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© The HOISe-NM Consortium 1997
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HP and SAP new strategic partners of Volkswagen
Walldorf, 09-06-1997 Hewlett-Packard Company and SAP AG have entered into a strategic partnership with German Volkswagen, one of the world's largest car manufacturers. Both companies will support Volkswagen in its efforts to implement a new bill-of-materials (BOM) process and the supporting IT solution for the global operations of Volkswagen.
HP's Professional Services Organization, as prime contractor, will work closely with SAP and VW-GEDAS, a systems integrator, to provide consulting, education, systems integration, project management and quality assurance, and support for change management, relating to the implementation of SAP's R/3 Automotive at Volkswagen. VW-GEDAS will oversee the coupling of the CAD applications with R/3 Automotive and the integration of the SAP solution into the existing IT systems environment at Volkswagen.
"Our aim in implementing this new BOM solution is to reduce the duration of our product creation cycle by redesigning processes related to bill-of-materials handling, with special focus on integrated product data management (PDM) in the entire process from design to manufacturing," said Dieter Schacher, corporate executive director for Organization and Information Systems at Volkswagen Group.
Volkswagen becomes the 3,000th SAP R/3 installation on HP platforms. HP is currently the leading provider worldwide of Unix systems for R/3 installations.
SAP is a key player in the automotive industry and, with R/3 Automotive, delivers a solution especially suited for use in the industry. Based on best-business practices, R/3 Automotive represents a modular and flexible approach, which allows each automotive company to tailor the system to meet its specific needs.
An important part of R/3 Automotive are the PDM functions, which allow SAP customers to integrate the business processes of suppliers and manufacturers.
Today, R/3 is used in more than 400 automotive installations worldwide. Both Volkswagen, as a launching customer, and SAP are committed to improving the scope of functionality of R/3 Automotive.
"A major challenge for the automotive industry is handling the complexity involved in planning and controlling the assembly of products with multiple variants," said Peter Zencke, member of the board of SAP AG. "One answer to this challenge is an advanced BOM system that checks the manufacturing feasibility of all possible product variants during the actual design process. Volkswagen is performing ground-breaking work in this field with its PDM project."