Engineering and ERP are moving closer together

Standards increase speed

"With the new cooperation, we are creating significantly more standardization in ERP integration," explained Eike Michel, Head of Research & Development as well as IT Operations at Aucotec AG. According to him, this aims to enable different systems to be linked in the shortest possible time so that they can exchange data securely and in a controlled manner and access centralized applications. "Only the integration of all plant information, even beyond engineering, results in a truly holistic digital twin," said Michel.

Founded in 2001, It-motive contributes the self-developed integration platform IMAP to the partnership, in addition to its expertise in SAP, PLM and configurators. It serves here as a product-independent key from engineering to SAP, Windchill and similar systems. On the EB side, Aucotec has developed the "ERP/PLM portal", which "docks" directly to the platform. IMAP is based on a service-oriented architecture (SOA) and enables machine-to-machine communication with EB, which is also web-enabled. This makes it easy to automate data exchange without client activity.

How ERP know-how creates engineering progress

Michel stressed the fact that there has always been a close connection with SAP. In 1996, Aucotec became the first provider ever to create an interface between E-CAD and SAP. However, the rapidly growing size of the SAP portfolio and the increasing complexity of the products prompted Aucotec to rely on ERP professionals with many years of experience in numerous integration projects for these integrations. "The expertise at It-motive is enormous, our customers benefit from this consulting strength," said Michel. "And they benefit a second time because we now can focus more on our core tasks and use our resources for real engineering advancements."

Increasing added value

"The new partnership with Aucotec perfectly combines the skills of an SAP partner and the modern engineering world," said the It-motive Executive Officer Christoph Tim Klose. "An important goal is to significantly increase added value by seamlessly connecting engineering to commercial processes and information." Whether SAP ERP or SAP S4Hana, PTC Windchill or other ERP/PLM systems, all information is available in a user-friendly, consistent and ad hoc manner with the new solution according to Klose.

A core competence of It-motive AG is the development of solutions for procurement, manufacturing and sales logistics, and for variant management as well as in-house and external accounting. This includes process consulting, design, development, sales and support of products and customized SAP solutions. It-motive supports its customers when implementing SAP solutions and in the areas of business intelligence, ERP and APO as well as by including targeted process optimizations. In addition to its head office in Duisburg, It-motive is represented in Dortmund, Bielefeld and Stuttgart. Its focus is on the automotive, logistics, mechanical engineering, steel, manufacturing, minerals processing, chemical and pharmaceutical industries.