Every day about 700,000 people around the world agree to an operation. A third of these surgical interventions are carried out on Maquet’s operation tables. The company from Rastatt in the Baden area of Germany is second to none in its rapid progress in medical technology. When the company was founded in 1838, ether anesthesia had not yet been discovered and hand washing in hospitals was regarded as an unnecessary luxury. Today, 177 years later, the practice of medicine is a synonym for high tech and Maquet has become the world’s leading supplier of medical systems. Whether it is operating tables, heart-lung machines, breathing apparatus, anesthetic systems or products for heart and vascular surgery – Maquet develops, produces and markets medical products for clinical applications in operating theatres, on emergency wards and in intensive care units.

Process efficiency is a core issueSeven thousand employees are on

daily duty, while 13 production locations and 53 sales and service organizations maintain the company around the world. Process compliance and process efficiency

are for Maquet an important business issue. Not only because standardized processes increase profitability but also because as a medical product manufacturer Maquet is sub ject to the strict regulations of the

American Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and numerous local laws. „If a process within the process chain does not conform to the relevant requirements, in the worst case this can mean that the approval of a medical product will be delayed or imports of the product will be blocked.“ explains Detlef Smolinski, who works in Maquet‘s Regulatory IT Compli-ance Department.

Whoever is thinking about compliant processes quickly comes across the topic of IT support. When the support contract for part of the deployed SAP systems expired, Maquet used the opportunity to look at its processes under the microscope. Instead of putting in place an upgrade project for the affected locations, they dared to make a completely new start. The histori-cal systems with their numerous interfaces and individual programming would be re-placed by a globally uniform platform with harmonized processes and data flows. That was the genesis of the project „MShape“. The abbreviation stands for „Maquet SAP Harmonization of Processes“. And, although MShape has become one of the largest IT

More HarMony for Business ProcessesWhen the support for the SAP ERP Release 4.7 ran out, the medical technology manufacturer Maquet saw this as an opportunity to put all its processes to the test. In a comprehensive harmonization project, the company managed to sharply increase the process efficiency throughout the group.

Michaela Kürschner, blaupause Editor

HIgHly StAndARdIzEd globAl Roll-In PRojEct

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About tHE coMPAny

Maquet develops, produces and

sells medical products

for clinical application in operating

theatres, emergency rooms and in

intensive care units. The company

belongs to the Swedish Getinge Group,

and with an annual turnover of

EUR 1.55 billion and 7,000 employees,

is one of the world’s leading suppliers

of medical technology.

www.maquet.com

projects in the firm’s history, it is and will remain first and foremost a business project for those in charge. „Primarily it is about saving money through establishing globally uniform processes and standards and sim-plifying the integration of new subsidiaries in our IT landscape“, explains Hans van der Zandt, Global IT Director, IT Compliance & Process Consultancy at Maquet. „The SAP project was rather the consequence of these requirements – and not the other way around“.

SAP ERP replaces individual ERP systemsAnyway they agreed relatively quickly

on using SAP as their global platform. On the one hand, since they were focusing for many years on SAP in Rastatt and other Maquet locations and on the other hand be-cause SAP NetWeaver Process Integration (PI) was also the integration platform for the various IT systems up to that point. „Our IT landscape consists of many varied solutions – not only SAP systems but also non-SAP systems, which through SAP PI are closely linked“, comments Arnold Fritz, Director, IT Factory & System Integration and MShape Program Manager. „In the course of MShape this system landscape will be supplemented by a cluster of various SAP components, such as Manufacturing Execution (ME), Global Trade Service (GTS) Master and Data Management (MDM). The individual ERP systems will be replaced by a single, central system: SAP ERP ECC 6.0“, according to the expert.

As MShape was, however, more than a pure implementation project and since it was in place to establish uniform processes that would be right for all locations, there was a complex analysis phase before the roll-in, with the aim of producing a template that could be applied worldwide. „The template is the basis for the later roll-ins“, explains Hans van der Zandt and adds:

„The better the groundwork here, the more time we can save at the end of each individ-ual project“. The starting point of the tem-plate implementation was a comprehensive status quo analysis. Seven central Maquet locations were included in the analysis. Arnold Fritz remembers: „We spoke with colleagues from the specialist departments to understand the existing processes and their requirements“. In addition, the team evaluated the answers to more than 3,000 questions in their survey and collated more than 500 suggestions for improvement. „Our colleagues saw the greatest potential for improvement in compliance areas such as traceability and special processes such as the allocation of leased equipment for demo purposes“.

Process map for orientationFrom the analysis results the project

team derived a Business Process map. However, as no-one knew the affected pro-cesses as well as the people who applied them on a daily basis; they followed a so-called stakeholder approach. That means that from each specialist department business process owners (BPOs) and key

users were nominated to support the mod-elling of the business process map. “In the area of material management, for example, the involvement of the business process owner meant that we could redesign the originally modelled process and make it considerably more efficient“, explains Arnold Fritz. Before the core team could produce a map of all business processes, it was considered necessary to resolve some basic questions: How do we map all process steps and business scenarios clearly? How can scenarios be correctly assigned to a business process owner? „Those were only some of the challenges that we needed to meet in the course of the modelling“, remembers Hans van der Zandt.

„To support the SAP solution manager, we then created a 3-level structure“, ex-plains the expert. „Level 1 stands for each department, Level 2 for the process and Level 3 for the individual process steps. Within this structure we worked with the logic of numbers“. For each leading object within the structure, i.e. for all processes and scenarios and also migrating objects, forms and reports, a number was issued.

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MultIfAcEtEd toolbox: tHE SolutIon MAnAgER

Maquet uses the SAP Solution Manager in all phases of application lifecycle

management. The template serves as a master document not only for roll-in projects

but also for upgrade and maintenance projects. Also in use is the complete manual

and automated test management of the projects and the change management

(CHaRM) after the go-live. All project documents are also oriented to project phases

in the road map area of the Solution Manager. The most IT-relevant validation

documents in the blueprint area are electronically approved and version-controlled

using SAP workflow and PDF/A conversion. Maquet is also running the process

monitoring function and the SAP test data migration server (TDMS),

which is integrated in the Solution Manager.

„Finally we could only realize the template and the roll-ins with the

help of our dedicated employees, who continually made suggestions

for improvement.”Hans van der Zandt, Global IT Director IT Compliance & Process Consultancy of Maquet (left)

Arnold Fritz, Director IT Factory & System Integration and MShape Program Manager (right)

All related documentation – such as process descriptions, programs and customization documentation, test cases, and documenta-tion relating to training and validation – received the same number. „In this way each object could be clearly allocated to a business process owner and a department“, adds Hans van der Zandt. The advantage is that a process step is only described once and has a generic test case that is refer-enced – even when it is relevant for various scenarios. Van der Zandt declares „We save an enormous amount of time and money like this“.

the onion skin principleThe business process map was not only

indispensable for the later tests, the selec-tion and range of the modules could be derived from this. „In the solution mapping phase the task was to determine the system architecture for the Maquet template“, explains Arnold Fritz. „Also here we got the business process owners and key users quickly on board“. The result was an archi-tecture that replaces all existing ERP systems by a central SAP ERP system and further incorporates seven further SAP components, including the SAP Solution Manager. Non-SAP systems still remain part of the total architecture, e.g. Customer Relationship Management (CRM) und Business Intelligence (BI).

With the business process map as the foundation, processes and functions which should belong to the global Maquet template can also be transferred relatively easily. The original version of the template already covered 70 to 80 percent of all globally relevant processes and features. Each local roll-in is usually accompanied by

additional requirements. A Change Advisory Board then decides whether the particular requirement can be used globally and the template expanded accordingly or whether it only affects that particular country. If the lat-ter is true, it is implemented in a local proj-ect. The original template grows layer by layer with each new requirement, like an onion. With each roll-in the number of gaps – and the programming effort – is reduced.

90 percent standardization level– and moreIf a concrete roll-in project is lined up,

the team produces a copy of the correspond-ing current template and uses this as the blueprint for the implementation. The template contains standard models for all project phases and necessary project documents. The effort for the actual roll-in is therefore reduced by this to a minimum. Moreover, with this standardized approach, external staff can learn the ropes very quickly. Four to six months are generally needed from kick-off to go-live, two to four months for the actual implementation. This includes development and programming of the existing gaps, tests and training. As the approach is highly standardized, several roll-ins can take place at the same time. Ar-nold Fritz happily states „We save up to 50% on costs and time with implementation projects; in some companies even up to 75 %“. In the past year 14 company codes have gone live, according to the program manager. In this year the medical techno-logy manufacturer plans to release 20. „Finally we could only realize the template and the roll-ins with the help of our dedi-cated employees, who continually made suggestions for improvement“, emphasizes Hans van der Zandt. Today the template

is also used for the maintenance cycle, including change management, and for upgrades – in other words, for the entire application lifecycle. Van Zandt further notes: „Also in this area we could record enormous increases in efficiency, which result from the template with the ready-made test scenarios and the standard procedures“.

Three years have passed since the pilot project took place in Solna, Sweden, in 2012. Now 33 Maquet locations are benefiting from globally standardized pro-cesses and data flows, and 20 more should follow. „There is an enormous increase in efficiency“, confirms Arnold Fritz. The pro-gram manager adds „Above all in the sales and service companies the processes could be harmonized to such an extent that apart from local legal requirements there are hardly any deviations from the standard“. Of course there are also users who miss the old system. „Mainly those who previously worked with SAP ask: why does this or that function no longer exist?” Overall, user acceptance is said to be very high, this being also a result of the many improvements the project delivered. If today 90 percent of all processes worldwide are implemented in a standardized way – core processes such

as sales, service or purchasing, and even more so central functions like finance and controlling – then one no longer needs to ask about the benefits for business.

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Works like an onion: the Maquet template for global roll-in projects

Source: Maquet

Consistency of processes and data

Deviation of processes and data

Uniform template

Uniform processes and homgenous SAP-centered landscape

original template

Global solution governance