Transformation with SAP S/4HANA at Vitens

At Vitens, more than 1400 people work daily to become a sustainable drinking water company, with a positive impact on people and nature. Vitens’ ambition is to be ‘Every drop sustainable by 2030’. To achieve this ambition, Vitens will implement the SAP S/4HANA software system in phases over the coming years.

Vitens extracts, purifies, and delivers drinking water to over 5.6 million customers in Flevoland, Friesland, Gelderland, Overijssel, and Utrecht. Annually, over 350 million m³ of water is extracted from the ground, purified, and delivered to customers at 100 locations. Maintenance of these sites is handled by the 130 technicians and process operators of the Water Production & Purification (W&Z) department. In addition to planned maintenance and inspection rounds, they also perform occasional maintenance and troubleshoot issues at the production sites.

Vitens produces and delivers drinking water while closely monitoring water quality, both during production and delivery to customers. For this purpose, 30 samplers work 7 days a week to ensure quality. They collect samples and conduct analyses. Coordination for this is done from the Water Expertise Center (WEC) in Leeuwarden.

The challenge

The objectives of the SAP & Transformation program are to standardize and improve work processes and to extract and make available data and knowledge from people’s minds to everyone. The supporting tool for this is SAP S/4HANA.

Employees of the W&Z department are transitioning to a mobile solution integrated with S/4HANA for registering and handling daily maintenance activities. Additionally, a completely new planning solution has been developed for scheduling the 130 employees. This solution aims to provide insights to optimize deployment.

The samplers in the laboratory are transitioning to a work order process in S/4HANA, integrated with the Laboratory Information Management System (LIMS). This is combined with a streamlined planning solution and a mobile work order management solution, all to support the revamped workflow to the fullest and work based on the latest technologies.

Employees of the W&Z department now work with the latest version of the Ideo Mobile Forms solution. This solution utilizes the SAP Cloud Platform and is integrated with Vitens’ SAP setup. Thanks to this integration, the planners of the W&Z department can easily schedule technicians via SAP MRS, specially configured for this purpose. Differences between freely schedulable inspections, fixed tasks, and malfunctions have been taken into account. In short, there is full alignment with the existing needs. Additionally, technicians can also use the solution even when there is no network connection.

The screens of the Ideo Mobile Forms application were designed in collaboration with technicians and process operators to seamlessly fit their tasks. Due to the diverse nature of the activities within different roles in the W&Z department, we constructed the screens variably based on the available data in S/4HANA. This ensures users do not encounter unnecessary information and screens, yet they always have all the necessary information to perform their work. Furthermore, users can easily create work requests or reports of malfunctions on all Vitens assets directly from the application. This enables users to address these issues promptly, ensuring no maintenance tasks are left unattended.

“With the implementation of Ideo Mobile Forms, we have a work order management solution based on the latest technologies. The solution feels familiar to our technicians and process engineers. We are already feeling more in control and will continue to implement further optimizations in the coming period.”

Carolien Koopman – Process Manager W&Z

For the samplers at the WEC, we developed a completely revamped work order management solution based on Ideo Mobile Forms. This solution utilizes the SAP Cloud Platform and integrates with the S/4HANA setup, combined with a fully automated scheduling solution in ClickSchedule. With ClickSchedule, it is possible to efficiently schedule samplers, with most orders taking 5 – 10 minutes and requiring minimal manual intervention from planners.

The screens of the Ideo Mobile Forms application were designed in collaboration with the samplers to seamlessly align with the revamped workflow of the WEC, providing a user-friendly interface. The Ideo Mobile Forms framework was specifically designed to fully support this flexible workflow.

Approach

Throughout the entire design and implementation phase, users were closely involved in designing and developing the functionality and screens of the applications through workshops and demos. Using the SCRUM methodology, we delivered screens and functionalities in small releases, allowing us to continuously deliver business functionalities and clearly track progress. Users could directly test the delivered functionality, providing feedback and improvement points for the subsequent release. The close collaboration between Vitens and Ideo ensured that the business was continuously involved in the project’s ultimate decisions, bridging the gap between ICT and the business.

The key to the success of both applications lies in their user-friendliness and user support, enabling new users to quickly adopt the applications.

The project had a duration of 1 year. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, most activities were carried out entirely remotely, testing the collaboration and communication between different project teams and the business. Working remotely without personal interactions made good communication and the longstanding partnership between Vitens and Ideo crucial. This enabled us to address and resolve issues as quickly as possible by coordinating with the right groups at the right times.

At the end of the project, a total of 160 end-users and 2 groups of planners at Vitens are using a solution tailored to their preferences and workflow. This highly customized approach ensures that the entire organization is covered to improve the reliability and user-friendliness of the systems.

Results/Benefits

Thanks to user-friendly, intuitive applications, end-users experience increased ease of work. There is a streamlined workflow with minimal administrative activities.