Mold-Masters avoids SAP integration nightmare through the power of expertise

The thought of integrating another vendor's applications with SAP's R/3 ERP suite gives most IT professionals nightmares. But management at Mold-Masters, a supplier of hot-runner technology used in making plastic molds, was pleasantly surprised at how smoothly its recent SAP integration project went.

Mold-Master's hot runners are used during injection molding—the process of melting plastic and injecting it into a mold for shaping. The melted plastic first passes through the hot runner, which acts as a delivery system, ensuring the melted plastic is evenly distributed to all parts of the mold. Once the melted plastic is properly distributed, it cools to the shape of the mold design.

Ontario-based Mold-Masters wanted its customers to be able to configure, price, and order their own hot runners online. To accomplish that, it needed to integrate its CAD system, the Pro\E system from PTC, with SAP's R/3 ERP package—a thought that Mold-Master President Jonathon Fischer admits was frightening at the outset. "We thought it would be a programming nightmare, but it really went smoothly," he says.

Mold-Masters had a relatively easy time with this project because it relied heavily on IDS Scheer, a business process management solutions developer that has a lot of experience working with the technology supporting the R/3 suite.

The key pieces of technology were SAP's proprietary programming language and application programming interfaces. Understanding how to manipulate these tools—known as advanced business application programming language (ABAP) and business application programming interfaces (BAPIs), respectively—has garnered steady work for many consultants.

SAP claims to be replacing ABAP and BAPIs with more industry-standard languages and interfaces in the NetWeaver integration platform that underlies its current generation of applications. But that does very little for the vast number of companies that, like Mold-Masters, still rely on a previous-generation SAP package.

Yvonne Genovese, a Gartner analyst who tracks SAP, says users typically have had trouble with SAP integration projects because they don't realize that SAP applications are built to work with precise business processes. "You need to know your own business processes very well, and then be able to map them to the SAP processes," she says.

Fortunately for Mold-Masters, IDS Scheer consultants insisted on having thorough discussions about the process of configuring and ordering hot runners before they began any programming. Once those discussions were complete, the consultants helped Mold-Masters build the proper links between the Pro/E CAD package and R/3.

The result was a Web-based ordering system that Mold-Masters calls the Merlin Collaboration Tool. This application, for which Mold-Masters now holds a patent, lets users enter information about how a hot runner will be used before guiding them through a series of prompts to complete the design.

Jason Mausberg, president of IDS Scheer Canada, says a product configurator inside the SAP suite is a key component of the collaboration tool because it pulls a wealth of information—ranging from the price and availability of specific parts to manufacturing steps and lead times—from various R/3 modules.

Fischer says this gives Mold-Masters' customers all the information they need before placing an order. Even more important, he says, "Customers can design and order systems that fit their own lead times and schedules."

Being able to offer that level of customer service is a dream come true, especially when it can be realized without suffering an integration nightmare.