Brembo SGL Carbon Ceramic Brakes – integrated shop floor with 4APS, 4BDE, 4MDE and 4PRO on SAP

Location: 86405 Meitingen, Germany · Industry: Automotive, carbon-ceramic brakes, series production · Products: Carbon-ceramic brake discs, high-performance brakes and brake system components for sports and premium vehicles · ERP: SAP · Website: https://www.carbonceramicbrakes.com/de/Pages/default.aspx · S4P modules: 4APS, 4BDE, 4MDE, 4PRO

Initial situation

The production of carbon-ceramic brake discs is characterised by long, multi-stage process chains, high quality requirements and full traceability. Commercial and logistical processes are handled in SAP. For finer planning and end-to-end data acquisition along the manufacturing chain – from initial raw material preparation to final inspection – standard SAP tools alone were not sufficient. With around 650 employees at the Meitingen site, reliable production control is decisive to maintain on-time delivery and quality levels.

Challenge

What was required was realistic fine planning of the complex manufacturing steps, reliable acquisition of operating and machine data and transparent KPIs for continuous process optimisation. The solution had to fit seamlessly into the existing SAP landscape and meet the high quality standards of the automotive industry. In addition, bottleneck machines had to be identified early, downtimes reduced and a solid basis for OEE analysis established. Integrating several solution modules required a carefully designed interface architecture and close coordination between IT, planning and shop floor.

Solution

The S4P solutions are used along the entire manufacturing chain: 4APS for digital, real-time production planning with a graphical Gantt board and simulation-based sequence optimisation; 4BDE for shop-floor data collection with order feedback and good/scrap quantity control at the terminals; 4MDE for automatic machine data acquisition with state and downtime analysis as well as OEE calculation; and 4PRO for process data collection covering quality data and traceability. All modules integrate bidirectionally with the existing SAP environment: order and master data flow from SAP into the S4P solutions, feedback data is automatically returned. Operators, shift supervisors and manufacturing management access tailored terminal views according to their role.

Results and benefits

Brembo SGL Carbon Ceramic Brakes benefits from a transparent, finely planned production with complete data acquisition. Machine and operating states are visible in real time; KPIs such as OEE, on-time delivery and scrap rates are reliably calculated. Quality data and process parameters are fully traceable, which simplifies audits and forms the basis for continuous improvement of availability, performance and quality along the entire carbon-ceramic process chain. Planning-reliable order confirmations and a faster reaction to disruptions strengthen delivery performance towards the automotive OEMs.