlds” meant that the many interrelationships between business processes in engineering, order management, purchasing, manufacturing, assembly, maintenance, quality assurance, etc. were literally hanging by a thread.

About the customer

Mayer & Cie. GmbH & Co. KG

Mayer & Cie. is a world leading supplier of circular knitting machines. The family-owned company has production facilities in Albstadt, the Czech Republic and China. "We understand ourselves as entrepreneurs in the sense of the word, as going ahead. Our goal is to have a say in our market rather than just following its trends. This requires experience, market knowledge, innovative strength – and a good deal of courage."

To the customer website

Business challenge

Market position

Mayer & Cie.’s innovative spirit has triggered a full-scale digitalization journey, aimed at expanding and securing Mayer & Cie.’s market lead in the years to come.

Process efficiency

Boosting efficiecy along the entire value chain.

Innovation rate

being able to offer great variety of variants in a more efficient, innovative and cutting-edge way

Customer goals

Strategy and planning ahead

make objectives, challenges, task fields, business processes and key applications visible at a glance
plan that represents the guideline for the company’s digitalization initiatives
define a series of tasks which were and still are being addressed incrementally

Process Update

integrative solution for end-to-end digital support of complex business processes
manage the variant complexity as well as the frequent change cycles
establish a PLM approach based on a digital backbone along the entire value chain

Technology Update

SAP platform as the lead system providing the basis for the intended data and process continuity
Eliminate the hard media and data break that separated its engineering and production segments.
Redundant and inconsistent data and information within processes and business units including high manual maintenance effort

In CENIT, we have found our digitalization partner.

Sebastian Mayer

Chief Digital Officer

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Approach

Based on its medium- and long-term goals, Mayer & Cie. and CENIT conducted a joint assessment of the identified search fields and defined the required processes and system components. For implementation purposes, CENIT developed a multi-phase plan that systematically addressed the processes and use cases and determined phase goals logically.

The first phase was thus about eliminating the media break between engineering and ERP, as well as using the new data basis for best-possible release and change management support. To replace the narrow bridge that Mayer & Cie. had previously been forced to rely on with a secure data highway between engineering and production, the engineering unit’s PDM system had to go. The legacy CAD/PDM data was migrated to SAP using CENIT Sys¬tem Migration Services and CENIT ETL Runtime.

The second major milestone of the first digitalization phase was the introduction of cenitCONNECT APM (Advanced Process Management) for the control of release and change processes. The knowhow gained from its implementation was used to optimize the application configurations.

Detailed project description Download

In a nutshell:

Assessment of the identified search fields and defined the required processes and system components
SAP PLM Foundation approach to integrate engineering into the central SAP system
Replacement of the engineering PDM system by SAP ECTR, including connection to CATIA V5 as well as integration into a current SAP landscape
Introduction of cenitCONNECT APM (Advanced Process Management) to control the release and change processes

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Results and conclusion

Single Source of Truth

Complete and high-quality information and decision basis thanks to central data management.

Sustainability

Future-proof and stable system landscape consisting of SAP ECTR, CATIA and cenitCONNECT APM.

Process Control

Maximum process and data transparency including comprehensive, simultaneous reporting and monitoring of business processes.

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