Case Studies - Gardner Denver - eLogic Group, LLC

Gardner Denver

Business Challenge

Gardner Denver Corporation, a diversified manufacturer of industrial fluid handling equipment, had a well established SAP R/3 implementation and a strong internal SAP support team. The company recognized that opportunities existed at several business units to achieve additional gains in costs, productivity, quality, and cycle times by utilizing sales and order configuration technology. Two divisions decided to incorporate these changes into their program of converting from a legacy system to R/3. A third business unit, that was already utilizing SAP's Variant Configurator (VC), included this work along with other needed improvements to product models and overall configuration capabilities. Gardner Denver's management decided to augment internal support capabilities with outside services in order to optimize configuration capabilities and meet project deadlines.

eLogic Business Solution

Gardner Denver chose to partner with eLogic because of our proven expertise in process improvement and SAP R/3 configuration. The project consisted of three primary components: Process, Data and Technology.

1. Business Process Improvement - Using cross functional workshop sessions, the current processes were evaluated and modified to ensure that they were aligned with the technology changes in order to maximize productivity, quality and cycle time improvements.

2. Product Data Management - eLogic established the methodology used to create the proper product definitions including naming conventions and nomenclatures, and managed the process to collect and organize the data across a broad range of engineered equipment product lines.

3. SAP R/3 Technology Expertise - eLogic managed the process to architect and construct the configuration models to align with the business process design and product data.

Results Achieved

Improvements at all three business units were successfully implemented on schedule and under budget. Each unit gained streamlined quote and order processes that provided dramatic cycle time and productivity improvements. Highlights of specific improvements at each implementation included the following:

Tulsa Pump Group Results:
- Automated and consistent proposal generation
- Consistent product nomenclatures
- Automated and accurate BOM generation
- Seamless transition to R/3 with Variant Configurator
Quincy Pump Group Results:
- Eliminated Bill of Material errors
- Ability to leverage existing and well understood product data templates within the configuration models
- Maintainable product models at a fraction of prior effort
Princeton Compressor Group Results:
- Eliminated Bill of Materials errors
- Reduced the number of configuration models from 300+ to 33
- Simplified product data maintenance and enabled subject matter experts to directly manage the models (vs. programmers)