With the goal of a modern IT system landscape and efficient workflows for employees, the global, family-owned company Hörmann KG is in the process of standardizing existing legacy ERP systems on IBM i (AS 400) across the board and establishing a SAP S/4HANA landscape in the long term. With Magic xpi integration technology, Hörmann is setting the course for important steps toward digitization and transformation.
The Hörmann Group is Europe’s leading supplier of doors and gates. More than 20 million doors have been produced and delivered worldwide since its founding in 1935. In the company’s 36 specialized plants in Europe, North America and Asia, more than 6,000 employees develop and produce high-quality gates, doors, frames, operators and access control systems for use in private and commercial properties. The Hörmann Group’s global headquarters are in the small Westphalian town of Steinhagen in Germany. The family-run company recently achieved annual sales of more than 1 billion euros. Hörmann has over 100 sales locations in more than 40 countries and is represented by sales partners in over 50 other countries.
Successful business development requires future-proof, flexible IT systems and lean workflows at all locations. To ensure agile and customer-oriented operations, Hörmann plans to migrate all SAP ERP systems uniformly to SAP S/4HANA. In addition to headquarters, this will include 14 German branches and all production plants around the globe.
Currently, the IT system landscape is heterogeneous and complex: SAP operates in six production plants, while the other plants use various proprietary legacy ERP systems and special applications for order entry through to production. In the branches, Hörmann employees work with a purchased and adapted older ERP system. The current SAP R3 landscape runs on a proprietary operating system.
The planned migration makes it necessary to first integrate SAP R3 with legacy ERP systems on IBM i (AS 400) and other system applications. External authority and partner systems must also be connected to the IT landscape. A major challenge here is to standardize over 200 existing AS/400 interfaces and replace several point-to-point (P2P) connections at operating system levels.
The Hörmann team implemented the necessary system integration with the middleware Magic xpi. They renewed several point-to-point (P2P) connections and thus created the prerequisites for an SAP S/4HANA migration.
The Hormann team saw the benefit of using Magix xpi with its code-free and visual approach. The intergration was fast and seamless due to the benefit of Magic xpi’s ability to connect to any system.
With the middleware, logic, complex processes and transformations can be executed within one platform, which according to Hörmann is a great advantage over other platforms and also over point-to-point (P2P) connections. According to Hörmann, end-to-end transparency from an overview of all business processes, documentation of process dependencies combined with data consistency and transaction security were key functional features that convinced them. A high degree of reusability, support for all common industry standards and existing, certified standard components such as the SAP connector helped Hörmann to implement and start up the system quickly.
The easy handling and maintenance of the integration platform through a self-documenting configuration and little required programming knowledge also contributed to an uncomplicated implementation. The Hörmann team was able to manage this IT project quickly and independently due to the benefits Business Process Modeling (BPM), graphical modeling, intuitive configuration, usability and a rule-based design.
Via the middleware, data flows for business processes between all internal and external systems which can now be integrated and operated. This includes IBM i (AS 400) legacy systems, merchandise management, SAP R3, travel expense accounting systems and special applications within the individual production plants. All communications-relevant data such as master data, data for order entry and order creation, delivery bills and export, inventory management, factoring, financial accounting and travel expenses are synchronized.
Hörmann also exchanges machine control data with external business partner systems. The same happens with customs and export-related data, which is made possible by a connection to the tariff and local customs processing system ATLAS. Hörmann employees can now process and transfer information on customs duties or the weight of goods directly, which saves a lot of time. This is particularly important for Hörmann when garage doors or other Hörmann products have to be delivered to customers across borders quickly.
The integration with another government system enables Hörmann employees to access blacklists and exchange data easily. The lists contain important information—for example, if certain persons and companies are not allowed to be supplied. The modernized and harmonized business processes lead to a measurable increase in efficiency in the company.
For the next step, Hörmann is preparing for the nationwide migration to SAP S/4HANA and other digitization measures.
Quote Hörmann:
“The easy to understand logic and high transparency of Magic xpi enabled us to quickly familiarize ourselves and to act independently. We were very impressed by Magic’s great commitment to us as a customer and fast reaction time, as well as their profound knowledge of affected systems and interfaces”.
Markus Dassmann, Head of SAP Application Management at Hörmann KG
Name: Hörmann KG, www.hoermann.de
Industry: Components
Magic Solution: Magic xpi integration platform
Connected Applications:
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Results in brief:
“We found that Magic xpi provided us with a reliable, robust and agile solution that is easy to support and scale up.”
