Company / Industry
MAN Truck & Bus AG, Munich / Automotive Industry
Service Portfolio
MAN Truck & Bus AG is located in Munich and is one of Europe´s leading providers for utility vehicles and transport solutions. They run production centers in three European countries as well as in Russia, South Africa, India and Turkey.
Website
www.mantruckandbus.com/de
MAN prepares for the future of work: Digital processes and automated workflows based on SAP HCM processes and forms are professionalizing controlling of permanent posts in the company's Truck & Bus division - paper-based forms and Excel lists belong to the past now.
Digitalization is an important point on the agenda of all MAN Truck & Bus AG divisions, also including Human Resources. The MAN Group's largest company employs around 36,000 people in its production facilities spread across seven countries. Due to the large number and distribution, it is a heavy task to plan and control the staffing of these positions. However, matters were complicated further for MTB's personnel controlling: Until the beginning of July 2016, the entire personnel requirement was organzied on paper-base and ran parallel to SAP ERP HCM Organizational Management (OM).
Whether creating new or shifting existing positions - for all these processes, the appropriate Word-based forms had to be filled out, printed and forwarded in paper form via in-house mail across all decision levels for review and approval. Accordingly, the processes took a long time. Moreover, within SAP OM planned posts could also be created at practically all locations. Therefore, it was difficult to keep track of planned and staffed positions.
Thomas Riedl, who is in charge for personnel controlling at the MTB and technical project manager, explains: "Data from four different systems and nine different data platforms had to be summarized via Excel evaluation, and reporting could only be created with great effort and time delay.“
Those involved were aware, that more flexible working time schemes as well as increasing numbers of projects and part-time splitting will require even more complex planning processes in the future. A system-based controlling of permanent posts should support this and enable a transparent, efficient and sustainable planning and steering of permanent posts. This project´s request for proposal involved the following tasks:
The new processes were to be introduced first at MAN MTB and then throughout the entire MAN Group.
In recent years, MAN has created the prerequisites for setting up a global, uniform process and providing technical support by setting up a worldwide single client, MAN SAP HCM Systems, on the basis of a global template. "This basis enables us to digitize personnel processes and roll them out worldwide with little technical effort," explains Hannes Bunke, technical project manager and SAP HCM in-house consultant for MAN´s Global HR IT team.
MAN MTB decided for provider projekt0708, who specialized in Human Capital Management solutions by SAP, as their project partner. The service provider from Munich convinced with an overall concept which included the still quite unknown solution "SAP HCM Processes & Forms". Within this framework, processes and forms can be digitized just like in some kind of construction kit. This approach attracted wide interest at MAN, where the transition to digitization is being worked on a cross-divisional basis.
The project began in early summer 2015 with the functional specification. After projekt0708 had gained an overview of the existing processes, the first task was to develop a concept with efficient organizational workflows and streamlined processes together with the responsible persons at MAN Truck & Bus. For example, the number of approvals by personnel managers was limited to two, the permissions for the creation of positions was now clearly regulated and the relevant group of people was limited. The technical concept was then presented to the management and only after their approval did the transformation into technical processes begin. The most uncomplicated application, the target value increase, was addressed first and then the more complex processes were approached. In total, automatic workflows for five planning processes were programmed: Requisitions for permanent posts with and without target value increase, double or multiple staffing of permanent posts, target value increase through part-time splitting and shift of permanent posts.
All applications were tested extensively, which was even more important since MAN had decided against a step-by-step introduction in combination with a pilot phase. In order to avoid old and new processes running parallelly, the new solution was to be implemented simultaneously at all locations in July 2016. “For the first time“, emphasizes Victoria Peters, responsible for personnel controlling and the consolidation of the MAN Group, “such a project was implemented at MAN this way (with a "big bang")“.
In addition to a smooth technical implementation, the prerequisite for success was, that all affected employees were trained on the new system in time before its introduction. Here, the projekt0708 training team around Stefanie Hanske was able to support - with workshops on site in Munich, Nuremberg, Salzgitter as well as at locations in Austria, Turkey and Poland. In addition, there were various online seminars offered for all other locations, as well as support in the creation of a Q&A catalogue. "It was important to us, that the employees were being trained closely to the system´s start. All trainings took place in June, one month prior to the Go-Live date. Without projekt0708´s support, we would´t have got it covered as is with board resources only", says Peters. For their part, the Munich service providers appreciated the commitment, diligence in testing as well as the profound preparation and equipment of the trainings by the MAN Truck & Bus project team: “While some companies confine themselves to sending only the instructions as manual, when introducing new processes, MAN MTB was able to clarify many upcoming questions in advance during the training courses. This is very important for the performance and, above all, the acceptance of a new solution," emphasizes Michael Scheffler, Managing Director at projekt0708.
“We feel comfortable with our new solution“, is the MAN Truck & Bus project team´s summary. The users were also impressed by the transparency, data security and flexibility of the system-based position controlling. Although some HR managers had some difficulties with the new rules at the beginning, the solution has now been accepted by everyone and is being consistently in use. The processes in position planning accelerated after the paper-based processes have been omitted and the processes were tightened. Now reports can be pulled directly and clearly from the system at any time.
After the rollout, the system is further optimized, and the consolidation also allows existing data to be efficiently maintained and cleaned now. A "Release 2.0" and an automated graphical comparison display of target values and actual states for the manager level are also being planned currently. At the same time, a follow-up project based on "Processes & Forms" is also about to start – thus, the digitization of MAN's work processes is further progressing.