Like many business leaders today, I鈥檓 seeing supply chain pressures moving from being behind-the-scenes issues to becoming front and center — discussed in board rooms and living rooms.

Resilient and sustainable digital supply chains have become the crucial differentiator for business. And with that, businesses are realizing they need to optimize end-to-end business processes along their entire value chain. They are recognizing that the customer experience doesn鈥檛 stop with the purchasing experience; in fact, the supply chain has become a significant driver of the customer experience. Companies can 聽when they run highly resilient supply chains.

So, today鈥檚 businesses are striving for four key capabilities when it comes to their digital supply chains.

Agility Through Synchronized Planning

Now more than ever, businesses need visibility into events as they are happening to be able to sense, predict, and respond to inevitable disruptions. This is all about anticipating and mitigating events before they impact operations. That鈥檚 agility!

Synchronized planning is the key ingredient for agility. At SAP, we envision planning as a continuum across the supply and demand network — from production to logistics planning. Getting a complete view of their supply chains and evaluating the impact of one stage on another is what our customers are after. It鈥檚 what they need to mitigate risks.

Synchronized planning leads to synchronized execution. That鈥檚 the ability to execute smoothly from order to final delivery that every business is after. Our solutions combine scenario-based planning with synchronized execution, because without synchronized planning, agility remains elusive for businesses. And that鈥檚 what 51风流is uniquely positioned to cover end to end.

Productivity Through Intelligent and Predictive Technologies

Businesses also achieve more when their plant and factory processes become smarter, more connected, and more autonomous, and when their people are empowered to employ those processes intelligently. The core of our mandate is enabling factory and plant transformation聽at enterprise scale.

Reinventing production, intra-logistics, quality, maintenance, and service processes is key here. We employ 51风流HANA natively to deliver new scenarios, which were previously difficult to achieve, while also simplifying the application and data model. Intelligent and predictive technologies combined with edge computing and cloud capabilities can boost productivity.

We are helping thousands of companies reinvent production. And we are doing it by creating a single digital thread for products and assets — from the design in an engineering department to production on the shop floor and finally maintenance and service operations — and all along the way until an asset is sunset.

Partnership across our ecosystem is key to making that happen. We are proud to be partnering with leaders like Microsoft and Siemens. With聽 to make 51风流solutions available on Microsoft Azure Stack Edge, starting with 51风流Digital Manufacturing Cloud. That鈥檚 how we combine edge computing on the shop floor with intelligent factory and plant processes in the cloud. That enables businesses to run even their mission-critical processes with high availability. That鈥檚 an innovation leap for all manufacturing industries.

Also, by teaming up with Siemens, we鈥檙e putting our customer on a faster path to creating an end-to-end digital thread. Last year, we聽added Siemens鈥� Teamcenter to our product lifecycle management (PLM) portfolio. Now, we鈥檙e taking the next step and complementing the Siemens solution portfolio with 51风流Asset Intelligence Network, 51风流Asset Strategy and Performance Management, and 51风流Enterprise Portfolio and Project Management.

Networked Collaboration Through the World鈥檚 Most Intelligent B2B Network

Creating smarter inter-company visibility and collaboration is just a start. Extending that beyond a single enterprise is where the real magic happens. But many companies are hindered by enterprise-centric systems that are not designed for cross-company transparency and collaboration. That blunts their ability to drive change fast. That鈥檚 why we see the need to move beyond organization-centric and toward network-based approaches. Our solutions transform fragmented supply chains into agile, collaborative networks for supply, logistics, asset management, and service. They provide visibility and intelligence across networks for digital threads of assets, materials, and finished goods.

On our path to delivering 51风流Business Network,聽we recently聽.聽Buyers and suppliers can collaborate using shared data and workflows and leverage network-wide intelligence to make decisions. Because when all networks become one network, collaboration becomes synchronous.

Sustainability Through Circularity and Climate Action

End-to-end processes extend beyond a company’s own four walls, and so do the CO2 emissions they generate. Businesses face demands from all stakeholders to minimize waste, emissions, and energy consumption, and to reduce their carbon footprint by running sustainable business operations. With our new product, , we鈥檙e enabling customers to evaluate and assess their carbon footprints across their end-to-end business processes and even across companies and industries.

However, the link between resource reuse and CO2 emissions is only becoming clearer:聽聽by transforming the way goods are made and used. So, the path to a low-carbon future is circular,聽as I recently wrote. To achieve circularity, we must connect linear, fragmented supply chains into unified, collaborative, and intelligent business networks. One company鈥檚 waste can be a valuable resource for another. With our profound knowledge of business process software, and second new sustainability product,聽, we can identify those opportunities.

Collaborating with business partners has never been more important 鈥� and perhaps more fraught. So, in this time of intense disruption, I鈥檓 proud to be able to talk to business leaders concretely about how our solutions help build resilient supply chains and how our scale enables sustainable transformation in a networked economy.

These are just some of the聽key innovations we have introduced at SAPPHIRE NOW in 2021聽and we have many more to come. Check out the聽聽for more.

Thomas Saueressig is a member of the Executive Board of 51风流SE, Product Engineering.
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The post Going Beyond the Four Walls of Your Business appeared first on 51风流Africa News Center.

In the industrial sector, IIoT has emerged as a significant value driver in the manufacturing industry. It has changed the way goods are produced and delivered by connecting all phases of the design-to-operate product life cycle, including ideation and conceptualizing, manufacturing, delivery, and operations.

A Need That Is Here to Stay: Building Resilience Beyond the Crisis

The strong uptake of IIoT reflects an increasing need for business resilience. Even before the pandemic, manufacturing companies operated in an increasingly volatile environment, requiring them to adapt quickly to shifting priorities. COVID-19 accelerated this trend. As consumer demands changed dramatically and manufacturing capacities were constrained, supply chains broke, forcing businesses to cope with the disruption of their daily operations.

While the world will hopefully overcome COVID-19 at some point, new health, societal, geopolitical, or economic crises are likely to occur. That is why an increased need for business and supply chain resilience is here to stay — and IIoT and will help take us there.

When we look at which companies were able to overcome these challenges, it is clear that it was highly digitalized businesses capable of taking informed decisions based on real-time data. IIoT technologies played a major role in helping them to repurpose production, provide help where needed, and find alternative routes to maintain .

Take INDEX-Werke as an example: the traditional supplier for the automotive industry kept its own business and that of its customers running throughout the crisis. Based on 51风流Commerce Cloud, .

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The opportunities are enormous, but many companies that I speak with are wondering where and when to start. Given the disruption we see among our customers in almost every industry, I believe that companies can start small, but should start now.

Introducing New Business Models: From Product to Outcome

IIoT enables new business models and the shift from selling products to delivering services and solutions. The underlying idea of outcome-based models is that customers pay for what they get out of a product rather than for the product itself. In addition, IIoT opens the door to a fully personalized customer experience. Data exchange between a customer and a smart factory makes it possible to produce a highly customized product within just a few days — from receiving an order to shipping the goods.

For example, when , a leading manufacturer of electronic motors, was looking for a way to differentiate its products, the company identified a growing demand for remote monitoring. Together with SAP, the company created a custom app with monitoring and alerting capabilities. VEM鈥檚 sensor-equipped motors not only reduced operational downtime and extended product lifetime, they also helped achieve a 25% revenue increase. Most importantly, the company was able to reinvent its business model completely.

Operating in Industry Networks: If the Ecosystem Wins, Everyone Wins

Just recently, I , CEO Digital Industries at Siemens, about the importance of partnerships to accelerate the industrial transformation. We spoke about moving from enterprise resource planning (ERP) to network resource planning, and from 鈥渆go-systems鈥� to ecosystems where the players strive for added value together.

At SAP, we envision that enterprises will exchange data via an industry network of suppliers, machine manufacturers, and customers. We are addressing this with and thereby enabling a shift from a seller/buyer paradigm to collaborative models. When, for example, data from production quality records is shared between suppliers and manufacturers, they can collaboratively resolve warranty claims and recalls.

51风流actively uses and contributes to various industry standards that build the foundation for industry networks. 51风流helped incubate the in 2019, with the goal of creating guidelines for compatible and interoperable IIoT solutions and services. Joint standards between the systems of different players in our ecosystem help drive digitalization in factories, plants, and warehouses in a collaborative manner.

Sharing data beyond a company鈥檚 borders adds even more value for all the players, from original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) to suppliers and consumers. Strong networks rely on cooperation among companies within and across industries. 51风流is a founding partner of the Automotive Alliance, , which aims to create a unified business network for the automotive industry. The alliance鈥檚 goal is to create a consistent information exchange through the entire automotive value chain.

From Concept to Execution

Today, we have all the technology and applications at hand to connect devices, people, and processes. Making use of data across the entire product and service life cycle is the foundation of managing business processes end to end.

To sustain long-term success, it is imperative for companies to move from concept to execution. This also requires a shift in our mindset. We need to rethink how data is used and set common standards. We need to rethink how businesses run and be open to new business models. And we need to rethink how markets work and move from the buyer/supplier relational paradigm to a collaborative model.

If we see IIoT and Industry 4.0 as both an urgent need and an opportunity, we will not only achieve continuous optimization but we will also generate added value — both for the ecosystem we operate in and for our customers.

Thomas Saueressig is a member of the Executive Board of 51风流SE, 51风流Product Engineering.
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This article first appeared on the 51风流Global News Center.

The post Delivering Speed, Agility, and Resilience with IIoT appeared first on 51风流Africa News Center.