IBM > Case Studies > Continental Automotive accelerates growth with integrated SAP solutions

Continental Automotive accelerates growth with integrated SAP solutions

Company Size

1,000+

Region

Asia
Europe

Country

Czech Republic
India

Product

SAP ERP
Oracle 10g
Microsoft Windows servers
UNIX servers

Tech Stack

SAP
Oracle
Microsoft Windows
UNIX

Implementation Scale

Enterprise-wide Deployment

Impact Metrics

Cost Savings
Productivity Improvements

Technology Category

Application Infrastructure & Middleware - Database Management & Storage
Platform as a Service (PaaS) - Data Management Platforms

Applicable Industries

Automotive

Applicable Functions

Business Operation
Discrete Manufacturing

Use Cases

Process Control & Optimization
Supply Chain Visibility

Services

Cloud Planning, Design & Implementation Services
System Integration

About The Customer

The Automotive Group is one of the leading global automotive suppliers. With its three Divisions Chassis & Safety (€5.1 billion, 27,000 employees), Powertrain (€4 billion, 25,000 employees) and Interior (€5.9 billion, more than 30,000 employees), it achieved sales of approximately €15 billion in 2008. The Automotive Group is present in more than 130 locations worldwide. As a partner of the automotive and commercial vehicle industry, it develops and produces innovative products and systems for a modern automotive future, in which a car accommodates individual mobility and driving pleasure to driving safety, environmental responsibility and cost-efficiency.

The Challenge

The Automotive Group of Continental AG, a leading global automotive supplier, had inherited two separate SAP application suites due to corporate acquisitions. This increased support and development expenses. The company wanted to consolidate to a single global SAP ERP instance with multi-language support, but its existing software versions did not support the required Unicode character set. The company’s expansion into new markets has been fueled by a continuous corporate acquisition program across many countries. The integration of two business units (Continental Automotive Systems and Siemens VDO) resulted in the company inheriting two separate SAP application suites, neither of which was able to support multi-language operations. With global ambitions, it was essential to provide an integrated system for all Continental Automotive business units, regardless of their location and language.

The Solution

IBM Global Business Services helped the Automotive Group of Continental AG upgrade its systems in the Czech Republic and India to SAP ERP 6.0 with Unicode support, migrating from Microsoft Windows servers to a UNIX platform. Following a Proof of Concept, the team migrated 100 named users and 200GB of data in a six-month program. Over a six-month period, IBM built and supplied a Proof of Concept and subsequently upgraded the India location to SAP ERP 6.0 with Unicode support. Some 100 named users and 200GB of data were moved from a number of Microsoft Windows servers to a new environment, based on UNIX servers and an Oracle 10g database.

Operational Impact

SAP applications with multilanguage support enable users in different countries to access data from a central repository – paving the way to a single consolidated SAP ERP system for the whole company.
Standardizing on the latest version of SAP ERP will reduce support and development costs.
With a single version of SAP applications for all Continental Automotive Divisions’ users in India, the company is now able to run integrated global operations and yet offer localized SAP applications.

Quantitative Benefit