Inside Komatsu's AI-Powered ERP Transformation: Clean Core, Joule, and SAP S/4HANA Innovation

From the Americas SAP Customer Community, I'm Jim Lichtenwalter, and this is a sub-talks. A podcast about conversations with the innovators, leaders, and change makers shaping the future of enterprise technology and the SAP ecosystem. This week, I am joined by Yogesh Chawaini, SAP Senior Solution Architect at Kamatsu, during its Greenfield SAP ERP Transformation project, the manufacturing giant also kicked off its own AI journey, leveraging SAP AI solutions, including dual-for-developers and dual-for-business. On this episode of the podcast, we dive into how Kamatsu leveraged these solutions to save significant developer time and the ways it managed its government strategy, along with some specific SAP AI use cases. All that and more this week on a sub-talks. From customer success stories to breaking news, first five keeps you up to date on what's what in the SAP ecosystem. Yogesh, thank you for joining me on a sub-talks today, nice to finally meet you in person, I'm looking forward to diving in to Kamatsu's journey so far with us for. Sure, thank you so much for giving this opportunity to me as well as Kamatsu to represent and share our experience. Happy to do it. Why don't you go ahead and give our listeners a brief overview of what this transformation you all are doing? Yeah, certainly, yes. See, transformation is not a straightforward journey and it's not just about technology. It takes lots of brainstorming about the governance, about the processes, about the decisions that you know, dry and then it comes with the technology and if you look at the Kamatsu and Kamatsu's business, nature of business is complex. We have two set of giant industrial vehicles standing as a display in the Kamatsu office and working so whenever I take a look at that, it reminds me of a movie, "Avator" and "Pandor of Planet" and that kind of giant vehicles we have here is not a science fiction reality and that's the manufacturing capacity of Kamatsu and so as our ERP business is also that interesting, it's complex, we just don't have SAP as an ERP, we have non-SAP also. So that has the complexity and after reviewing all these, we have allotted many options and the fair decision that we got to go ahead with the green film implementation. Okay. So this is about our transformation. Excellent. First of all, Avatar, great film. What did you think about the newest one? News one. Fire and ash. Yeah. That's so amazing. Yeah. So I will see. Deep down in the sea. All my friends are like, "Why do you still like these movies?" I'm like, "Because they're amazing. What are you talking about?" I appreciate that. It's nice to fit an Avatar and a Pandora reference and do a podcast about ERP. So thank you for giving me the opportunity to do that. Why don't you walk us through then Kamatsu's stated goals for this project? What were you all hoping to get and start to do from the very beginning? Yeah. So as we decided to go ahead with the green film, so obviously, as we have many non-SAP ERPs as well as SAP ERP, we wanted to go for a single system to have a system consolidation as a part of S.O. journey. We wanted to utilize all S.O. capabilities to transform our business operations and to bring it in a shape so that our systems are future innovation ready. So that's a good. Perfect timing. Future innovation ready. Yeah. As we sit here, that's a nice lead into my next question. This has been, I know if you are aware, AI is pretty popular here at SAP Sapphire this week. It has been the last few sapphires. SAP is working very hard to make it so that their customers can adopt and embrace AI easier. You all have been on an AI journey at Khmatsu. Why don't you walk us through that journey's been like, specifically tell us how it started and how it's developed over the years. Yeah. Sure. So this journey started last year when we signed contract with SAP RISE and as a part of SAP RISE, RISE with SAP, that contract we got AI credits. And that's the starting point of our AI journey. There, I really appreciate the help and support that came from AI team from SAP's AI team. They brought their approaches, hey, you have AI credits and these are the tools which you can plug in your system and start utilizing as part of our credits. See, that team just not just provided a guideline, but they also hand hold. They had a working session with us and they ensure jewel for developer and jewel for business, a plug in our ecosystem, our ecosystem of SAP RISE. We perform many steps on BTP, on HANA Cloud, on Fiori. We also establish the role security matrix and that way we plug. And this way, we have already started utilizing jewel for developer as well as jewel for business. Jewel for business is still under in development and quality stage is not moved to production, but we are setting the stage for jewel for business and jewel for developer, we are effectively utilizing it. So SAP is very hands on with you all when you all begin embracing jewel for business and jewel for developers. Yes, that's good to hear. When you think about CMATSU and its operations, again, an iconic global organization, why were jewel and SAP business AI solutions critical to innovation in your IT infrastructure? My perspective looking at AI or any AI app is kind of a machine, a smart machine, anything that makes your life easy is a machine. So jewel for developer is playing a very good role here. So what we did is we set up a clean core governance along with the jewel utilization and that's helping us as a time saver. It's acting as a catalyst. If you know the definition of chemical definition, catalyst is something which increases the rate of chemical reaction, right? So it's giving the efficiency 30 to 40% of time saver is generating the code, it's also helping to develop came to an app right from CDS view, audit service and fury. So that level of help we are getting as a oscillator throughout the jewel and certainly yes, it's a it's a time saver, it's a good oscillator, I would say. This is the way it's helping for the developers and jewel for business. So that's another tool that we got. It's very impressive when we demonstrate toward ebpuse and business, it's increasing first side. Okay. Yeah, it has very good capabilities like reduced number of clicks, certainly. That's the first capability it has. Other capabilities conversational AI capabilities you need not to write a kind of a command or code, even for jewel for developer, you need not to write a code or command to get a code. It just your human interaction language, natural language, you got to talk to Jew and you will get the answer and similarly for the business, they're getting fee of their business cases, live business cases as an example that we can fulfill through jewel. So jewel for business is certainly a very good tool that's going to help the users as a, I would say, a facilitator. So a commodity being a company that is, again, large or large global presence, I'm sure has some organizational specific hurdles and probably also some region specific hurdles. How has this transformation and how has jewel, how has jewel addressed some of the organizational specific challenges that come on through faces on a day to day? As a comma, so we have in house technology team limited candidates. So jewel for developer that's pretty much helping us effectively. So we can utilize, we are utilizing a jewel for developer as a time saver and we are able to focus more productively on other stuff like design, review of the design, forming the governance and then suddenly driving the offshore team of our partners. So that's why jewel for developer is certainly helping us at this organizational level to her to make this initial hurdle because you need to come out of developer shell, certainly our developers and take a next step ahead to spend more time on design based practices and governance. Okay. A critical component of leveraging AI is ensuring the organization has what SAP is called a clean core, how did you all go about cleaning your core? What solutions did you all use? Yes. So what happened is when we came across a clean core as a journey, we came across SAP's note. So that knows talk about level, clean core level, level A, level B, level C and level D. So the level A is something golden standard for it's at most quality for a clean core. It's kind of a client compliant level. Then comes as level B. It's a it's upgrade friendly as per SAP categories level B because it's not cloud compliant even though there are SAP provision or good standards to do your customization. Then comes as level C that is we market as orange because it's a kind of a medium risk and then it comes D that is high risk. But through this categorization we highly fill the necessity of setting a funnel to filter out the screen of level A, B and C. And that way what we did is we set up a governance and that governance we are reviewing in every design review. So whenever your function specification comes on your way for the development and what we do we take a look at a governance and C or this business specific customization can be implemented through which level A level B or level A plus B and then last resource goes to B C and D. So this governance is helping us and other than that to handle the risk of C and D and even B we had our own classic announcement strategy. So it's very interesting strategy I will talk about it later. But it's very interesting strategy that helps you to keep your system future upgrade ready. Okay. Can you go a little bit deeper into how you specifically approached clean core governance. Yeah. So as I discussed just about just for a short while ago we set up that governance and that governance is a part of our design review, daily design review. And there the best thing that we did is we infuse utilization of jewel for developer. So J4D is playing a crucial role there. So there are many requirements that comes on our way. We talk to jewel, we interact with jewel, we fear the approach as A or B A plus B. There certainly it's helping jewel as that we infuse in the governance. And that's not just our commas would be but it's also helping the developers of our partners. So combination of this jewel for developer and classic announcement strategy that's certainly helping us to set up the proper clean core governance. In a world of custom code system upgrades and constant pressure to keep the core clean SAP developers are being asked to do more faster to modernize applications to improve performance and prepare for what's next. That's where a sub tech connect comes in join fellow developers for deep technical sessions hands on labs and real solutions you can take back to your organization and use on your systems. If you build extender support SAP this is the conference or work gets done a sub tech connect registration is open now click the link in the description to learn more. How would you say that adopting a clean core set the stage for your eventual usage of AI technologies like jewel can you articulate that a little bit and just talk about through commodities experience yes so what we notice is more you go towards clean you go green green for your air adoption let's customization that you have in your system your system will be more adaptable for future a nids not just a clean core we also adopting APR driven architecture so this clean core and APR driven combination is helping our system future upgraded we can have faster upgrade we can have lower total cost of ownership for the upgrades. This clean core governance along with the combination of jupe or developer and classes management strategy is suddenly keeping our system to do up to that level. We have cloud lm also and from the cloud lm we have a one tool in a system view that gives the overview about your clean clean core achievement. From there we capture the data and we plot the data for the development that we completed so far so there we have seen we have 52% of a and a plus b which is great achievement and then 42% b and then rest 6% 5 to 6% as high risk c and d okay so this way we set up our clean core governance with enablement of jupe or developer and classic announcement strategy okay what we chatted before this podcast planning sort of the crux the conversation you're telling me about how spptp was critical to this transformation can you go into a little bit more detail about how come us is leveraging the business technology platform yeah so as a part of spptp we also got btp ea credits and btp so throughout this what we're doing is we are effectively realizing btp business technology platform where utilizing certainly business applications studio for or custom theory developments where utilizing a middleware integration switch that's also very effective and very I would say helpful for seamless integration implementation okay then next tool that we're utilizing mbc that's for bank integration then mdi master data integration and again there we have sac spp analytics cloud that we are highly utilizing for our reports so that's another good utilization of btp we are doing and certainly for jul btp is a starting point because we have billburg zone there we need to set up the jules of account and security framework and also for security we are releasing ies and ieg for took go on btp security are you moving sapps for hana are you trying integrate systems that were never designed to talk struggling to keep master data clean with budgets getting tighter and tighter if any of this sounds familiar you're not alone in fact most sap customers are facing the same challenges you are right now that's why you should attend an asub chapter meeting they connect you with peers who have already navigated sap s for hana migrations untangled integrations and found practical ways to move forward these are real experiences shared openly because sap can be hard and you don't have to figure it all out alone find your local a sub chapter by clicking the link in the description when we think about jule what would you say some of the immediate benefits a commodity realize specific to jule for business jule for business air as i said earlier it's conversational air capabilities wonderful okay and whenever user login to the system the login to fury they need not to keep on searching a specific fury ties for even though even though it is limited today for five to six business lines but they got to they can simply start the interaction with this jule let's say show me says order for specific sold to this is one of the use case from our koma so another is show me purchase order pending for approvals show me geol account and all open and closing balances right so all these kind of a use this examples are certainly helping our business to gate the details on fingertips reduce number of clicks and suddenly it will gonna reduce the train that we got to training overhead I would say is certainly gonna reduce okay on our user friend how many end users do you all have using a city AI tools so from jule for developer perspective you say there are more than 30 developers and for jule for business there are around 10 users but certainly that user count gonna grow as we move ahead to you Eddie and production you guys we we talked about your usage of jule and i love this sort of dig a little bit deeper and love for you the teller listeners about a use case of how you all and your end users are using jule in kamaatsu's operations yes the best example here i can talk about we were in the initial phase of implementing the clean core we thought about the clean core governance we started following the clean core governance with the help of jule for developer there was a specific business requirement that came over way we wanted to add a field product group or on SAP standard theory app rock master and this product group along with the custom searcher So we want to do that. Now the beauty is When we requested jewel for developer here, right, then it gave us step by step guide. How to go with the clean coding implementation of this business requirement? We follow the step. So very first step is about we got to go to custom field logic app. There we got to find the business context and business context for this product master. Then add your custom field all there. When you define a type for this custom field, it has to be code list based on CDS view. And then it also provided the CDS view for your search app, your custom search that you're looking for. Then through this configuration, when we hit OK, it generated the O data services, it generated the classes, it generated the binding and then we got this field on our product master. So this is the example of key user, so this is the example of developer extensibility. Now key user extensibility, we got to go to the product master field app and just do add of UI. OK, the moment we do add of UI, this will appear on that SAP standard field app and that to be the search is so quick, so seamless. If you imagine you go to do this customization through classical way, it takes lot of time, you go to lots of complexity, but with this very simplified step, it's helping us. Other app we developed for our production order. So if you notice production order, there is a Feury app on Feury app library, but that's GUI app. We wanted to implement a Feury UI app, we asked you, "Jule provided us, CDS view, is provided us API, O data service, and it also provided the model view controller code for UI. And that help us to build is app very quickly. So these are the use cases from the Jule for developer, that's exciting. And one example I would like to tell you, how to deal with the Jule for developer. Who is? Yeah. So it's a kind of your colleague, extended helping hand, you can suddenly get from him, but he's kind of your be specific friend, be specific colleague. So last year in Sapphire, I was here and one of my friends was standing in queue, I called him, he said he's standing in a queue to get a cup of coffee from Barista Bar. Okay, asking, "Oh, okay, please get me for, get me also one cup of coffee." So kind of him, "Hey, get me a cup of coffee, we had coffee cheers, and then I enjoyed a first sip of sip of coffee." Then I realized, "Oh, it's full of sugar." I asked my friend, "Hey, you know, I don't need sugar, and you get me a coffee with a sugar." He replied, "But I didn't know at this moment you need a coffee with a sugar or without sugar." You got to be be specific. Exactly the same way, whenever you interact with the Jule for developer, you got to be specific. The specific, "Hey, act as a web developer, act as a solution architect or do not hallucinate." And then put your requirement, and also you can put your requirement from standard specific, do not give me a serious view or association with a join on serious views, not any sip of a table. Then he gives you accurate results. So this is one hint and technique to deal with the Jule. Thank you for sharing that. It's very funny. And good context. As it pertains to the conversation we've had today, Yogesh, what's the future hold for Kamatsu? What are the next steps that you are taking in this project? So as a part of Greenfield, we decided to go ahead with the phase wise manner. Okay. So pilot phase is certainly is to shape up our strategies, our reusable strategies I would say, so we have clean core governance along with the infuse AI and classic announcement strategy, and that we are going to utilize effectively to for our future roll outs. So we have strategy in place. We just talk about the processes, we took her to talk about the decisions and the scope for our business requirements, and that comes from our business. This runbook and strategy, clean core governance and strategy, we're going to utilize to have, I would say, well plan and seamless roll outs and infusion. Last question for you. My asses of everyone I interview, I want you to think that you're speaking to a potential future Jule for business, Jule for developers, customer, someone that's considering using it. At least you have for those listeners that are about to leverage that solution and maybe even embark on a project similar to this one. Yeah, I would say, see, you need a solid foundation from your infrastructure first. So that's SAP rise, you can certainly consider. And once you have the solid foundation on system build, then achieving a clean core is not straightforward. You got to think through, you got to set up a governance and you've got to utilize enablers for this clean core governance. Okay. So enabler is Jule for developer that I explain a lot. Now let me take this approach to explain the classic announcement strategy that we are utilizing for category C and D to make a clean core. So implicit and explicit announcement is a little bit hard, hard technical here, but the core we are putting in this announcement is a generic and reusable code. The actual business specific customization, we are having in a separate class configured in a table and then that code we are invoking here into this customer exit, user exit and implicit announcements through field symbol programming, reusable, a generic core. So this way we are keeping the code of SAP as close to standard possible. Okay. One is something goes wrong. You're doing your upgrade SPA, you underscore ENH process, SPDD SPA, you just got to replace that reusable code because it is same all over these exits. Only the differentiator is the constant. So this is another, I would recommend to best take a base utilization of it. So done in a nutshell, there is a clean core governance with the combination of Jule for developer and classic announcement strategy can part of your system to make it future ready. Okay. Yogeesh, thank you so much for walking us through Komatsu's journey with Jule. If that's for, really appreciate your insights here today. I mean, thank you for joining the podcast. Thank you so much for giving us a promotion day again. Thanks, Yogeesh, let's take a look what's happening around the ASA community this week. First, learn about SAP's recent commitments around on-premise maintenance and support, including more flexibility on unused licenses, greater ability for customers to tailor support arrangements to their operational commercial priorities, and streamline processes for returning customers to resume SAP maintenance and support without administration fees. Click the link in the description to read the full article and what it means for you and your organization. Then dive into another ASA editorial article around Puget Sound Energy's SAP sales and service cloud platform implementation. Read how the utility managed a seamless cutover and achieved its main goal of having the least amount of impact on its business as possible. You can read the full article by clicking the link in the description. For ASAug, I'm Jim Lichtenwater, thanks for listening.