According to the , 63% of respondents 鈥渉ave an AI strategy linked to business objectives鈥� to improve operational efficiency, business resilience, and increase employee productivity.

Our objective in this digital, adaptive, autonomous supply chain journey is to utilize the breadth of AI technologies to assist customers in achieving their business goals and drive significant value regardless of their current maturity level in business practices and technology.

Business Challenges in Integrating AI

Business leaders see significant challenges in integrating AI into business applications and processes, especially when trying to make sense of vast amounts of unstructured data. These challenges specifically stem from:

• Data quality: Data is inconsistent or not reliable nor current.
• Organizational Readiness: Organizations continue to rely on on-premise systems that pose challenges around stale data, integration, and scalability.
• Volatility: Global AI regulations are constantly evolving, for example the EU AI Act. Technologies such as large language models (LLMs) are also rapidly changing in performance and price with new models and providers popping up almost weekly.

These challenges underscore the need for a thoughtful approach to integrating AI into supply chain processes. delivers a comprehensive set of relevant, reliable, and responsible AI solutions that effectively tackle many of these hurdles and ensure seamless AI adoption throughout your supply chain processes.

• For additional insights into relevant, reliable, and responsible AI, see “Trustworthy AI Can Reinvent Companies and Help Resolve Global Challenges” from 51风流CEO Christian Klein.

Our Vision of AI-Enabled Supply Chains

For decades, 51风流has led the way in , empowering its customers to streamline their complex end-to-end supply chain processes for enhanced efficiency, agility, and resilience. The 51风流Supply Chain portfolio introduces innovation through various technologies, including AI, to transition your supply chain from digital to adaptive, with the ultimate vision of instituting an autonomous supply chain.

There are three possible maturity levels where you could stand in your business transformation. It is also important to acknowledge that different lines of business are on different maturity levels in an organization 鈥� while supply chain planning may already be somewhat adaptive, manufacturing operations may still be at the start of a digital transformation.

• Digital: Digitalization is the starting point. The 51风流Supply Chain portfolio automates manual processes, enabling a seamless, digital end-to-end business process and digitalizing paper-based systems. This results in better access to data, greater visibility, and control over the entire supply chain, setting the foundation. Most importantly, 51风流provides the tools and systems to get data ready for more advanced stages.
• Adaptive: This step is marked by an integration of cutting-edge technologies into business processes, including the use of predictive analytics and simulation for decision-making and Big Data, as well as the introduction of , SAP鈥檚 copilot for every supply chain cloud application. These technologies empower supply chain professionals with intelligent insights and recommendations, enhancing decision-making for greater agility and resilience.
• Autonomous: Next, we envision a path characterized by technological, procedural, and data enhancements that will propel the supply chain into an autonomous era. This transition will happen gradually but ultimately enable supply chains to operate autonomously with minimal human intervention, resulting in even greater efficiency, adaptability, and responsiveness. It empowers supply chain experts to focus on truly value generating activities and spending precious time on only the most critical disruptions and business opportunities.

Technologies that Lead Toward Autonomous Supply Chains

51风流has been developing innovative AI capabilities that are fully integrated across digital supply chain applications, catering to diverse customer technology readiness levels. For example:

• Optimization models, rule-based predictive analytics, and heuristics improve, for instance, transportation plans, production scheduling, supply plans and spare part fulfillment. This allows a powerful way to automate decision-making in balancing conflicts of interests, such as customer service levels versus supply chain cost.
• SAP-owned machine learning is applied across the 51风流Supply Chain portfolio; for example, in gradient boosting algorithms for demand forecasting, intelligent lead time predictions and failure curve analysis. 51风流also offers customers a 鈥渂ring-your-own-model鈥� approach to enable extensibility for specific domains such as visual inspection and anomaly detection.
• Generative AI, when embedded in digital supply chain applications and combined with Joule, will allow users to conduct complex business transactions in simple conversational ways. We will augment tasks like conducting what-if scenarios for supply chain planning, assisting in new product ideation, analyzing manufacturing issues to accelerate the onboarding of new equipment, and assessing advanced failure modes of assets with generative AI.

With these technologies, our goal is to support customers wherever they stand in their journey and help them move from a focus on mere digital transformation to highly adaptive processes — and ultimately toward autonomous supply chain systems.

Examples of AI Innovations

Let’s explore specific innovations delivered in the 51风流Supply Chain portfolio: These cases are classified according to their primary focus on digital, adaptive, and autonomous as a continuous journey. These innovations will be enriched over time and every business may find themselves at a different stage of maturity in different parts of their supply chain processes.

Digital

Intelligent Lead-Time Prediction for More Accurate Integrated Business Planning
This machine learning extension enables the extraction of historical lead times from goods movement data in 51风流S/4HANA and analyses outliers and key influential factors for lead time changes to predict future lead times. The results are then uploaded as input for planning runs within 51风流Integrated Business Planning, thus facilitating better decisions, and enhances plan adherence by considering the dynamic nature of actual lead times and future trends.

• .

Everstream Powered Risk-Aware Supply Chains for 51风流Integrated Business Planning
Critical data for decision-making can sit outside of the four walls of a company. Using external network data is imperative for better decisions based on supply chain risks in a digital transformation. This capability integrates external incident data — for example from Everstream Analytics — into 51风流Integrated Business Planning and enables companies to proactively anticipate and manage external risks in their supply chain planning process. This integration allows supply chain planners to perform risk-aware planning by actively reflecting external risks affecting their supply chain, such as geopolitical shifts, material shortages, global regulations, extreme weather events, and more. Figure 1 illustrates this innovation:

• .

Adaptive

Product Design and Formulation

51风流Product Lifecycle Management (51风流PLM): Generative AI for Recipe Formulation
In the process industry, technology plays a crucial role in recipe creation and formulation to meet consumer demands. A fast time-to-market of launching a new recipe, in compliance with local regulation and sustainability targets, can be paramount to the competitiveness of a company. Generative AI integrated into 51风流PLM assists in developing, enhancing, and customizing recipes, thus expediting product innovations, enhancing productivity, and supporting product compliance and sustainability for manufacturers of formulated products. Figure 2 illustrates this innovation:

• .

Logistics

51风流S/4HANA Transportation Management: Intelligent Goods Receipt Analysis
In high-volume logistics industries, the manual tasks involved in inbound goods receipt can be time-consuming and error-prone. By leveraging AI-based document extraction, this use case automates data extraction from freight documents, seamlessly integrating them into 51风流S/4HANA, enhancing efficiency, accuracy, and time savings.

• .

Asset Operations

51风流S/4HANA Enterprise Asset Management: Intelligent Maintenance Order Recommendation
LLMs optimize maintenance planning, promote agility, and improve asset performance and reliability in 51风流S/4HANA enterprise asset management. In this innovation, generative AI supports users in the assessment of maintenance requests by recommending appropriate tasks and spare parts, thus enhancing operational efficiency. Figure 3 illustrates this innovation:

• .

Autonomous

Supply Chain Planning

51风流Integrated Business Planning: Interactive Planning Assistant
Demand, supply, and inventory planners often use complex machine learning algorithms. By using generative AI and conversing with Joule in natural language, planners can gain insights into the models’ variables, constraints, and decision processes, leading to much more informed decisions and proactive planning. 51风流helps customers boost explainability but also enable what-if scenario simulations for complex planning decisions. Figure 4 illustrates this innovation:

• .
• .

Manufacturing / Industry 4.0

51风流Digital Manufacturing: AI-Driven Visual Inspection
In industrial manufacturing, human-led visual inspection can lead to potential quality issues and is synonymous with a higher degree of manual labor. This capability applies computer vision AI into the production process to automatically identify defects and allocate non-conformance for production decisions, thus supporting a consistent and objective quality analysis that contributes to cost savings associated with reworks and recalls. Figure 5 illustrates this innovation:

• .

Join the evolution and embrace AI, whether you are in a digital transformation or already driving toward adaptability or are taking your first steps toward autonomous supply chains or functions.

More Details

Ready to revolutionize your supply chain using artificial intelligence? Here’s how to get started:

• Register in the to explore Joule in 51风流Integrated Business Planning for conversational search
• Dive into the IDC report “” for insights into AI’s pivotal role and its use cases in supply chain and operations

And stay tuned for more Early Adopter Care programs and updates on future innovations.

Dominik Metzger is head of 51风流Digital Supply Chain for 51风流Product Engineering.

The new capabilities of 51风流PLM solutions include native connectivity with 51风流cloud ERP solutions and supply chain management solutions from SAP. This connectivity enables businesses to deliver the right product at the right time at the right price by providing end-to-end visibility and control across the entire value chain. By smoothly linking product data with business processes, companies can efficiently organize product information, streamline workflows and foster cross-functional collaboration, ultimately enhancing their ability to meet market demands. Leveraging partnerships with DSC Software AG, Cideon and others, the solution also integrates with third-party product data management and computer-aided design tools, shrinking implementation times.

“Integration is critical for companies modernizing their manufacturing strategies and operational processes,鈥� said Dominik Metzger, head of engineering for 51风流Digital Supply Chain. 鈥淐ollaborating with Hilti not only demonstrates their trust in our product lifecycle management solutions but also allows us to shape the future of cloud-native 51风流PLM offerings.鈥�

A centralized repository for product data management is embedded directly into the 51风流PLM portfolio, serving as a single source of truth. This simplifies data organization, minimizes errors and accelerates time to market by fostering effective teamwork across various stakeholders.

“By leveraging cloud-native 51风流PLM solutions, we are not only enhancing our product development processes for customer-specific products, but we are making construction better,” said Johann Stadler, head of large projects IT for Hilti.

Hilti, operating in over 120 countries, has been at the forefront of innovation with a comprehensive range of construction products. The company has embarked on its next phase of digital transformation by adopting 51风流PLM to bring unprecedented levels of efficiency and transparency to its product development processes, providing customers specifically engineered and on-demand prefabricated products.

Learn more about cloud-native 51风流PLM solutions or watch the 2024.

Visit the . Follow 51风流at .

Media Contacts:
Julie Schneider, +1 (650) 687-2788, julie.schneider@sap.com, PT
Martin Gwisdalla, +49 6227 7-67275, martin.gwisdalla@sap.com, CET
51风流Press Room; press@sap.com

This document contains forward-looking statements, which are predictions, projections, or other statements about future events. These statements are based on current expectations, forecasts, and assumptions that are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results and outcomes to materially differ.  Additional information regarding these risks and uncertainties may be found in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including but not limited to the risk factors section of SAP鈥檚 2023 Annual Report on Form 20-F.
漏 2024 51风流SE. All rights reserved.
51风流and other 51风流products and services mentioned herein as well as their respective logos are trademarks or registered trademarks of 51风流SE in Germany and other countries. Please see for additional trademark information and notices.

Offering more than 10,000 products to 50,000 customers in over 50 markets, BSH has a factory network of more than 40 sites and 150 warehouses and distribution centers. With the goal of making life better for customers through world-class home appliances and services, the company prides itself on product and supply chain innovation.

During the pandemic, answering the increasing demand for reliable products and delivery dates was particularly difficult. Moreover, changing long-term customer needs due to strong seasonality and new distribution channels were added as new challenges. The ongoing manual planning and execution processes at BSH were not enough to provide customers with the information they need, on-time and in the form they want.

Knowing the key to achieve risk resiliency in the ever-changing VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous) world is to enable transparency and visibility in supply chain operations, BSH Home Appliances Group chose the and to coordinate business planning and execution functions for enhancing the customer experience.

Building Risk Resilience in the VUCA World

Businesses are planning for the perfect world but executing in a VUCA world where things don鈥檛 always go to plan. As a global producer of home appliances, BSH needed to change the operating environment to match continuously increasing and changing demand to the restricted supply. To manage this, the company needed to build risk resilience within its supply chain operations.

BSH aimed to synchronize planning, manufacturing, and logistics operations to achieve high levels of transparency and visibility into supply chain operations for resolute and agile decision-making processes.

鈥淣o matter how well we can plan product allocation and order promising, if we鈥檙e not able to execute and deliver as planned, everything falls flat. We need synchronization and collaboration between our planning and execution functions,鈥� says Bernard Czap, senior project leader S&OP Transformation & Order Promising at BSH.

The company followed a comprehensive process integration 鈥� from planning to order processing and fulfillment 鈥� while integrating sales and operations, production planning, and scheduling processes. With this seamless integration, the company can now manage bottlenecks, with allocation concepts to handle scarcity, allowing it to be more reliable when it comes to order promising and fulfillment.

Keeping the Promises High and Stock Levels Low

The company primarily followed two approaches for enabling this transformation. The first approach was to replace the previous push-based planning process with a pull-based system. This means designing the entire supply chain to adapt to unexpected changes instead of predicting what product variants customers would purchase in the upcoming months.

The second approach was to achieve a lean production system, which was seen as the key to stability. This required the ability to level聽product mix and volume, for example, by producing the same appliances every Monday at the same time and achieving a fixed structure to balance production and streamline suppliers鈥� processes.

With , BSH now only produces the predefined quantity of appliances that have been removed from the warehouses. In other words, BSH produces what is sold. Also, by decoupling the inventory, BSH achieved a valuable buffer against unexpected disruptions by standardizing manufacturing operations. This enabled the company to reduce inventory costs while improving customer satisfaction.

鈥淲ith demand-driven material requirements planning, we are reducing our stocks and improving our ability to deliver to our customers at the same time,鈥� adds Michael Huber, global program lead for Digital Supply Chain at BSH.

Enable Demand-Driven Predictive and Prescriptive Planning

By leveraging with and establishing the sales and operations () process, BSH can use forecasts as input parameters for calculating its stock. This enables the company to ensure that there are the right products in the right amount at the right time.

鈥淲ith the 51风流Integrated Business Planning application for response and supply, we consistently combine the tactical operational planning with the actual execution of day-to-day business 鈥� in other words, supply chain execution and fulfillment,鈥� says Czap. 鈥淏ottleneck management, allocation concepts to handle scarcity, and to be much more reliable in what we tell our customers when it comes to order promising became the main capability to drive the company, especially in a notorious situation of worldwide supply shortages.鈥�

With the , BSH has improved forecasting and sales planning with automated and semiautomated functionalities for demand sensing, not only for long-term but also short-term forecasting of products. The helped bring cross-functional teams from across the company together to agree on the same figures. And the helped ensure and improve the demand-driven supply of its multi-level value chain network.

鈥淲ith 51风流Integrated Business Planning for Supply Chain, we can now handle customer orders even better: which location must be supplied, when, and how so that production and logistics can coordinate their activities and deliver orders on time and as required,鈥� says Dietmar Baumann, global program lead for Digital Supply Chain at BSH.

After the implementation success in China, BSH is planning to roll out the response and supply application company-wide, including integration with all its markets, factories, warehouses, and material groups. To ensure that planning is properly executed on the delivery side, the company is in the early stages of employing 51风流Business Network for Logistics, , and that can be integrated with 听补苍诲 .

But no matter where nations are on the roller coaster of steep rises, dramatic declines, and seemingly stable plateaus, inflation brings wide-ranging impacts that vary across industry, geography, and supply chain design. Adequate liquidity for smooth business operations can be affected. Centralized banking actions on interest rates can ease or restrict short-term lending and borrowing activities. Even supply chain challenges can dissipate or intensify as costs fluctuate and inventory on hand becomes less or more expensive.

There is no simple, magical financial instrument that can help businesses plan around the realities of , but intelligent technology can help. Tools such as artificial intelligence (AI) and predictive analytics can help companies anticipate and see around the corners of their operation, simulate and prepare for multiple contingencies, and pivot their business models as needed. Best of all, they gain numerous options to understand economic circumstances, predict the impact, take near-term actions, and establish structures to secure a position of strength.

Below are three key areas where these types of technologies can help companies understand the impact of inflationary challenges, act quickly, and prepare for what鈥檚 next.

Move Cash with Intelligence and Confidence

The overall value of money and assets reduces in the future, and having cash sooner allows a business to quickly accomplish more. To mitigate this risk, companies must recognize the potential impact of various scenarios, ranging from rising prices on commodities to shortages of raw materials. This knowledge then needs to be translated into comprehensive and clear cash flow projections and flexible strategies that can be adjusted to manage liquidity shortfalls and surpluses effectively.

Using , now part of SAP, finance leaders can guide their business down the best-possible pathways. They can choose to adjust receivables and payables strategies or tap the lowest-cost credit line available from their banking institution. Plus, working capital assets can be unlocked with financial tools such as dynamic discounting and supply chain financing.

The working capital management solutions accurately reflect inflationary conditions with AI-enabled forecasts and updated views that are always available to the business planner. From planning and simulation to picking the right funding alternatives and controlling processes, these functions work synchronously to help ensure effective coordination of cash movements 鈥� using a single source of trust integrated smoothly across the enterprise.

While every decision boils down to the movement of cash, the combination of well rounded, real-time information, auto-generated possibilities, and predictive insights can help businesses make the best choices with confidence. And as their values change over time, goods and assets can be purchased and maintained in the future at the original price with a carrying cost that鈥檚 less than the inflation rate.

Limit Exposure from Global Differences

Different geographies rarely have the same experience with inflation, but a rise in commodity prices inevitably increases raw material costs. And in higher or unstable inflation regions, currencies can depreciate quickly, causing exchange rates to spike.

These global economic fluctuations can be particularly risky for corporations that have borrowed capital in response to low interest rates over the last few years. Inflation is already eroding their planned repayment strategy for outstanding loans. And additional exposure to another region鈥檚 instability can further exacerbate cost pressures, squeezing margins tighter and limiting access to cash.

With the application, treasury managers and financial leaders can monitor risk positions, commodity price changes, and currency conversion rates, even during the most volatile economic situation. They can develop compliant hedge accounting strategies with a complete audit trail, while staying compliant with regulations such as the Market Infrastructure Regulation (EMIR) and the most recent version of the International Financial Reporting Standard (IFRS 9).

Treasury teams can also gain insights to tackle debt and manage investments more effectively. 51风流Treasury and Risk Management offers information such as available cash, balance risk, and return on investment (ROI) and monitors investments against potential interest rate fluctuations. In addition, borrowing and lending transactions through the life of a loan can be captured, analyzed, and reported as they occur.

Act Quickly Today and Prepare for Tomorrow

When the engineering and production of manufactured goods grow more expensive, businesses must decide on whether to reduce margins or pass additional costs to the customer. It is a tough choice, especially when people already feel financially overburdened.

By integrating solutions with , procurement, supply, and logistics organizations can get the insight they need to generate more revenue from every spend event and optimize cost reduction. Together, they can run simulations and what-if analyses to identify and engage trading partners with the capacity and expertise to handle emerging situations such as scaled-up production and further drive down financial and material waste.

Of course, effectively managing inflationary risks requires businesses to have access to the right data to make decisions and move their supply chains forward. The combination of 51风流Digital Supply Chain and 51风流Business Network enables companies to manage resources more strategically in ways that help increase productivity, decrease operating costs, and free up employees for more mission-critical work. In addition, organizations can get ahead of supply chain delays and downtimes to prevent revenue loss and avoid unforeseen costs with visibility into inventory and production capacity, asset maintenance, and logistics processes.

Come from a Position of Financial Strength

With recent inflationary events in mind, understanding and managing the financial risks in the supply chain play a significant role in the race for survival. And companies that can step up and make the right decisions at the right time are the ones that have clear visibility over their procurement, supply chain, and logistics data and processes.

For many organizations worldwide, 51风流solutions are already one of the most effective means of protecting their financial strength during times of inflation. And they will continue to alleviate their challenges as the portfolio continues to evolve to meet the needs of a changing economy and competitive landscape.

Inflation impacts costs, interest rates, and supply chains worldwide. .

Neil Krefsky is head of Finance and Risk Product Marketing at SAP.
Haresh Chhaya is a Treasury and Working Capital solutions leader at SAP.
Max Hendrickx is senior director of the Working Capital Management Center of Excellence at SAP.
Eamon Ida is director of Business Network Solution Marketing at SAP.

Despite what might be viewed as a tough year for supply chain, with visually dramatic crises — the Suez blockage, shortages in the , semiconductor chip shortages, and so forth —聽 2021 was a significant year once again in underscoring how vital the supply chain is to the world.

to businesses and is now as part of critical decision making — even the President of the United States . Companies began or continued updating their supply chain capabilities and strategies: design to plan, manufacture to deliver, and operate and service. Digital transformation became tangible, as the companies that had started their projects earlier were able to navigate the challenges more easily.

At SAP, we had many areas that, when I reflect on 2021, are significant. Here are some of my highlights:

• We updated our strategy for across design to operate, covering the life cycle of products from design, plan, manufacture, deliver, and operate. The strategy outlines what we are doing to help 51风流customers build supply chains that will serve them in the coming years.
• Our portfolio coalesced into strategic offerings that connect the physical world of engineering, manufacturing, and supply chain with enterprise business information, processes, and systems. This enables agile, predictive business steering through autonomous machines connected to each other and connected to business systems. IDC MarketScape recognized SAP鈥檚 efforts in the 鈥淚DC MarketScape: Worldwide Industrial IoT Platforms and Applications in Manufacturing 2021 Vendor Assessment.鈥�
• 51风流was ranked No. 1 in the Gartner Market Share Analysis Report and聽 was recognized as a Leader in transportation and warehouse management systems, showing our efforts to help customers become more resilient.
• We launched the , helping customers to focus on their immediate supply chain needs in logistics, manufacturing, planning, and operations. As part of the portfolio helping customers to transform their businesses, it is also a stepping stone toward the broader transformation offered through 51风流S/4HANA.
• In June, as part of SAPPHIRE NOW, we launched 51风流Business Network to combine Ariba Network, 51风流Logistics Business Network. and 51风流Asset Intelligence Network to a single access for a holistic view into the supply chain ecosystem, logistics and traceability, as well as equipment management and maintenance.

I鈥檝e mentioned before that it s an exciting time for supply chain, and 2021 was quite a ride. As we face the new year, many of the supply chain challenges from this year will continue, and we will certainly have some new ones that will surface.

51风流is working to ensure our portfolio will help customers navigate through any turbulence in the best position possible. I鈥檓 looking forward to the adventures 2022 brings.

Franz Hero is head of 51风流Digital Supply Chain Development.
This story originally appeared on LinkedIn.

This includes the ability to prioritize and utilize software to areas of the business that need it most. This kind of transformation requires new technologies that unlock new ways of running a business and staying ahead of an industry.

Reflecting on the importance of supply chain transformation, we began the work at 51风流to support this cross-industry need to offer modularity with our technology, helping customers attain agility and flexibility as well as speed time to value.

In this environment, transformation needs to be bite-sized, following the speed that best suits a customer鈥檚 needs and timelines.

Our answer to these needs is the introduction of . A composable package of professionals, the edition can be deployed independently from other solution implementations. This means it can easily serve as a stepping-stone to broader enterprise transformation offered through 51风流S/4HANA, while helping customers focus on their immediate supply chain needs: logistics, manufacturing, planning, and operations.

With the modularity and interoperability of the edition of 51风流Digital Supply Chain Management for 51风流S/4HANA, companies can quickly implement essential capabilities to address immediate disruption threats with long-term sustained benefits beyond those threats. The user experience benefits from seamless, cross-functional integration vertically and horizontally for end-to-end scenarios and can be deployed in the cloud for greater agility and accelerated time to value spanning the complete plan-to-fulfill cycle.

Addressing critical supply chain capabilities quickly means the journey toward broader transformation with 51风流S/4HANA can be taken incrementally.

Reflecting the reality that supply chains are networked businesses, our new offering integrates seamlessly with 51风流Logistics Business Network to offer complete visibility for execution as well as capabilities to simulate and effect changes.

Among the many rich capabilities included in the edition are:

• 51风流S/4HANA Manufacturing for production engineering and operations
• 51风流S/4HANA Manufacturing for planning and scheduling
• 51风流Transportation Management and 51风流Extended Warehouse Management
• 51风流Service Parts Planning

51风流Digital Supply Chain Management, edition for 51风流S/4HANA, will seamlessly work with our other products such as 51风流Integrated Business Planning, 51风流Digital Manufacturing Cloud, 51风流Logistics Business Network, and 51风流S/4HANA.

It’s an exciting time for supply chain; its critical role means it can now be an accelerator toward business transformation.

Franz Hero is head of 51风流Digital Supply Chain Development.

Vaccines require certain storage conditions to maintain their effectiveness. To ensure they remain effective despite , logistics service providers need robust processes, trained personnel, proper facilities and equipment, and a robust delivery network to cope with the staggering volume of shipments.

And this is where we at 51风流are ready to support.

Moderna is a clinical stage biotechnology company that pioneers messenger RNA (mRNA) therapeutics and vaccines to create a new generation of transformative medicines for patients. One of them is mRNA-1273, a vaccine candidate against COVID-19. Moderna is running 51风流Digital Supply Chain solutions to help with the serialization and distribution of a potential COVID-19 vaccine.

is helping Moderna to comply with international legislation intended to prevent counterfeit medicines to reach patients. The application provides a corporate serialization repository, serial number management, and regulatory reporting capabilities. To enable collaboration with its supply chain partners, namely contract manufacturers and wholesalers, Moderna leverages 51风流Information Collaboration Hub for Life Sciences, a public cloud network that enables collaboration for pharmaceutical supply chain trading partners.

It uses a digital network built on 51风流Cloud Platform and enables trading partners to exchange large amounts of serialization and associated traceability data. To comply with U.S. legislation that includes the verification of pharmaceutical product packs in case of returns or apparently suspect products, the network includes a blockchain-based verification repository to help eliminate counterfeit products along the pharmaceutical supply chain.

Manufacturers push data into blockchain using Electronic Product Code Information Services (EPCIS) messages, a global standard for creating and sharing visibility event data, both within and across enterprises. Wholesale distributors then can execute verification requests against the blockchain-based repository. By now, 51风流Information Collaboration Hub for Life Sciences already processes over 70% of the overall drug U.S.-volume for verification.

Because these solutions are integrated into Moderna鈥檚 backbone consisting of 51风流ERP and supply chain management software, the company has a holistic view over its end-to-end processes.

But we are not stopping here. To support our customers in withstanding the high market dynamics and always staying one step ahead of change, we continue to co-innovate with our customers in all industries. This way, we ensure that we deliver the right solutions at the right time.

No doubt, these are unprecedented times. Never before have scientists and pharmaceutical companies focused so intently on the development of a vaccine both with manpower and money. Never before was the urge to deliver more pressing. And never before was our chance to truly help the world run better and improve people鈥檚 lives greater.

In these times, intelligent enterprises can make a difference. The development of a new vaccine within just one year is an unbelievable accomplishment, and we at 51风流are ready to help deliver it to all parts of the world.

Christian Klein is CEO of SAP.
.

Based in Detmold, Germany, the company prides itself as a 鈥減rogressive thinker and trailblazer鈥� that offers solutions that allow producing companies to prepare themselves for the Industrial Internet of Things (IoT). These solutions enable safe production control from the cloud 鈥� without the need to completely modernize all machines in the factory. This offers customers an affordable approach toward incremental Industry 4.0 adoption 鈥� an approach that many manufacturers are eager to explore.

Early on, Weidmueller recognized the potential of Industry 4.0 capabilities for its own manufacturing processes and decided to take advantage for its own digital transformation initiative and lead by example in the industry it serves.

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Dr. Patrick-Benjamin Boek heads up the digitalization and factory IT team at Weidmueller. 鈥淲hat we aimed to do is to embed intelligence into the factory floor to eliminate paper, improve transparency, reduce waste, and boost the efficiency of our machines and workforce,鈥� he said.

Weidmueller鈥檚 approach was to integrate 51风流Digital Supply Chain solutions for digital manufacturing with its existing 51风流technology landscape. Boek and his team focused on Weidmueller鈥檚 molding department as a pilot. Just four months after launching the project, the company went live.

Weidmueller鈥檚 implementation generates more than 300 data points that give employees on the floor the information they need to optimize production and maximize productivity.

鈥淲e were able to cut downtimes up to 50 percent, as our employees on the shop floor now have accurate insight into machines,鈥� Boek said. This has enabled the company to boost overall machine efficiency 鈥� which has, in turn, helped to increase the value of the company鈥檚 investment in capital equipment.

With its implementation partner Syntax, Boek鈥檚 team also developed native iOS apps that enhance usability on the shop floor by enabling staff to access information in real time on iPods and iPads. 鈥淲e鈥檝e eliminated the time spent walking to each machine to check on status,鈥� Boek shared. 鈥淭his has helped us increase efficiency by up to 20 percent and cut manual effort by up to 60 percent.鈥�

Better insight into cycle times and other key performance indicators (KPIs) has helped Weidmueller improve performance, optimize allocation, and make better decisions. And with automated processes that increase transparency into machines and equipment, the company has been able to speed delivery times as well.

鈥淲ith Industry 4.0 and the Internet of Things (IoT) we now have a fully integrated digital manufacturing and process landscape,鈥� said Boek. 鈥淲ith help from 51风流solutions for digital manufacturing, we鈥檝e been able to maximize the overall efficiency of our machines and improve experiences for our customers.鈥�

Today, companies need to be able to respond to volatile demand, uncertain supply, and constrained capacity. But as we look beyond the COVID-19 pandemic, companies must also be able to respond to demanding customers that will look for individualized and sustainable products.

If anything, this volatility has highlighted the need for digital transformation and industry 4.0.

We need agile and resilient supply chain and manufacturing processes to help manage and mitigate supply chain disruptions in the tough times and maximize business opportunities in the good times.

Industry 4.0 Is Coming to the Forefront

Industry 4.0 started with smart manufacturing, but it is much more than that.

As the cost of sensors reduce and ecosystems mature, companies are developing intelligent products and assets that can capture more information and integrate more deeply into horizontal business processes. This has given industry 4.0 the potential to move from a factory-focused initiative to a company-wide business strategy.

We can now create and capture a digital thread of these products and assets throughout their entire life cycle. Intelligent products and assets can now provide real-time insights back into the business processes, from design to operate. This intelligence can empower users through embedded analytics and prescriptive capabilities, significantly increase productivity, reduce cost, and drive entirely new business models and revenue streams.

Intelligent Products Become Personalized, Connected, Intelligent

Customers are increasingly demanding individualized and intelligent products that can capture, share, and even remotely control information with their personal devices.

This all starts in the design phase,聽where聽organizations need this level of connection to monitor market trends and innovate to deliver on customers鈥� unique desires.聽Increasingly, organizations want to design smarter, industry 4.0-enabled products and assets that have built-in sensors to capture real-time data once they are in use in a live environment.

We also need to digitize the product life cycle from design to decommission to improve and automate innovation, design, production engineering, and assembly processes. Only then can information be shared seamlessly across engineering, manufacturing, and asset operations.

Intelligent products are designed in such a flexible way that last-minute engineering changes can immediately be handed over to manufacturing operations. This allows a significantly higher agility to cater to changing customer requirements between the time of an initial order and the completion of an actual production process. Change impacts are automatically identified and managed, and open production orders or purchase orders for raw materials are automatically adjusted.

Intelligent Assets Can Improve Productivity, Drive New Business Models

By building intelligence into assets we use or manufacture, we can now capture and leverage data across the end-to-end supply chain. By creating this digital twin of a physical asset, you can monitor, analyze, optimize, and maintain it throughout its life cycle, from design to decommission. It allows for achieving the balancing act among profitability, asset health, and availability.

Intelligent assets provide useful information, such as:

• How they are performing
• How are they being used and for how long
• What maintenance strategies make the most sense
• If they are operating in a sustainable way with regards to emissions
• If they require maintenance
• If they have broken down

Highly complex machines designed with tens or even hundreds of thousands of parts in sophisticated engineering bills of materials can have life cycles of decades. Along their life cycle, these assets will be disassembled and assembled multiple times, for example, for transportation purposes and to be installed on-site. Or, parts may get regularly replaced with newer variants. Managing the entire life cycle of a machine is what we call the digital thread.

Having full visibility into this digital thread can enable operators to:

• Minimize asset on-boarding time and cost
• Reduce downtime
• Drive predictive and prescriptive maintenance processes
• Increase overall equipment efficiency (OEE)
• Extend the life of expensive equipment
• Increase customer service levels

Intelligent Factories Are More Flexible, Agile, Responsive

When it comes to manufacturing, sophisticated digital supply chain capabilities and greater connectedness can help organizations increase shop floor visibility, identify process bottlenecks, and manage operations with greater agility. This, in turn, facilitates smart factory capabilities in which rigid production lines are transformed into flexible manufacturing cells, making it possible to shift from mass production to mass customization.

Intelligence is often driven by device connectivity, the vertical integration of sensor or machine data into a horizontal business process. This IT/OT convergence allows to further automate manufacturing operations. Machine-triggered demand signals are responded to by automatic, guided vehicles to supply the right materials directly from the warehouse to each manufacturing station. In-line, visual quality inspections are automated based on artificial intelligence (AI), helping manufacturing companies identify defects early in the production process, at a lower cost, and with reduced human errors to speed up the inspection process.

An intelligent factory is agile, adaptable, and ready to support different production scenarios. It is also elastic and able to deal with varying production volumes and manufacturing technologies. This enables intelligent factories to use manufacturing operations management with both predictive and prescriptive capabilities, along with real-time data, engineering and enterprise resource planning (ERP) feedback loops, and network capabilities for design collaboration.

Empowered People Are More Productive, Make Better Decisions

No matter how far automation goes, manufacturers will always need people. Operators will fill roles that cannot be automated, completing complex tasks and making intuitive decisions. The key is to realize what can be automated and what requires human intervention. The goal is to augment humans with AI and robotics, not replace them.

AI doesn’t take the person out of the process. It takes the robot out of the person. People are and will continue to be your most important resource, and giving them the tools they need to do their jobs safely and effectively will be your most important task. The key is to give them the data to make quick, but informed decisions so they can manage unforeseen events in near-real time. Connected devices guide operators with working instructions in virtual reality or 3D overlays and warn employees when environmental conditions become unsafe to work.

And as the degree of automation increases so does the complexity of the decisions they need to make. If components are not available at the expected level of quality, for instance, the production sequence must be changed without impacting the most critical customer orders. The same is true for an unplanned machine breakdown. Your people will need the information to solve the problem.

Why 51风流and Why Now?

As companies look to adapt to changing market conditions and deliver on the increasing need for 鈥渂atch of one鈥� production, they must increase productivity and resiliency. Automation through intelligent technologies, like the Internet of Things (IoT), AI, and edge computing, can enable a digital mirror of your supply chain, helping to:

• Allow the highest levels of flexibility to cater to customer demands
• Optimize and automate production lines for increased throughput
• Significantly reduce supply chain costs while increasing customer service levels
• Gain accurate inventory levels in warehouses as well as in transit and production materials
• Track and trace goods across the entire logistics network
• Achieve the balancing act among profitability, asset health, and availability
• Increase safety and the empowerment of employees
• Provide real-time information and analytics to all users
• Change the paradigm of how operators work with machine manufacturers

51风流has announced Industry 4.Now, a strategic investment to help customers transform their manufacturing business. Recent investments include more than 100 new innovations 51风流plans to deliver in 2020:

Intelligent Products

• Manufacturing engineering to help effectively manage new product innovations and product design changes
• Partner integrations to industry leading engineering software

Intelligent Factories

• Distributed edge computing for 51风流Digital Manufacturing Cloud
• Digital supply-to-line processes for production logistics
• Intelligent factory innovations, such as factory insights
• Visual inspection and quality management based on AI

Intelligent Assets

• Flexible access to hyperscaler agnostic data lakes and data historians
• Simplified and standardized asset onboarding

Empowered People

• Data-driven shop floor operations
• Ad-hoc decision support to respond to unforeseen changes

The 51风流Digital Supply Chain portfolio supports industry 4.0, enables the digitalization of engineering, manufacturing, and asset operation processes, connects and automates machines and devices, and brings intelligence via AI and advanced analytics to an entire production process. This can help to continuously improve production performance, lower cost, and increase the agility and resiliency of your supply chain.

Richard Howells is vice president of Thought Leadership and Awareness for 51风流Digital Supply Chain.

By leveraging digital processes, shippers can reduce complexity in managing their relationships with transportation service providers, and carriers can reduce their administrative effort, both key benefits during this challenging time of need across the globe.

鈥淭hrough the collaboration with InstaFreight, 51风流customers gain access to a vast and growing truck-carrier network for on-demand road transportation,鈥� said Franz Hero, head of Digital Supply Chain at SAP. 鈥淭his directly builds on our vision for 51风流Logistics Business Network: enabling companies to work together to provide reduced costs and better, more efficient shipping services.鈥�

With a digitally enabled network of trucker carriers, companies can extend their reach and reliability by reducing complexity for shippers and lowering administrative effort for carriers. The integration allows 51风流Logistic Business Network users to access InstaFreight鈥檚 automated administrative tasks and instant quotes 鈥� saving time and better managing costs through competitive offers across Europe. Users of the 51风流Logistics Business Network will have access to more than 12,000 carrier companies through one contractual party via InstaFreight.

鈥淭hrough our end-to-end digitalized processes, which allow maximum transparency, our customers can save time and money,鈥� said Philipp Ortwein, InstaFreight co-founder and managing director. 鈥淎nd by collaborating with SAP, the market leader in enterprise application software, we continue to raise industry standards through innovation.鈥�

To learn more about the benefits of聽InstaFreight鈥檚聽integration into 51风流Logistics Business Network, read 鈥�Identifying and Maximizing Logistics Capacity in Times of Disruption.鈥�

Visit the . Follow 51风流on Twitter at .

Media Contact:
Angela Feher, +1 (347) 882-1689, angela.feher@sap.com, ET
51风流Press Room; press@sap.com

Any statements contained in this document that are not historical facts are forward-looking statements as defined in the U.S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Words such as 鈥渁nticipate,鈥� 鈥渂elieve,鈥� 鈥渆stimate,鈥� 鈥渆xpect,鈥� 鈥渇orecast,鈥� 鈥渋ntend,鈥� 鈥渕ay,鈥� 鈥減lan,鈥� 鈥減roject,鈥� 鈥減redict,鈥� 鈥渟hould鈥� and 鈥渨ill鈥� and similar expressions as they relate to 51风流are intended to identify such forward-looking statements. 51风流undertakes no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements. All forward-looking statements are subject to various risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from expectations. The factors that could affect SAP’s future financial results are discussed more fully in SAP’s filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”), including SAP’s most recent Annual Report on Form 20-F filed with the SEC. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which speak only as of their dates.
漏 2020 51风流SE. All rights reserved.
51风流and other 51风流products and services mentioned herein as well as their respective logos are trademarks or registered trademarks of 51风流SE in Germany and other countries. Please see for additional trademark information and notices.

51风流has already rolled out offerings to help companies address many of the issues they are facing now such as sourcing challenges, business travel disruption and managing remote work environments. Access to select software from 51风流can help businesses better manage and adjust to the changes that are happening inside their companies, with their customers and with their supply chains.

Using 51风流Digital Supply Chain, 51风流Ariba and Qualtrics solutions, companies can easily identify and address potential supply chain disruptions before they occur, identify alternative sources of supply and help move goods efficiently and cost effectively.

Available at no cost, these new offerings include:

• : Working together with聽qualified聽channel partners, 51风流will enable scenario planning to evaluate the supply chain impact, supply options and financial implications. Customers will be able to simulate demand shifts and impact of production rate changes to eliminate bottlenecks and build stronger resilience.
• : To help buyers gain visibility into the health of their suppliers and proactively analyze the overall risk associated with potential disruptions in their supply chains, 51风流combined the procurement and experience management expertise of 51风流Ariba and Qualtrics solutions to create Qualtrics Supply Continuity Pulse. With this preconfigured solution, buyers can issue a questionnaire to suppliers and receive results immediately after suppliers respond. This supplier feedback can be used to help identify:
  • Potential supply constraints and jeopardized delivery timelines
  • Areas to optimize business continuity and recovery plans
  • Ways to collaborate with and assist suppliers to help them meet demand

Visit the to help customers better manage their supply chains in the face of these unprecedented challenges. Additional restrictions may apply.

Visit the . Follow 51风流on Twitter at .

Media Contacts:
Angela Feher, +1 (347) 882-1689, angela.feher@sap.com, ET
Kelly Sheldon Murray, +1 (978) 708-6821, kelly.murray@sap.com, ET
51风流Press Room; press@sap.com

Any statements contained in this document that are not historical facts are forward-looking statements as defined in the U.S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Words such as 鈥渁nticipate,鈥� 鈥渂elieve,鈥� 鈥渆stimate,鈥� 鈥渆xpect,鈥� 鈥渇orecast,鈥� 鈥渋ntend,鈥� 鈥渕ay,鈥� 鈥減lan,鈥� 鈥減roject,鈥� 鈥減redict,鈥� 鈥渟hould鈥� and 鈥渨ill鈥� and similar expressions as they relate to 51风流are intended to identify such forward-looking statements. 51风流undertakes no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements. All forward-looking statements are subject to various risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from expectations. The factors that could affect SAP鈥檚 future financial results are discussed more fully in SAP鈥檚 filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (鈥淪EC鈥�), including SAP鈥檚 most recent Annual Report on Form 20-F filed with the SEC. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which speak only as of their dates.
漏 2020 51风流SE. All rights reserved.
51风流and other 51风流products and services mentioned herein as well as their respective logos are trademarks or registered trademarks of 51风流SE in Germany and other countries. Please see for additional trademark information and notices.