Background
Panasonic is a division of Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. Ltd., one of the world's leading manufacturers of products for industry, business and for the home. Founded in 1918 in Osaka, the company offers a wide range of products and services in more than 160 countries.
Panasonic Industrial Europe provides equipment for manufacturing. The Factory Automation division, with its headquarters in Hamburg, Germany, is one of the key business units in the group. The Factory Automation division provides equipment and technology to some of the leading manufacturers in Europe. Thanks to its outstanding products, production know-how and competent personnel, the company has earned an outstanding reputation for customer satisfaction and reliability.
The Challenge
In a tough competitive market place, the Panasonic Factory Automation division needed to maintain this outstanding reputation. As more of its customers started using the web, Panasonic needed to respond to the competitive pressure to provide customers with access to real time price, availability and order status, over the web.
However, the group had recently implemented SAP, and budget, time and technical constraints meant that it was difficult to add web access for customers to Panasonic’s SAP system. Panasonic, therefore needed a solution which would complement SAP, add the functionality that the customers were demanding, and yet be quick and cost-effective to implement. Moreover, security was a vital issue as the nature of the information that would be available was highly sensitive.
Panasonic turned to Modcomp - a leading supplier of manufacturing support solutions - for assistance.
The Solution
First, Modcomp worked with Panasonic to understand the business requirements. Having analysed these, Modcomp started designing and developing a software solution. One of the key issues was that the information that customers required was spread across multiple SAP systems at Panasonic. Clearly integration with SAP was going to be a crucial element in delivering a solution in a timely and cost effective manner.
Modcomp developed an integration solution using its ViewMax Application Server. ViewMax provided the integration with the SAP system via the standard SAP Java Connector (JCO). The SAP JCO is a toolkit that allows a Java application to communicate with SAP.
Within four months of first discussing the challenge with Panasonic, Modcomp had delivered the solution and it was beginning to deliver real value.
Secure by Design
Security was a major concern; however, by using a standard interface to SAP, Modcomp was able to develop the required functions without compromising the security on the SAP system – a vital requirement for Panasonic.
To meet all the security demands, the Modcomp System was configured using two servers - the Web Server, which provided Secure Socket Layer (SSL) based encrypted communication with the end user and the ViewMax Application Server, which provided the real-time link to the SAP systems and restricted functional access based on user ID. Security is further enhanced by the use of three levels of firewall.
Conclusion
The solution delivered by Modcomp met the business, functional and security requirements of Panasonic. Moreover, because of the speed of implementation, the solution was paying for itself very soon after Modcomp and Panasonic first started discussing the challenge.
Most importantly, Panasonic’s customers were able to securely and reliably check prices, check availability and check order status, without regularly calling the Panasonic help desk. This in turn reduced the demands on the call centre, which could focus on increased sales and marketing activity.
About Modcomp
Modcomp is a systems integrator with over 25 year’s experience of building software solutions. Specialising in web and integration solutions Modcomp has worked in most industries, but has been particularly successful in manufacturing and business services.
Our customers include some of the leading manufacturing and industrial organisations, including ITT Industries, Yamazaki Machine Tools, and Rolls Royce Aerospace.