The SAP Global Batch Traceability (SAP GBT) application provides a view on a cross-system product genealogy and its distribution. It reduces the time to insight into your product batch network and enables rapid investigation and, when required, precision withdrawal and recall. The track and trace data managed by SAP GBT has additional value, providing the foundation for timely regulatory reporting imposed on organizations that produce goods.
Karl Christian Roediger (CR), Solution Expert for SAP Global Batch Traceability, and Bernd Haberscheidt (BH), package owner for the recently released rapid-deployment solution on SAP Global Batch Traceability, share with us some news on this new application and the related pre-packaged start-up offering.
Doreen Baseler (DB): Where can the SAP GBT application help customers in their business operations?
CR: Many industries operating in consumer products, life sciences, chemicals, and wholesale are confronted with a multitude of legalrequirements from agencies such as the GMP (Good Manufacturing Practices), FDA (Food and Drug Administration), and authority directives in case of recalls (Switzerland). Almost daily, news about faulty products or recalls create headlines and consumer panic, especially around cars, or – which might be even more critical - food and medication. In these types of situations, time is crucial. Every minute counts.
Companies that employ best practices in tracking and tracing product and distribution do substantially better in areas of protecting consumers, minimizing legal and regulatory problems, and protecting the company brand image.
In case of faulty products notifications, customers can now act immediately: They can use SAP GBT to trace the complete corporate product genealogy, diving down to the raw material or production location, facilitating root cause analysis and creating subsequent reporting to effect immediate recall actions.
Using predefined reports, SAP GBT customers can easily understand to whom a faulty product was distributed or how much of the remaining faulty batch is still at stock where to restrict further usage of bad batches.
SAP GBT supports all of the above by providing a cross-system product batch genealogy with graphical exploration capabilities, fast reporting and analysis tools. It has automated as well as manual maintenance of batch linkages.
DB: The idea as such is not new. SAP ERP already includes batch management functionality. Why has SAP come out with another batch management-related approach?
CR: Batch Management in SAP ERP is integrated in all applications of the SAP system. It supports the management and processing of batches in all of a company’s business processes. However, tracking and tracing of batches is limited to the ERP system in which the batch management application is located.
Many customers, especially medium size and global players, operate multiple SAP ERP systems from which they would like to derive batch-related data. SAP GBT can connect to these multiple SAP ERP systems to retrieve batch where-used data. To get the big picture on their corporate network, customers can now even tie in information on batch related-data from their subcontractors.
Let me give you some examples that explain why it is worthwhile investing in SAP GBT. Compared to the batch management functionality in SAP ERP, you can leverage the following capabilities:
- You can graphically explore your corporate batch genealogy that combines detailed top-down or bottom-up analysis into a single view.
Figure 1: Graphical Display of global batch traceability for sell-from-stock:
Building a corporate batch genealogy covering cross-system goods movements – down to outbound delivery to customers
- You can trace batch records across systems and even integrate non-SAP batch record systems and consider objects which are not tracked in SAP systems via the SAP Manufacturing Integration and Intelligence (MII) application.
- You can define rules upon which SAP GBT automatically creates batch links across systems. If you identify broken batch links, you can quickly fix them and on top of it maintain a batch network. However, analyzing batches one by one would be a tiresome exercise: With SAP GBT you can now select multiple batch IDs and perform the chosen reporting in a single run, hereby, simplifying reporting and accelerating time to insight. For example, with one click you get a distribution report for a selection of multiple batch IDs.
- Search and reporting is much faster, thanks to a new data model.
- Template reports save you time for structuring your own reports. They cover, for example, batch distribution at delivery-item level, batch stock overviews for connected SAP ERP application systems, and material balance. You can quickly customize your own report.
DB: To speed up the implementation of SAP GBT, SAP has now released the new SAP Global Batch Traceability rapid deployment solution. Can you tell us a little bit more about the functional scope of this pre-packaged offering. Which
use cases does it cover?
BH: Yes, this is a fixed-price, fixed scope, fixed schedule deployment with best-practices content, albeit entry level offering, that deploys in weeks. It is
designed to support three important use cases:
1. In-house production of a batch material consuming batch-managed components: It helps you to gain insight into your batch network within company boundaries.
Figure 2: Sample use case - Global batch traceability for in-house production
2. Tracking component batches processed by a subcontractor, from individual components to the finished product. This use case provides traceability of batches provided from external sources (for example, a subcontractor). The data transfer from the subcontractor’s systems is ensured using SAP MII.
Figure 3: Sample use case – Global batch traceability for subcontracting
3. Tracking batches across subsidiaries with different SAP ERP application systems or non-SAP systems. It helps you to assure the integrity of corporate batch traceability when batches are moved across multiple SAP ERP systems, for instance, as part of a sell-from-stock scenario.
Figure 4: Sample use case - Global batch traceability for sell-from-stock
DB: What is the value customers get with this rapid deployment solution compared to implementing the standard SAP GBT application? How soon can customers expect to go live when deploying this package?
BH: The engineered service, which was created to support the implementation of the above mentioned use cases, targets a go-live within 10 weeks. It comprises typical activities inherent to most rapid-deployment solutions, such as installation check, kickoff workshop for the project, activation, that is, configuration of the pre-packaged solution, knowledge transfer workshop to key users, and support for going live.
For this particular package, service experts do the basic configuration of SAP GBT 1.0 and set up the connectivity between SAP GBT and SAP ERP. Being a pre-defined scope and price offering, the package was designed to support an initial data load of up to 100,000 materials, 10,000,000 batch where-used records, and two years of batch where-used history. If customers intend to incorporate batch where-used data from subcontractors, the configuration of SAP MII, the setup of connectivity between SAP GBT and SAP MII, and the configuration of the data transfer using delivered sample XML schemas is also included in the service scope of this solution. Naturally, customers are not limited to this scope: It can be enhanced on demand as part of a time and material customer project.
So, in a nutshell: A fixed scope, which is implemented in a fixed time at a fixed budget provide customers with a fast start into SAP GBT. The SAP Global Batch Traceability rapid deployment solution joins a wide portfolio of SAP Rapid-deployment Solutions, including:
- SAP Best Practices for Discrete Manufacturing package
- SAP Best Practices for Process Manufacturing package
- SAP MII Batch Manufacturing rapid-deployment solution
You can post your questions, here and we will try to monitor the blog questions. For immediate assistance go to SAP.com and click the Contact Us link.
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