Navantia collaborates with Capgemini to achieve operational excellence

Client Challenge: Navantia needed to digitize its processes and production plant to adapt to new market challenges by making its production processes more efficient and effective

Solution: Capgemini helped Navantia implement the SAP MES platform at the Cartagena Diesel Engine Factory, as the first deployment site for the platform

Benefits:

• Full integration of plant processes, production engineering, logistics, quality management and production management, coordinators and jobs.
• Total traceability in the product structure.
• Real-time visibility of plant processes, unique data and a scalable solution.
• Elimination of paper at the plant, cost savings and increased efficiency of people and assets.

The situation

Navantia is a Spanish, state-owned company that acts as a reference in the design and construction of high-technology military and civilian ships. It operates in the shipyards of Bahía de Cádiz, Ferrol, and Cartagena.

Since the year 2015, Navantia has been immersed in a digital transformation process that seeks to make the company more competitive in order to face the new challenges of today’s market. One of the cornerstones of this roadmap is to achieve operational excellence, which is only possible by digitizing its processes and production plant to increase the efficiency and efficacy of its productive processes.

When carrying out this digitalization process, the SAP Manufacturing Execution Suite (MES) tool was chosen with the Diesel Engines Factory in Cartagena serving as the kick-off point. Capgemini was the technological partner designated to carry out such implantation.

The SAP MES implantation project involved a series of associated objectives:

• Design a comprehensive and innovative solution that could not only cover the needs of the plant’s basic control and execution processes, but also its operational improvement needs in pre-production processes
• Total integration of all plant processes in engineering, production, engineering, logistics, quality management, and production management, coordinators, and work posts
• Total traceability in product structure
• Real-time visibility of plant processes, single information, and scalable solution
• Paperless policy on the plant that led to costs savings and greater efficiency in human and material resources.

The solution

Within the scope of the plant’s execution and control processes, and when integrating these processes with an ongoing quality inspection, Navantia and Capgemini implemented a standard SAP MES functionality. This tool provides plant operators and supervisors with unique work surroundings for all types of plant orders, such as production, project, and maintenance orders.

Furthermore, following the full integration with SAP ERP documentary management, all operators now receive digital access to work plans, specifications, and all the documentation required for manufacturing at the necessary time. Firmly committed to digitization, Navantia has made a huge investment in favor of cutting-edge hardware technology to include not only mobility devices but also smart screens as a back-up both in plant supervision and in lean follow-up meetings and production analysis.

The results

On 5 November 2018, SAP MES was launched in the Cartagena Engines Factory. This new system represents a key technological innovation in the 4.0 industry and has increased asset efficiency parameters. Among other benefits, it has optimized visibility in the management and availability of equipment and tools that back up productive processes, and has achieved greater efficiency in process execution by integrating and rapidly making available all the necessary production documents. Likewise, relevant benefits have been achieved in the stockpiling process between the warehouse and production areas, thus avoiding errors and the loss of materials required for plant operations.

From the point of view of follow-ups and checks on production status and evolution, the SAP Manufacturing Intelligence and Integration (MII) functionality that is included in the SAP MES suite has provided the necessary tools for the real-time monitoring of key indicators, Kanban supervision, and coordination tasks for issuing working orders to the plant. In turn, ongoing quality inspection has been integrated into the productive processes themselves, in SAP ME, without losing sight of collecting productive and quality parameters directly from each machine through SAP Plant Connectivity (PCo).

As part of Navantia’s digital transformation strategy, this project has been able to close the existing gap between processes configured and executed on the SAP ERP platform and others related to manufacturing in the Cartagena Engines Factory. This constitutes a huge step forward in achieving Navantia’s operational excellence objective.

A joint effort

This project was carried out by a team of more than 20 Capgemini professionals, in conjunction with over 35 key users in the Cartagena Engines Factory who were proactively involved. Capgemini deployed an implementation team scattered geographically (Valencia, Asturias, and Cartagena), backed up by our advanced development center in Asturias and our offshore development center in Pune (India). This joint effort has strictly met the quality standards required by our client, strengthening Navantia’s trust in Capgemini.

Also essential in this process has been the commitment shown by Navantia’s team, from its project team to end users, for whom the training and knowledge transfer process has been decisive, ensuring a rapid adaptation to the new SAP MES tool.

The commitment, understanding, and close collaboration between the teams of both companies have facilitated Navantia’s journey towards operational excellence that has allowed them to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of their production processes.