Success-Story from: Nov 2007

The organization

VEKA AG is a world leading manufacturer of profile systems for windows, doors and roller blinds made of synthetic material. The company which was established in 1969 is based in Sendenhorst. Today VEKA employs 3,000 people in 28 subsidiaries on three continents. In 2006 more than 200,00 tons of PVC were processed and sales of almost 700 million euros were generated. VEKA’s innovative technology has set the course for the company’s continued success. VEKA has also benefited from the fact that the company has been an SAP client since the 1990s, and that it has been using SAP R/3 since 1998. The company’s Engineering uses Autodesk AUTOCAD 2006 for its design work. VEKA’s technical development is concentrated at the Sendenhorst site which is also the location of the company’s standards centre which is responsible for processing and distributing CAD documents and drawings. A total of 13 workstations in Sendenhorst are involved in designing approx. 80 to 100 new products. The new products are presented to customers, suppliers and the company’s own production department using a two dimensional display.                                                                                                                           

The requirements

This project confronted VEKA with the following challenges:
· The number of drawings and metadata had reached a volume requiring the use of a document administration system. The administration of the drawings and metadata in the file system had reached its absolute limit.
· The growth of the company and the new domestic and foreign production sites required a quick and efficient know-how transfer from Engineering to production.
· VEKA faced the challenge of preparing this data in the local language (Polish, Russian, German, English, French, Spanish) of the production sites (e.g. multilingual headings of drawings, etc.). On the other hand, the final authorization of development work and standards had to remain with head office in Sendenhorst, i.e. Original-Files were not to be distributed.
· The collaboration with customers and the areas of the company located downstream from the design department also required the transferral of the drawings in an exchange format.
· The forwarding of documents to the centre responsible for standards which had always been performed on demand (time lag) was no longer sufficient for the new requirements brought about by the growth of the business and the markets. This meant that the process from the search for information and the transferral of information from Engineering to those parts of the company located further downstream had to be optimised.
· VEKA faced the challenge of using a multi-CAD useable document administration system which could also handle a CATIA V5 3-D-CAD system.

The solution

VEKA decided to turn to the direct SAP CAD integration solution and the interrogation of files in the SAP DMS system. To handle this task a KPRO server was installed in Sendenhorst with the use of additional servers now being planned.
The direct SAP integration is an ideal way of incorporating documents in the logistic SAP based process. This allows drawings which have been released to be immediately available in the production department. This process however depends on the use of the CIDEON Conversion Engine which in the background automatically converts released CAD documents into exchange formats (DXF) for customers and architect’s offices and PDF documents for departments located further downstream such as sales, purchasing and production.
A special task was the integration of this new system into the VEKA material master system. The SAP material master system was adapted to the special conditions of VEKA and the plastic processing industry with the program being extended to suit this purpose. This information which is generated in the design department during the creation of the product and is vital for the further procedures in the organisation had to be especially accounted for in the project with the direct SAP integration – here especially the automatic material master system and the material master links. In addition, this information was also meant to be administrated between AUTOCAD and SAP without redundancies and stored in the SAP system on request. Here the IT-Management and the CAD Administration depended on the manufacturer, and they commissioned CIDEON Software GmbH with its implementation and other relevant services.
Hubert Erpenbeck, SAP Consultant at VEKA, stresses the fact that: “it was important to be able to file the data independent of the language, and that the data can be issued in any language as needed.” The VEKA change service for designs and standards is mapped by the SAP standard functionality of the versioning of documents. Using the options available in SAP PLM, the company’s requirements were met by the SAP status network. There are various document types which are processed in the organization using different inspection and release procedures. When the “release” status is reached, neutral and exchange formats are generated by the CIDEON Conversion Engine and deposited in the SAP Contentserver.
The exchange formats are generated and filed in a DXF format. These files are important for the measuring software Promex/Innox (quality assurance software) used during the production process and for generating information for customers and product users. The challenge of using the information in the multiple languages Polish, Russian, German, English, French and Spanish was also solved using the CIDEON Conversion Engine.
Here the options which are available in the SAP standard for a multilingual data administration are used. The SAP classification which can administrate multilingual features within the standard is also used to store the metadata information in more than one language. Together with the status change of the document, neutral format files are also generated in the background. The neutral format being used in the VEKA group is PDF. Within the scope of the project, the CIDEON software solution is being used to convert the AUTOCAD files into several PDF-Files. During every conversion procedure the headings and other informa-tion written on the basis of the attributed drawing blocks is exchanged to match the foreign language deposited in the SAP system.

Several PDF-Files are generated for each language and then systematically filed in the SAP DMS system. When a PDF-File is opened by an SAP user, the language which has been maintained in the user master record is automatically queried and the corresponding Workstation application is opened. Thus a Polish user will only be able to access a Polish PDF-File. The SAP standard authorization concept already blocks an access to the Original-File (AUTOCAD file) and protects the Engineering data. The documents are automatically converted and distributed in the background after being released in the SAP system by being made available to all users through the SAP Standardviewer.

CIDEON extensions prevent the originals from being accessed. They also enable the neutral formats which have been translated in the language of the SAP user to be automatically accessed. Because of the size of the file, the PDF format binds the resources being ignored to the filing capacity and the network capacity, with the latter being important for the distribution and visualization of the documents. The exchange formats (DXF) are usually required at VEKA either in English and/or in German. The user acceptance of the CIDEON solution is presently being positively tested in repeated Roll-outs. Together with the ongo-ing success of VEKA AG, the project is extending into new international markets and has proven itself just like the VEKA products.

www.veka.de