Automotive

It’s all that a lot of medium-sized enterprises know: At many companies, the various departments roll up their sleeves each day to take care of everything themselves. Even IT. Monitoring data security, procuring new network components, distributing software updates – employees are so busy with routine tasks that activities with strategic significance often have to wait until later. This was also the case at W.E.T. Automotive Systems AG. Until the company decided to outsource its ICT to T-Systems.

W.E.T. Automotive Systems AG produces highquality seat heating systems and cable technology for cars and commercial vehicles. Many wellknown car manufacturers in Western Europe, North America and Asia rely on the innovative supplier’s product quality. W.E.T. has almost 4,000 employees at its eleven locations and is active in China, Canada, Korea, Malta, Mexico, the Ukraine, Hungary and the US. The company is headquartered in Odelzhausen, Germany, west of Munich, the Bavarian capital.

W.E.T used to control its globally distributed production using only the Infor ERP LN system (formerly Baan). Since the fall of 2007, the entire system has been successfully migrated over to SAP. This standard software, which is widely used in the industry, supports many of W.E.T.’s business processes as well and enables the company to uniformly map the internationally growing demands in its IT system. Many processes in the areas of development, procurement, production, sales and service are now automated and can be centrally managed.

CIO Ryan Gaul saw the extensive system switchover to SAP ECC 6.0 as an opportunity to strategically restructure W.E.T.’s entire information and communications technology set-up. Instead of continuing to operate the application itself, the medium-sized enterprise decided to rely on the external support of a professional ICT provider. T-Systems’ job was to first consolidate W.E.T.’s globally distributed ERP infrastructure and then to operate it on a mainframe at the data center in Hoyerswerda, Germany. T-Systems took special care to make sure that W.E.T.’s business processes, procedures and routines that were implemented in the system did not undergo any changes.

Operational services GmbH, a joint venture between T-Systems and Fraport AG, updated the server platforms and used partitioning to optimize computer capacities. The process dynamically allocates resources that are not being used at night on one continent to active systems on other continents. Thisintelligent central installation replaced three different Baan systems in Asia, Europe and North America and saved the company millionsin annual costs right from the start. W.E.T. often times paid double or even triple the amount for maintenance, service and updates on the various continents. Many investments were redundant because the local business units used their own hardware.

But this is not the only competitive advantage the company has gained through its partnership with T-Systems. The result shows that W.E.T.’s operations are now perfectly in tune with the company’s operational requirements. “We’re now able to use our IT capacities in a much more efficient and targeted fashion compared to when we ran our IT ourselves,” stresses Ryan Gaul. For example, W.E.T.’s streamlined information technology makes it possible to quickly and reliably fix errors without having to use additional personnel. T-Systems has fully taken over this task. The ICT experts are there 24/7 to make sure that the ERP servers are fully available. The migration went smoothly and without downtimes. W.E.T. employees did not even realize that their IT was being moved to the Deutsche Telekom subsidiary’s data center.

Ryan Gaul and his colleagues use these new capacities to focus their resources on strategically important operational tasks. “We now have the personnel capacities we need to consistently advance our business processes and integrate them into our IT architecture. This allows us to make an activecontribution to corporate success.” The CIO is convinced that, “It takes a smart outsourcing concept and a reliable partner like T-Systems to be able to use IT efficiently in the long term at our company.”

Dirk Frowein, Head of the South/Southwest region at T-Systems in the Corporate Customer business unit, adds, “W.E.T. Automotive Systems AG isanother example that goes to show that mediumsized enterprises in the automotive industry can also benefit enormously from our process expertise andtechnological infrastructure. Our teams can fix the problem before it even happens. They’re intelligent and act fast. We come up with solutions that take our customers to the next level.”

In addition to T-Systems’ reliable operational services, W.E.T. also benefits from Deutsche Telekom’s global backbone for data communications. The ICT experts took over the W.E.T. Group’s corporate network in January 2009. The first thing T-Systems did was to significantly improve the company’s connection in the Ukraine. The facility there, which happened to be the company’s largest, was equipped with a poor network connection. Within no time, T-Systems set up a leased line to Vynohradiv and connected the location in western Ukraine with the state-of-the-art and fail-safe, high-speed platform.

Ryan Gaul was especially pleased with T-Systems’ work ethic. “They think like guys from the mediumenterprise sector. Their motto is “create instead of red tape.” There is very little bureaucracy and they provide great service at fair prices. The monitoring process is exemplary: Even the most minor errors,which W.E.T. does not even notice, get documented. That makes customers feel secure. “T-Systems has a firm grip on our global network infrastructure.That leaves you with a great feeling,” says Ryan Gaul.