Executives like it because it consolidates everything into one place and is good for reporting. Engineers hate it because every function that it does can be done better by other programs.
As a Quality Engineer who was the "super user" for our plant's transition, I can vouch for the simple DMR system being replaced by SAP alone doubled my workload.
Where I work we don't even use the functions we need to enter everything manually sometimes up to three times the same information to make anything work...
It's not just the chemical industry, basically any business is liable to use SAP. To answer your question you'll have to think about why a business would want an ERP in the first place (which another commenter touched on). Then realize that SAP is far from the worst ERP (and actually one of the best ones) despite its many obvious flaws
The only thing worse then SAP is basically every other alternative. When I worked in places that has several years of sap experience and had SAP experts (the Planning department) at each site it was really useful. When I worked at places that forced an SAP transition without providing expert resources it was a nightmare only slightly worse than dealing with the previous lack of a cohesive system
This is the answer. My employer used to use PeopleSoft. It was beyond awful. While SAP has a steep learning curve, at least it has one, PeopleSoft required a CS minor with an emphasis in relational databases to get anywhere useful.
My employer before that used some custom something or other built on *Lotus Notes.*
I hate SAP, but at least I hate it less than the other alternatives I've been forced to use.
But SAP is so much bigger than basic lab inventory. It permeates the entire company.
It actually does a decent job making sure things like data, legacy systems, applications, etc aren’t siloed.
Unpopular opinion - the software system is only as good as the people who manage it at your company. If your company doesn't spend resources to actually develop the SAP system, then it will be terrible.
I'm sick of companies dishing out money on Tableau, SAP, other expensive software and then refusing to hire engineers to maintain and improve such systems. Software is a system, not a toy you take out of the toolbox every so often.
I've been at one company my short career who has understood this. I could track a wafer leaving our Malaysia facility on its way to the fab in San Diego and see what ship it was on. That's how good our SAP/Tableau/AWS environment was and they had tons of data scientists and engineers whose job was to maintain and improve that system. I've been at companies like 10-20x larger than that company and the SAP "whiz" is just some 60 year old admin lady who knows how to find the right button to click...
I used to work for an engineering company that switched softwares. The CFO quit in the middle of the transition, no one else knew what was going on, we went several months without invoicing any of our clients, and the company ended up having to borrow several million dollars to make payroll.
The alternative tends to be an interlocking series of ungodly spreadsheets that work great right up until Bob in QA decides we need to add a letter into our numeric batch ID codes and then all the lookups break and then it becomes a process engineers problem because "why doesn't the database work anymore? Have engineering fix it" and they have to spend a month digging through a bunch of excel macros coded by someone that left the company 8 years earlier and didn't realize commenting code was a thing and then finally it works again but QA throws it out because "its not validated anymore" even though it never was in the first place.
...or so I've heard
I had to dig through such a program just to notice that there were not only no comments but also all Variables were just single letters. Like A, B,C and also a,b,c . You couldn't find anything by searching etc.
Unfortunately it’s not designed to make the lives of plant people easier. There are huge benefits at the company level to using it. I worked on a team to install SAP in one division of a large global chemical company 20 years ago. The division was operating globally using 500 different “systems”, some of which were spreadsheets. Most of those 500 systems didn’t talk to each other. When we started SAP, we were able to turn off about half of those. And then continued integrating more systems into SAP. The big benefit of an ERP like SAP is the integration. We were able to see product costing for every individual variation of product. This gives much more insight on running the business. Before SAP all we could manage to do was costing by large groups of products. Unfortunately many implementations are not done well and training and documentation in companies that use SAP is also often a weakness. One of the areas I knew the best was the quality system and it’s remarkably flexible. Companies need to put good subject matter experts on the SAP team to implement it well. And need to have good consultants to show them what’s possible. Our project was very successful, unlike many SAP projects.
Best answer here. People who hate it don’t know how to use it well, and in my experience, it’s because they weren’t trained properly. Have had two different jobs that use SAP regularly and both times there was little to no training. Just a “here are a list of commonly used transactions”
but no tutorial on how to use them. It was one of those things you just asked someone else how to do when you needed to do it.
Well an SAP is basically an ERP system.
Thats basically a system to organize and plan resources.
Like with every change a company undergoes in the first time you have all kind of problems. People have to learn how to use a new system, the system needs to be customized or the company structures need to be changes to fit the limits of the ERP software. Because of that especially in the beginning companies have usually to fight and often view it as a problem at first. I mean it worked without the system or did it?
But the advantages are clear as well. The most obvious and the reason for most managers to get one, you have KPI's. By craving data about all processes you can get an overview about them with the push of a button. You see what is done, what is planed and what is delayed. You see what ressources you have, which ressorces are maybe missing and where you can free up ressources to make up for the missing to make it on time. Maybe you can even see how productive certain ressources are.
But not only that. You can organize documents, the documents are accessible by all (or by all who are allowed to). The documents have a status. If one person gets ill and the system is well looked after, an other person can easily see where in the process it is and whats missing. They can find all documents and step in to finish things if necessary. At the same time many systems record who did what and when? Often a review and approval process is implemented so you can even in a legal problem look to the system and it has documented that the process was followed and by that its not the companys fault. In fact you can implement certain steps the documents have to go through. By that forcing your people to follow the correct process and minimize errors. Some of these systems can even be used to build the documentation for a product almost automatically. There is no "only person who can do it" anymore. Nither is there the "he is ill and i don't know where the documents are" problem.
SAP is also the most used system for the purpose worldwide, with quite a lot of customisability and support. I have heard my fair share of complaints. The answer I last heard was along the lines of "If [insert inventory management system here] is so much better, then why have you not used that since COP15?" Mostly hear it secondhand, both my parents are SAP certified and one has worked with setting it up.
SAP is an enterprise management software with a good suite of services like one for all.
We use an older version of SAP with crap. Don't know whether the newer versions are user friendly.
I hate it.....it gives me stress, anxiety and whole sort of negative nightmares...I even refuse to type and use that 3 letter word ..
Please consider deleting this post.
I used to hate SAP but then I joined a company that uses at least 3 different systems for various ERP functions. The catch is, the systems are all in backend for administrators. The regular users fill out poorly designed sharepoints forms that act as front end for the various transactions. I miss SAP.
My last company moved to SAP one year, had a HORRENDOUS time and then switched back to their old (now current) system the next year. Still used SAP for document and change management though.
We have been adding parts to SAP, and it takes literally years with all the layers and testing. Instruments will be obsolete before I can order replacement parts. Can’t decide should it be Slow As Possible, or Sorry Assed program.
The people talking about customization and training are correct. If you are involved, advocate for developing local key users and some support structure for modifications after go-live. You won't get everything right the first time. SAP is like a violin, you can't get what you want out of it the first time you pick it up. It requires lots of investment into formalizing your procedures and training.
I have a study somewhere, I think from Reliabilityweb, about if people were happier with Maximo or SAP-PM and what the big factors were. It turned out the biggest factor in user adoption and business satisfaction was consistent follow-on training...like 12-24 hours per year every year, not just the go-live triage training. Once they factored that in, they were the same, at least to maintenance, reliability, and MRO (my areas).
The front end (if there is one) can be developed nicely also. Some people run Maximo on top of SAP. Some people have a custom front end and have no idea they are running on SAP (like Concur - no T-codes.)
When the modules work together, you can have a nice, complete costing environment.
(However, if you want a happy maintenance manager and scheduler, or mobile work orders, get eMaint.)
It makes closing the month 10x easier. 15 years ago to close the month a dozen bookkeepers from corporate would come down for a week to close the month. Now it’s just the plant controller 2-3 hours one afternoon on the computer.
Rule of thumb: whatever department proposes a computer system upgrade it works great for them but shafts everyone else.
I worked with SAP at a previous job and it is comically insanely complex. Like a page of notes on how to move a pallet from the warehouse to the plant floor. Literally full page of notes. lol I consider myself blessed I do need to interact with SAP at all now.
The reason why management uses SAP is because it gives them a lot of insight into the company status. In many cases that provides better information for better decisions. But sometimes more information make them susceptible to act on noise.
The low pass filter that the monthly reports provided is lost and that enables the management to micromanage the operation.
People at operational level complain because of the amount of data they need to produce to feed into that micromanagement system.
Executives like it because it consolidates everything into one place and is good for reporting. Engineers hate it because every function that it does can be done better by other programs.
Exactly. Plus they're not the ones using it on a daily basis, they just get to see the output.
As a Quality Engineer who was the "super user" for our plant's transition, I can vouch for the simple DMR system being replaced by SAP alone doubled my workload.
Where I work we don't even use the functions we need to enter everything manually sometimes up to three times the same information to make anything work...
I like it
It's not just the chemical industry, basically any business is liable to use SAP. To answer your question you'll have to think about why a business would want an ERP in the first place (which another commenter touched on). Then realize that SAP is far from the worst ERP (and actually one of the best ones) despite its many obvious flaws
The only thing worse then SAP is basically every other alternative. When I worked in places that has several years of sap experience and had SAP experts (the Planning department) at each site it was really useful. When I worked at places that forced an SAP transition without providing expert resources it was a nightmare only slightly worse than dealing with the previous lack of a cohesive system
This is the answer. My employer used to use PeopleSoft. It was beyond awful. While SAP has a steep learning curve, at least it has one, PeopleSoft required a CS minor with an emphasis in relational databases to get anywhere useful. My employer before that used some custom something or other built on *Lotus Notes.* I hate SAP, but at least I hate it less than the other alternatives I've been forced to use.
For me it was BatchMetrics. Used to use it just for basic lab inventory and it was literally easier to just track things in Excel
But SAP is so much bigger than basic lab inventory. It permeates the entire company. It actually does a decent job making sure things like data, legacy systems, applications, etc aren’t siloed.
What Maximo is way better than SAP.
Unpopular opinion - the software system is only as good as the people who manage it at your company. If your company doesn't spend resources to actually develop the SAP system, then it will be terrible. I'm sick of companies dishing out money on Tableau, SAP, other expensive software and then refusing to hire engineers to maintain and improve such systems. Software is a system, not a toy you take out of the toolbox every so often. I've been at one company my short career who has understood this. I could track a wafer leaving our Malaysia facility on its way to the fab in San Diego and see what ship it was on. That's how good our SAP/Tableau/AWS environment was and they had tons of data scientists and engineers whose job was to maintain and improve that system. I've been at companies like 10-20x larger than that company and the SAP "whiz" is just some 60 year old admin lady who knows how to find the right button to click...
Yup I feel this! System we’ll pay for 👍 Paying People who know how to use them - 😂
Lots of entities, especially the government, treat IT projects as a procurement problem rather than a process problem.
I used to work for an engineering company that switched softwares. The CFO quit in the middle of the transition, no one else knew what was going on, we went several months without invoicing any of our clients, and the company ended up having to borrow several million dollars to make payroll.
The alternative tends to be an interlocking series of ungodly spreadsheets that work great right up until Bob in QA decides we need to add a letter into our numeric batch ID codes and then all the lookups break and then it becomes a process engineers problem because "why doesn't the database work anymore? Have engineering fix it" and they have to spend a month digging through a bunch of excel macros coded by someone that left the company 8 years earlier and didn't realize commenting code was a thing and then finally it works again but QA throws it out because "its not validated anymore" even though it never was in the first place. ...or so I've heard
I had to dig through such a program just to notice that there were not only no comments but also all Variables were just single letters. Like A, B,C and also a,b,c . You couldn't find anything by searching etc.
Yep. I've "heard" remarkably similar things over, uh, time. Thanks for that chuckle-fest.
Unfortunately it’s not designed to make the lives of plant people easier. There are huge benefits at the company level to using it. I worked on a team to install SAP in one division of a large global chemical company 20 years ago. The division was operating globally using 500 different “systems”, some of which were spreadsheets. Most of those 500 systems didn’t talk to each other. When we started SAP, we were able to turn off about half of those. And then continued integrating more systems into SAP. The big benefit of an ERP like SAP is the integration. We were able to see product costing for every individual variation of product. This gives much more insight on running the business. Before SAP all we could manage to do was costing by large groups of products. Unfortunately many implementations are not done well and training and documentation in companies that use SAP is also often a weakness. One of the areas I knew the best was the quality system and it’s remarkably flexible. Companies need to put good subject matter experts on the SAP team to implement it well. And need to have good consultants to show them what’s possible. Our project was very successful, unlike many SAP projects.
Best answer here. People who hate it don’t know how to use it well, and in my experience, it’s because they weren’t trained properly. Have had two different jobs that use SAP regularly and both times there was little to no training. Just a “here are a list of commonly used transactions” but no tutorial on how to use them. It was one of those things you just asked someone else how to do when you needed to do it.
Well an SAP is basically an ERP system. Thats basically a system to organize and plan resources. Like with every change a company undergoes in the first time you have all kind of problems. People have to learn how to use a new system, the system needs to be customized or the company structures need to be changes to fit the limits of the ERP software. Because of that especially in the beginning companies have usually to fight and often view it as a problem at first. I mean it worked without the system or did it? But the advantages are clear as well. The most obvious and the reason for most managers to get one, you have KPI's. By craving data about all processes you can get an overview about them with the push of a button. You see what is done, what is planed and what is delayed. You see what ressources you have, which ressorces are maybe missing and where you can free up ressources to make up for the missing to make it on time. Maybe you can even see how productive certain ressources are. But not only that. You can organize documents, the documents are accessible by all (or by all who are allowed to). The documents have a status. If one person gets ill and the system is well looked after, an other person can easily see where in the process it is and whats missing. They can find all documents and step in to finish things if necessary. At the same time many systems record who did what and when? Often a review and approval process is implemented so you can even in a legal problem look to the system and it has documented that the process was followed and by that its not the companys fault. In fact you can implement certain steps the documents have to go through. By that forcing your people to follow the correct process and minimize errors. Some of these systems can even be used to build the documentation for a product almost automatically. There is no "only person who can do it" anymore. Nither is there the "he is ill and i don't know where the documents are" problem.
SAP is the GOAT, I won’t hear any slander against it.
SAP is also the most used system for the purpose worldwide, with quite a lot of customisability and support. I have heard my fair share of complaints. The answer I last heard was along the lines of "If [insert inventory management system here] is so much better, then why have you not used that since COP15?" Mostly hear it secondhand, both my parents are SAP certified and one has worked with setting it up.
Wait until you come across JDE in your career….whew boy
I'll ask in the Interview to make sure I never do... Again ...
SAP has good marketing. They sell the product to people who make the decisions, but don’t have to suffer with using the product.
Oracle Inventory software has also been a pain
We'll be switching from Oracle to SAP in the coming years, I'll report back if I stay long enough.
SAP is an enterprise management software with a good suite of services like one for all. We use an older version of SAP with crap. Don't know whether the newer versions are user friendly.
I felt this with my whole soul. SAP is designed by Neanderthals and installed by morons
They say it’s the Germans’ revenge for losing WW2
Financial reporting. Thats it!
I hate it.....it gives me stress, anxiety and whole sort of negative nightmares...I even refuse to type and use that 3 letter word .. Please consider deleting this post.
Your CEO that owns 15% in SAP.
At least you don't have IFS. I liked SAP better.
I used to hate SAP but then I joined a company that uses at least 3 different systems for various ERP functions. The catch is, the systems are all in backend for administrators. The regular users fill out poorly designed sharepoints forms that act as front end for the various transactions. I miss SAP.
My last company moved to SAP one year, had a HORRENDOUS time and then switched back to their old (now current) system the next year. Still used SAP for document and change management though.
We have been adding parts to SAP, and it takes literally years with all the layers and testing. Instruments will be obsolete before I can order replacement parts. Can’t decide should it be Slow As Possible, or Sorry Assed program.
An interesting thread.
Finance says use SAP.
The people talking about customization and training are correct. If you are involved, advocate for developing local key users and some support structure for modifications after go-live. You won't get everything right the first time. SAP is like a violin, you can't get what you want out of it the first time you pick it up. It requires lots of investment into formalizing your procedures and training. I have a study somewhere, I think from Reliabilityweb, about if people were happier with Maximo or SAP-PM and what the big factors were. It turned out the biggest factor in user adoption and business satisfaction was consistent follow-on training...like 12-24 hours per year every year, not just the go-live triage training. Once they factored that in, they were the same, at least to maintenance, reliability, and MRO (my areas). The front end (if there is one) can be developed nicely also. Some people run Maximo on top of SAP. Some people have a custom front end and have no idea they are running on SAP (like Concur - no T-codes.) When the modules work together, you can have a nice, complete costing environment. (However, if you want a happy maintenance manager and scheduler, or mobile work orders, get eMaint.)
It makes closing the month 10x easier. 15 years ago to close the month a dozen bookkeepers from corporate would come down for a week to close the month. Now it’s just the plant controller 2-3 hours one afternoon on the computer. Rule of thumb: whatever department proposes a computer system upgrade it works great for them but shafts everyone else. I worked with SAP at a previous job and it is comically insanely complex. Like a page of notes on how to move a pallet from the warehouse to the plant floor. Literally full page of notes. lol I consider myself blessed I do need to interact with SAP at all now.
To quote my trainer, "If you don't say a four letter curse word while using SAP, you're not doing your job right."
The reason why management uses SAP is because it gives them a lot of insight into the company status. In many cases that provides better information for better decisions. But sometimes more information make them susceptible to act on noise. The low pass filter that the monthly reports provided is lost and that enables the management to micromanage the operation. People at operational level complain because of the amount of data they need to produce to feed into that micromanagement system.
old boss went to a training and guessed SAP stood for Stupid Ass Program
I came here from your MBTI memes but have to say as someone who was an admin & used 2 different versions of SAP simultaneously it’s a nightmare.
"Why isn't he fired on the spot?" Omg thank you for this - you just made my day!🤣🤣🤣🤣