So this is the big moment! Just one small mistake and the whole schedule goes out the window. For a few hours, every­thing that so many people have been working toward for over one-and-a-half years lies in their hands. And that’s because the “Tech­nical Basis and Migra­tion” sub-project, super­vised by Lukas Bulla, Julia Malsam and Stefan Burkert, is creating the tech­nical foun­da­tion for the changeover to SAP S/4HANA. And it’s crucial that the migra­tion is imple­mented effi­ciently so as to ensure that oper­a­tions subse­quently run smoothly again across all processes, and that Uhlmann is fit for the digital future. Because that is the whole objec­tive of the complex project.

Just one wrong click and that’s it for the planned go live.

Lukas Bulla, System Engi­neer

Lukas Bulla and his team are keenly aware of these impli­ca­tions during the long weekend leading up to the public holiday on October 3, 2023. Even months later there is one thing he will clearly recall from that weekend: “Just one wrong click and that’s it for the planned go live.” So there’s no need for coffee or energy drinks – despite little sleep and up to 50 working hours per person. Only when they have done their job can the 18 appli­ca­tion consul­tants waiting for their cue connect the more than 40 key sub-systems, like the one for auto­mated goods move­ments and inven­tory manage­ment in the ware­house, to the new SAP. Then it’s down to the 100 or so key users from the depart­ments to finally check whether every­thing is working as it should.

When the new SAP system goes live, all processes that were previ­ously handled by the old SAP system in every depart­ment at Uhlmann Pac-Systeme, including all subsidiaries as well as Wonder and Axito DE, will run on the S/4HANA tech­nology base. The final prereq­ui­site for the go live is that the Uhlmann Group’s IT manage­ment gives the go-ahead, taking into account all open risks – which finally comes after a grueling weekend on October 3, 2023 at 6 pm. However, the journey the team jointly under­took with external consul­tants was anything but plain sailing.

The biggest success factor was the IT team and the key users.

Klaus Kramer, IT Project Manager

It was no picnic. “We had to under­take major efforts throughout the entire project – and, most recently, even more so during the migra­tion weekend – to meet the planned go-live date. The imple­men­ta­tion was simply more tech­ni­cally chal­lenging than expected from the outset,” recalls Klaus Kramer, one of the co-project managers in charge of the migra­tion. Together with his co-project manager Helge Stührmann, his credo right from the word go was this: Work fast but stay focused! And above all, don’t lose sight of why we’re doing all this, as Klaus Kramer explains: “With this migra­tion, we are maxi­mizing Uhlmann’s capa­bility to expe­dite progress on digi­tal­izing processes on a future-proof plat­form.”

To mini­mize the risk of converting to S/4HANA and keep the migra­tion time within reason­able limits, Uhlmann chose a brown­field approach for the conver­sion. Specif­i­cally, this means that all existing busi­ness appli­ca­tions are trans­ferred from the existing SAP system to the new one and only a few neces­sary changes are made during the process. New func­tion­al­i­ties, and in partic­ular, process opti­miza­tions along the value chain will be intro­duced in subse­quent orga­ni­za­tional projects (“Speed+”), but then on the basis of S/4HANA. “Applying this approach was a major success factor,” says Klaus Kramer, “but the biggest one was the IT team and the key users, who are respon­sible for ensuring that the system works exactly according to the needs of their respec­tive depart­ment.”

Count­less lines of code

Michael Flor­czak is one of the 18 appli­ca­tion consul­tants who support the user depart­ments during the intro­duc­tion of the indi­vidual SAP-based busi­ness appli­ca­tions. He remem­bers situ­a­tions during the project when he thought: “How on earth are we going to manage all this?” Of the 40 sub-systems avail­able, Flor­czak connected two major ones to the new SAP, including the auto­mated ware­house and thus one of the most crucial ones: “If this one stops working, the company will come to a stand­still,” he explains.

If this one stops working, the company will come to a stand­still.

Michael Flor­czak, Appli­ca­tion Consul­tant

To prevent this from happening, the IT special­ists used so-called sand­boxes in the project. These copies of the existing SAP system were used to test the migra­tion of existing addi­tional func­tions and processes to S/4HANA in advance without affecting the main system. To ensure that all addi­tional func­tions also run under the new S/4HANA system as required by Uhlmann, Wonder and Axito, many – indeed count­less – lines of source code for the addi­tional func­tions had to be adapted.

0
lines of code (LOC) were changed

And yet, for most colleagues at Uhlmann, Wonder and Axito, nothing has changed on the surface. Klaus Kramer puts it like this: “It’s like a car: we still have four wheels and it drives. But we have created the condi­tions that will enable us to change the entire power­train in the future.” However, as Michael Flor­czak adds, “some people now have to get to grips with new buttons and oper­ating concepts because the approach they have become accus­tomed to for so long has already changed in certain areas.” However, there were no major outcries from the work­force in the months following the changeover. And, when the day of the project wrap-up event arrived on February 16, 2024, the migra­tion team was finally able to breathe a big sigh of relief and cele­brate their well-deserved success: the project had achieved its objec­tives, oper­a­tions continued to run smoothly, and the timing and budget targets had been met – an outstanding achieve­ment!