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MYSAP IDES (International Demonstration and Education System)

SAP IDES is a normal R/3 but with lots of DEMO data.

The system that contains several sample companies typifying relevant business processes. It is simple to use and has a variety of master and transaction data, and is used for demos, online/classroom training, and presentations. Potential customers use IDES to trial and test software via Internet.

SAP IDES – the “Internet Demonstration and Evaluation System” in the R/3 System, represents a model company. It consists of an international group with subsidiaries in several countries. IDES contains application data for various business scenarios that can be run in the SAP System. The business processes in the IDES system are designed to reflect real-life business requirements, and have access to many realistic characteristics. IDES uses easy-to-follow business scenarios to show you the comprehensive functions of the R/3 System.

The focal point of IDES, however, is not the functionality itself, but the business processes and their integration. IDES not only covers the Logistics area, but also Financials, and Human Resources. It demonstrates how the R/3 System is able to support practically all types of industries, from discrete production through to process industries, from engineering-to-order to repetitive manufacturing. However, IDES is not a sector-oriented model company.%KEYWORDS1%

The individual processes are based on practice-oriented data for sectors such as Retailing or Banking. The IDES group manufactures products as diverse as elevators, motorcycles, and paints.

IDES is managed by SAP just as any regular business enterprise. SAP regularly updates the IDES data (master data, transaction data, and customizing). IDES also carry out period-end closing and plan with different time-horizons. Transaction data are generated to ensure that the information systems in all areas have access to realistic evaluation data. IDES are constantly implementing new, interesting business scenarios to highlight the very latest functions available in the R/3 System. New functions are represented and documented by IDES scenarios.

Above all, IDES shows you the possibilities of the integrated applications in the SAP System. IDES cover all aspects of a business enterprise, including Human Resources, Financial Accounting, Product Cost Planning, Overhead Management, Profitability Analysis, Planning, Sales and Distribution, Materials Management, Production, and much, much more. IDES have also integrated document administration and third-party CAD systems within the IDES system. This means that you can call up and display external documents, or access CAD drawings.

IDES shows you how the R/3 System supports production processes, the supply chain, and the efficient usage of global resources. Or perhaps you would like to increase your understanding of just-in-time-production or the integration of the electronic KANBAN system in an MRP II environment? IDES provides the ideal way to learn about areas such as Product Cost Controlling, Activity-Based Costing, or integrated Service Management and Plant Maintenance. How to manage high inflation is just one of the ever-growing number of IDES business scenarios that you can choose from.

Business Processes in Financial Accounting

Financial Accounting covered basic structure and procedures business process financial accounting within SAP System.
Table of Content :
Navigation in SAP R/3
General Ledger Accounting
Account Payable
Account Receivable
Asset Accounting
Bank Accounting
Preparing Financial Statements

ERP II in Support of Lean Manufacturing in Automotive

Successful manufacturers in the auto industry will adopt both mass customization and lean manufacturing techniques. These techniques will require the deeper application capabilities and open architectures of ERP II.

To save themselves from an industry with too much capacity and inventory with too little demand, manufacturers in the auto industry should embrace mass customization (or building to order). The steps the industry has taken during the last decade, such as consolidation and fostering competition among suppliers, will no longer be enough to reduce costs. Successful manufacturers will make their manufacturing operations lean, yet also more aware of and responsive to the needs of individual customers, suppliers and market changes. “Lean” manufacturing will require enterprise resource planning (ERP) vendors to deliver lean technology capabilities as they become more vertical in their evolution to ERP II.

Definition of Lean Production

The American Production and Inventory Control Society (APICS) defines “lean production” as a philosophy of production that emphasizes the minimization of the amount of all the resources (including time) used in the various activities of the enterprise. It involves identifying and eliminating non-value added activities in design, production, supply chain management and dealing with the customer. Lean producers employ teams of multiskilled workers at all levels of the enterprise and use highly flexible, increasingly automated machines to produce volumes of products in potentially enormous variety. ERP in Lean Manufacturing: Push vs. Pull Production Manufacturers typically take two approaches: push or pull production.

Push and Traditional ERP: Traditional push manufacturing uses traditional ERP to turn demand forecasts into planning cycles for the factory (see Figure 1).

The problem for build to order is that most automotive companies currently execute push strategies that cannot effectively compete with pull strategies on either responsiveness or optimal use of resources. Further, as order-to-delivery cycles shorten, the competitive disadvantage of push scheduling compounds. The reason is that these push environments are driven from a forecast which must accurately estimate the end item mix without visibility of actual customer demand. Pull and Lean Production: To protect themselves from demand fluctuation, manufacturers that use forecast-driven production resort to inventory buffers throughout the supply chain. A properly implemented lean production environment that uses pull scheduling techniques does not require ERP to tell it to produce what customers demand or order what materials are needed. The link between customer demand and production is more direct and not reliant on a forecast. The lean environment only needs a manufacturing resource planning (material requirements planning II) system to ensure that, across a mid- to long-term horizon, adequate supplies of raw materials are planned and appropriate capacity is available.

From ERP to ERP II: Mass customization will require combining the flexibility of a pull manufacturing strategy with the information-gathering power of ERP — but extended to interact with the systems of customers and suppliers. Therefore, ERP must adapt to support lean manufacturing, including techniques and performance measures, and alternative material-planning methods (see Figure 2) through more-robust manufacturing functionality and more-open architectures that support the extension of enterprises processes into the supply chain. These two changes are at the heart of the transition from ERP to ERP II.

Figure 2

ERP and Lean: Material and Orders Pulled to Shop Floor
Shop
MPS/ Floor
MRP Signal
Supply
Forecast
Signal
Supplier
Forecast & Long
Lead Time
Customer
Orders
Source: Gartner Research

The Lean Impact on Production Management: Pulling the Enterprise From Planning to Execution

The essence of a lean manufacturing strategy is the binding of customer orders (or actual aggregate demand) to production operations so that the factory and its suppliers are working in harmony with market consumption. The manufacturer may choose to build the product to order or fulfill from a staging depot for finished goods, depending on lead times and changeover costs on the line. Lean manufacturing eliminates inventory buffers and remedial warehousing and logistics operations, linking the factory’s actions directly to customer/market impulses and critical supplies. As such, the application linkage from order management and supply chain management to shop-floor control becomes more critical in a “lean-enterprise nervous system,” whereby demand stimuli directly triggers production and consumption, in turn, triggers materials supply.

Looking backward in the supply chain, materials and component manufacturers must:
• Know the original equipment manufacturer’s consumption rate for their supplies
• Receive signals from the shop floor to provide just-in-time material replenishment
• Follow a shared concept of quality across the supply chain and pursue of continuous improvement toward “perfect execution”

These lean principles cause the manufacturer and its entire supply chain to supplement a material planning discipline with a shorter-cycle execution discipline, where shared analytical tools and visualization techniques are critical for synchronization. Functions critical to lean manufacturing include:
• Networked kanban system to trigger production and regulate the just-in-time flow of material to the
shop floor/workstation
• Networked community-based quality definition and analytical tools
• Lot tracking and material-tracing capability (for joint regulatory controls and problem resolution)

ERP II in Lean Manufacturing

Most manufacturers today have ERP systems, but ERP planning systems are subject to the processes and constraints defined by the material requirements planning paradigm — internally focused, pushscheduled mass production of large lots with a focus on maximizing machine utilization and efficiency.

Enterprises should:
• Become more creative in their use of current planning engines to support a leaner environment through the tighter linking of demand to supply, the reduction of lot sizes and increasing the frequency of material planning runs.
• Plan to implement ERP II software that is designed specifically for tightly connected, lean production environments. ERP II will provide the required integration of lean manufacturing functionality and traditional ERP processes while further enabling supply chain processes for interenterprise interactions.
• Carefully monitor vendor progress toward ERP II and the specific enablement of lean manufacturing, a new initiative for many vendors, as this combination of functional depth and interenterprise connectivity is currently achieved with custom integration of point solutions to ERP.

Moving to this new, order-based paradigm is not all about new advances in applications. Successful enterprises will think differently about fundamental processes that have been entrenched for years. This will be no easy task, because shifting from a productivity orientation to an agility orientation will be very painful.

SAP FICO

Bottom Line: Automotive enterprises should employ ERP II strategies as they migrate to a build-toorder model. The combination of lean manufacturing techniques (pull orientation) and mass customization (customer orientation) will require the deeper functional capabilities and more-open architectures of ERP II. Users, however, should not solely focus on technology changes, as process changes toward lean manufacturing can provide significant business benefits while orienting the enterprise toward customer-centric manufacturing.

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