Transform Research and Development with SAP S/4HANA

A successful research and development (R&D) department brings new designs to life with speed and accuracy based on market, customer, and quality insights. R&D prepares the downstream departments to manufacture, sell, and service products with high quality and low cost while continuously iterating designs to create more profitable, desirable, and reliable products. Digital tools are needed for rapid design-prototype-test iterations to foster a “fail fast and fail cheap” approach. There is also pressing need to simplify the complexity in downstream processes such as manufacturing, service, and sales to execute a “lot size of one.” An intelligent, integrated, and visual product innovation platform is essential for efficient product development, faster time to market, and fundamentally better initiative success rates.

With SAP S/4HANA as the digital core, customers can iteratively and more collaboratively build a foundation of requirements-driven smart products that are brought to the market faster with full compliance and a wide range of configurations and variants. SAP S/4HANA allows companies to gain live visibility into idea pipeline, portfolio prioritization, project actuals versus budget, new product design, development history, engineering changes, and finally phase-out.

SAP S/4HANA enables companies to integrate, embed intelligence,and visualize the entire R & D process from idea, to product, to production, to service, and disposal. Connected and individualized products can be developed with full compliance and shorter time to market.

• Run design processes on live insights into customer needs and market opportunities
• Perform multilevel “what if” analyses with predictive insights to drive better design decisions
• Analyze live performance of the project portfolio with predictive insights at any stage of the innovation process
• Simplify access to project information for stakeholders and team members with the ability to drill down
• Define and analyze product costs and manage all engineering changes effectively along the lifecycle
• Create a platform as the single digital backbone of product master data for internal and external collaborations across the enterprise
• Provide connected design capabilities, integrating requirements, mechanics, electronics, software components, and simulation, as well as synchronizing all downstream product development needs internally and externally
• Manage flexible, high-performing, and ease-of-use configuration and classification for product individualization
• Integrate and validate compliance requirements in the development process and manage product declarations as part of the product properties for all variants across the product supply chain and lifecycle
• Plan and communicate resource demand to match available resources in the long and short term
• Simplify decisionmaking and processes across the enterprise for manufacturing, service,and marketing through intuitive visualization

Ideation and Concept Development

• Innovation campaigns running inside and outside the enterprise
• Repository for ideas and feedback for development-to-concept stage

Portfolio and Project Management 

• Respond quickly to customer inquiries and requirements
• Coordinate resources across a project’s lifecycle
• Use performance metrics to make informed decisions
• Support for product, service, and asset lifecycles

Product Development 

• Reuse existing components and recipes
• Do costing simulations
• Manage change-controlled structures and variants
• Hand over to manufacturing and service, with full design authoring tool integration

Compliance Management

• Design products keeping material, global, regional, and industry compliance
• Prepare quality and safety sheets for downstream use

SAP S/4HANA is The Next Generation Business Suite For A Digital World
The opportunity exists to transform business processes and achieve the digital transformation of your business with more automation and real-time visibility. Our SAP HANA and Big Data solutions address these important these needs and more. Let us show you today! Set up a free consultation.