SAP's Perfect Plant and Enterprise Mobility

Enterprise mobility is a term often used in the context of remote and traveling workers, but it can also be used for situations inside the four walls of a manufacturing plant.  This article explores the use of enterprise mobility solutions within the four walls of a plant using SAP.

First, let's review what SAP says about their "Perfect Plant" initiative.  SAP is enabling companies to create a framework for the “Perfect Plant” by integrating planning, asset management and execution with real-time visibility.  As a result, manufacturing networks are more agile, responsive and operationally efficient with SAP solutions.  Manufacturers embarking upon the journey towards a “Perfect Plant” gain visibility into all aspects of manufacturing operations, providing the ability to respond faster and minimize impact to the business and bottom line, driving increased yields, asset utilization and order fulfillment. The “Perfect Plant” is the ultimate goal for manufacturers looking to optimize utilization of their manufacturing assets and drive increased production performance in concert with enterprise objectives.

Second, SAP has demonstrated that they believe mobility is critical to a "Perfect Plant" by developing solutions and dedicating time and effort to partnerships that strengthen their mobile capabilities in this area.  Here is a statement from the vice president of Advanced Manufacturing Solutions, SAP Americas, Paul Boris, “The SAP manufacturing team overseeing efforts related to the vision of the “Perfect Plant” will be supporting Syclo for mobile EAM opportunities within SAP."

Third, lets see the role of systems integrators in combining mobile enterprise solutions with SAP's "Perfect Plant" initiatives.  “Syclo complements our existing implementation practice in support of SAP Enterprise Asset Management and enables us to develop, deploy and manage mobile applications.  We are excited to provide this new service to our customers as well as strengthen our on-going support of SAP’s efforts aimed at helping manufacturing customers achieve the “Perfect Plant," stated Kahn Ellis, senior partner and COO of Vesta. ”

These excerpts point out the fact that SAP sees mobile enterprise solutions as being important to their "Perfect Plant" manufacturing initiative.  SAP has teamed with their co-innovation partner Syclo to prebuild and preintegrate products that mobilize asset maintenance, operator rounds, time/attendance tracking and materials management to fill out their vision for the "Perfect Plant."  In addition, systems integrators within the SAP manufacturing ecosystem also are seeing the value of supporting mobile enterprise solutions in support of the "Perfect Plant."

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Kevin Benedict, SAP Mentor, SAP Top Contributor, Mobile and M2M Industry Analyst
Phone +1 208-991-4410
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Full Disclosure: I am an independent mobility consultant, mobility analyst, writer and Web 2.0 marketing professional. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.