Product Lifecycle Management Blogs by SAP
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It has been two years since the SAP and Siemens partnership was announced in July 2020. On December the 5th 2022 we reached another incredible milestone in the partnership. We will launch the third release of the jointly developed integration. This release and a small enhancement in February 2023 marks the completion of our first phase of development and the full delivery of scope defined two years ago. As a result we felt it was time to once again remind everyone about what makes this partnership unique to SAP and the value it brings to both Siemens and SAP customers.

The SAP and Siemens partnership is now demonstrating and delivering the value it set out to deliver. We have multiple customers who are taking full advantage of the SAP Teamcenter by Siemens portfolio alongside SAP solutions bringing more variability of products to market, with increased data quality and a significant increase in efficiency through process optimization by removing silos between departments .

Today also marks a significant step forward in the transformational aspects of the partnership. For the first time SAP and Siemens solution portfolios can be combined in a single solution offering delivered fully integrated as a subscription and cloud based solution from SAP.

Through this blog we intend to share with you how this offering has been made possible, what the offering contains and how its delivered to customers. We will also illustrate where a richer source of PLM data can be leveraged by other SAP solutions to further increase the value of this unique offering.

First a brief introduction on each of the three SAP portfolio extensions that have made this offering possible.

  • SAP PLM portfolio extension enabled by SAP Teamcenter by Siemens

  • SAP & Siemens Joint Integration solution

  • SAP Teamcenter by Siemens, private cloud edition


SAP defines Digital Supply Chain as five pillars in the E2E process holistically across the lifecycle from “Design to Operate”(D2O). Below is a high level overview of this process describing the influence of digital product data across each phase of D2O.


 

SAP PLM portfolio extension enabled by SAP Teamcenter by Siemens

When the partnership was first announced our first task was to establish the impact of the partnership on our existing portfolio of Product Lifecycle Management solutions. The SAP Teamcenter by Siemens portfolio sold by SAP is not a replacement of any of the existing SAP PLM solution portfolio. It designed to augment current offerings by providing an additional process and capability within our DSC Design pillar and extending the value of our existing SAP products. It is not a replacement of SAP PLM products or solutions.

SAP recognized the depth of capability in certain markets of the Siemens portfolio and will leverage this capability to extend the value of SAPs PLM solutions. Our focus has been on developing end to end processes driving connectivity between the solutions and enabling the digital thread.

SAP can now offer over 100 solutions from the Siemens portfolio for Teamcenter sold through SAP as SAP products. SAP holds all the responsibility to the end customer for solution sales, software delivery  and support of these products. Offering solutions in this way enables SAP and Siemens to provide industry solutions across the combined portfolio and integrate them more closely adding increased value in process efficiency, system performance and at the same time reducing costs.

This approach enables our customers to leverage the simplicity of a single contract with the savings and efficiencies that come from increasing your SAP portfolio.

SAP & Siemens with a smooth joint integration

One of the most significant outcomes of the partnership are the capabilities for our customers when they decide to deploy SAP Teamcenter by Siemens:

  • Closed loop processes

  • Pre-configured data model mapping solutions out of the box

  • Upgrade and change any end point without affecting other systems

  • Continually evolve processes without heavy costs for complex integration scenarios


To have delivered such a rich integration both SAP and Siemens have made fundamental changes to their core products as well as the integration technology. The result is an integration enabling the functionality highlighted below.


Many of these processes are now enabled bi-directionally. This gives the customer unrivaled flexibility in where to execute certain processes giving “Customer Choice”. It also enables processes executed to one system to be complete as part of a closed loop process in the reciprocal system. As an example of this Changes raised in SAP S/4HANA can have their resolution delivered as part of an integrated workflow spanning both systems as shown in the example below.


These are not future statements of capability being developed. This integration was launched back in October of 2021 and has seen a further release in April of 2022 and its final release of the phase one development coming on the 5th of December 2022.

The initial set of customers who adopted the jointly developed integration have already reported decreased implementation times and a more performant architecture. In fact  one customer enabled the integration with systems cross-communicating within a few hours and a completed project with high degree of configuration after 6 weeks.

In the next phase of delivery the project team will build on the solid PLM capability foundation to add further value adding capabilities such as planning integration and other SAP product connections such as SAP Master Data Governance.

The roadmap below shows the current state of the delivered capability.


Why SAP Teamcenter by Siemens, private cloud edition

In June of 2022 SAP launched our SAP Teamcenter by Siemens, private cloud edition offering. The intent of this solution brings SAP Teamcenter by Siemens closer to our own SAP S/4HANA cloud strategy. It enables SAP to present a complete offering for our Design to Operate lifecycle process to be delivered in the cloud and provided by a single solution provider. All of the features and functions of SAP Teamcenter by Siemens and SAP S/4HANA digital core connected in a digital thread.

“A fully integrated digital thread supporting federated PLM domains across the enterprise delivered on a single subscription-based contract.” (Keith Zobott, Global VP SAP Digital Products & Projects)

The SAP Teamcenter by Siemens, private cloud offering will include all of the current set of Teamcenter functionality sold by SAP. Customers will have all the flexibility of their on-premise systems without any of the technical overhead and costs of operationally running their Teamcenter systems. This will reduce risk, costs and increase agility in adopting technology.


 

SAP Teamcenter by Siemens & Beyond…

Clearly the use of Digital Product Data does not stop when the information lands inside the SAP Digital Core S/4HANA. This is only the beginning of where having a richer source of product data becomes value added. SAP has a suite of other solutions that provide capability which can leverage the Digital Product Data. The picture below shows some of the solutions which can exploit richer product data.


SAP Enterprise Product Development – Visualise a complete bill of materials for multi discipline design, from multiple PLM systems as a federated BoM

SAP Enterprise Portfolio and Project Management – Tracking deliverables, controlling projects and defining the work breakdown structures required to execute complex product design.

SAP Digital Manufacturing Cloud – All the capability to take a product from Design through the delivery including planning, manufacture and execution.

SAP Product Lifecycle Costing – Develop detailed cost projection and track their implications

SAP Product Compliance – understand the impacts of a regulation change on a design and maintain compliance throughout a lifecycle.

SAP Visual Spares and inspection – Visually navigate a product definition to identify replacement parts or understand installation and inspection requirements related to a product

SAP Production Engineering and Operations – Advanced complex product manufacturing solution.

SAP Product Data Management Integration - Multiple PLM system integration technology enabling SAP as the master product definition system for federated PLM.

 

In summary

The SAP and Siemens partnership is focused on delivering a comprehensive integrated cloud enabled solution portfolio that offers the value expected from these two market leading solution providers.

The combined solution portfolio offering a complete digital thread from design to operate, fully integrated bi-directional processes covering all the major integration scenarios our customers have been asking of the partnership and its available under a single contract from SAP.

Fully integrated, cloud delivered, digital product design transformation across the design to operate lifecycle delivered by SAP Teamcenter by Siemens.

 

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