REHAU Polymer China Co. Ltd (REHAU China), the Chinese branch of multinational company REHAU Group is the first to go live with SAP Intelligent RPA (robotic process automation) and intelligent technologies packages in the Asia Pacific Japan region. The company is also the first SAP S/4HANA Cloud customer in Greater China.
In recent years, REHAU Group has been attempting to enhance its business model which accommodates both B2B and B2C requirements. There was an urgent need for digital transformation across corporate management. The polymer company needed a fully-integrated cloud-based enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution to help it address the following:
- swiftly respond to business needs
- promote and create an end-to-end modern smart factory
- improve employee experience
- improve productivity and collaboration
- leverage technology to support decision-making
- achieve higher process efficiency across the entire value chain
The company chose SAP S/4HANA Cloud to provide it with a next-generation environment that is scalable, mobile, and offering seamless connectivity to a vast range of other systems and cloud applications. The cloud model of SAP S/4HANA Cloud has proved to be a very suitable ERP solution for the company. It enables REHAU to evade the need and costs of tedious customizing with integrated functions such as MES, WMS, and APS.
Nils Wagner, Executive Director at REHAU Group said,
“Digital transformation is an initiative that is driving the development of our whole group and we specifically chose the Chinese market to implement this lighthouse project of implementing cloud-based ERP system for the first time.”
Automating Around SAP S/4HANA with SAP Intelligent RPA
To help REHAU China achieve a high degree of automation with its financial operational process in SAP S/4HANA Cloud, SAP Labs China and REHAU partnered for a co-innovation project that leverages SAP Intelligent RPA. The team trained a machine learning model that, when used in combination with the RPA bot, was able to achieve greater accuracy and seamless automation.
Timothy Xue, Project Manager at SAP China commented,
“We worked closely together with the technical experts from REHAU, and customized the automatic execution function templates for various operation phases at REHAU based on SAP Intelligent RPA. For example, we streamlined and automated the transfer of financial data from the original ECC into the new S/4HANA Cloud and the monitoring and processing of production orders along the assembly line.”
REHAU China has been live on SAP Intelligent RPA since January 2020. It has helped the company automate its business workflows to boost efficiency and enable employees to focus on fulfilling strategic goals. With the combination of AI and RPA, SAP has enabled REHAU China to:
- reduce its monthly manual processing time of about 1,000 account receivables from four days to 10 minutes
- reduce 50 hours of manual processing time of nearly 3,000 product orders in its IT system to less than 0.5 hours per week
In the future, REHAU Group plans to continue to explore the SAP AI Cloud Platform and promote and deploy it not only in the Asia Pacific Japan region but also in other countries throughout the group.
Wagner said,
“We will facilitate the integration and standardization of the processes within the group and achieve supply chain excellence throughout the whole industrial value chain.”
About REHAU Group
REHAU is a leading global provider of advanced polymer and composite products for industry and end-users. The company develops innovative polymer-based solutions that enable quality, efficiency, and sustainability in homes, on the road, and elsewhere.
REHAU employs about 20,000 people in more than 170 locations. The corporate headquarters for the car industry business and Commercial Construction is in Germany, while the administrative headquarters is located in Muri bei Bern, Switzerland.
