Conception of an SAP-integrated Mobile Logistics Solution for Global Use

Just-in-time logistics works only when the people moving material and the system tracking it agree about the current state of the world. In practice the system of record is usually SAP, and the people are usually somewhere else entirely, holding a phone.

This bachelor’s thesis sets out the conception of a mobile logistics solution that integrates with SAP and is designed from the outset for use across international sites, rather than being adapted to them afterwards.

The work became the foundation for logistics tooling used in practice at Porsche Motorsport, where the resulting system supported just-in-time operations for a globally distributed team.

Why a standard ERP was not enough

An ERP system covers a standardised range of functions and processes, which is precisely what makes it dependable and also what limits it: company-specific business processes rarely map onto it in full. The logistics system in use had been built on SAP R/3, and the gap showed most clearly in supra-regional operations, the ones that matter most to a team whose material spends the season moving between continents. Newer requirements were simply unsupported.

A globally active motorsport team needs a logistics solution that works wherever the transporters happen to be. Covering that demanded a purpose-built logistics module rather than further configuration of an ill-fitting one.

Scope of the module

The module was conceived around the following:

• Management of parts flows across the entire horizon of a race event, and across test outings as well
• Supplier management, with parts databases and their technical drawings integrated
• Integration of a maximum bill of materials describing the technical build
• Generation of order slips for parts ordering
• Bidirectional parts identification using Code 39 barcodes and Data Matrix codes

Approach

The thesis was written against the Porsche Racing System, an SAP S/4HANA platform then still in development, and proceeds in three movements.

It opens with an analysis of the processes as they stood, separated into off-season and in-season, on the reasoning that a racing organisation is effectively two different businesses depending on the time of year. Processes that did not yet exist were then defined against the particular demands of the Formula E series. Those processes became the basis for a prototype, which visualises the functions derived from them and carries the explanatory weight of the concept. Finally a weak-point analysis of the current processes identifies where functional integration is worth pursuing.

What it concluded

Designing target processes proved genuinely difficult, and the thesis says so rather than claiming otherwise. Functions had to be planned whose eventual scope could not yet be assessed, which is an uncomfortable position to design from. Delimiting the planning horizons of the Formula E season is what made it tractable, since it gave later functional planning a fixed frame to sit in.

The weak-point analysis did its work, identifying problems in the process flow and producing solutions for them, and the platform proved a sound basis given the breadth of basic logistics processes it already carried. The honest qualification is that company-wide system constraints capped how much improvement was available. What remains is that correcting the identified weaknesses advances the integration and widens the share of the operation the systems actually cover.

The outcome is a concept for a mobile logistics solution, intended as the basis for the implementation that followed.

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@mastersthesis{golombeck2019sapthesis,
  author   = {Golombeck, Marius},
  title    = {{Conception of an SAP-integrated Mobile Logistics Solution for
              Global Use}},
  school   = {University of Applied Sciences and Arts Dortmund},
  address  = {Dortmund, Germany},
  type     = {Bachelor's Thesis},
  year     = {2019},
  month    = mar,
  language = {english}
}