Cooper Standard moves to SAP S/4HANA to drive growth plans

Brownfield approach provides the foundation to move into different markets and adopt new business models

Cooper Standard is a leading global supplier of systems and components for the automotive industry. Headquartered in Northville, Michigan, it manufactures a range of products including sealing systems, fuel and brake delivery, and fluid-transfer systems.

Boasting more than 50 years of automotive excellence and innovation, Cooper Standard has grown via acquisitions around the globe and is looking to expand its business into new markets.

Cooper Standard started accelerating its journey to a single instance of SAP ECC in 2016 when it began working with Capgemini on the conversion. The original goal was to finish the ECC journey and then migrate to the SAP S/4HANA platform. But after moving most of its sites to the single instance of SAP, it was a hard sell to get the business to do yet another ERP implementation. It would be a major disruption to the business.

Building on its existing process with Capgemini, Cooper Standard instead moved to SAP S/4HANA 1809 for its 74 sites globally in 12 languages with 5,240 users running more than four million transactions daily. This included migrating hardware, moving to the cloud, transferring a five-terabyte database, transferring 6,000 custom objects, and integrating 35 systems. The entire process took 10 months; the final step was a 115-hour cutover as the systems were migrated from on-premises to the cloud.

Read how Cooper Standard’s move to SAP S/4HANA is driving growth plans.