SAP® IPC for the web-based con­fi­gu­ra­ti­on of lifts

Schind­ler was alre­a­dy using the SAP IPC Con­fi­gu­ra­tor to con­fi­gu­re pro­ducts in the SAP CRM quo­te pro­cess. To impro­ve ori­en­ta­ti­on and ergo­no­mics in the SAP IPC, ORISA expan­ded the inter­face with a navi­ga­ti­on tree. This con­ta­ins all sub­or­di­na­te ins­tances of the mul­ti-level model and their fea­ture groups as well as their resul­ting sta­tu­s­es. The tree allows the sel­ec­ti­ve expan­si­on and hiding of hier­ar­chy nodes. A spe­cial dis­play with moder­nis­ed icons and tool­tips was imple­men­ted and the dis­play of radio but­tons and check­bo­xes was adapt­ed. ORISA inte­gra­ted the con­flict dis­play into the con­fi­gu­ra­tor inter­face.

A jus­ti­fi­ca­ti­on func­tion that dis­plays all con­flict-caus­ing rules was also imple­men­ted. Deve­lo­pers and tes­ters can thus trace back the set­ting of values more quick­ly. The cus­to­mi­sed imple­men­ta­ti­on of the “Gra­phi­cal Flo­or Desi­gner” enables a com­pact and logi­cal­ly struc­tu­red repre­sen­ta­ti­on of defi­ned fea­tures. It is used for visu­al assis­tance and simp­le defi­ni­ti­on of the flo­or para­me­ters of the lift, such as door spe­ci­fi­ca­ti­ons.

Fle­xi­ble tree navi­ga­ti­on makes it easy to dis­play and eva­lua­te trans­par­ent­ly across the dif­fe­rent con­fi­gu­ra­ti­on levels of the pro­duct model. In addi­ti­on, the func­tions of saving, loa­ding and recor­ding a con­fi­gu­ra­ti­on histo­ry have been imple­men­ted or decisi­ve­ly expan­ded. Users have the opti­on of com­pa­ring the cur­rent con­fi­gu­ra­ti­on with pre­vious­ly per­ma­nent­ly stored ver­si­ons. This means that chan­ges to the con­fi­gu­ra­ti­on can be deter­mi­ned more quick­ly and incor­po­ra­ted into the quo­te pro­cess within SAP CRM. An expan­si­on of the pri­ce dis­play allows the dif­fe­ren­tia­ted dis­play of up to seven pri­ce cal­cu­la­ti­ons. During con­fi­gu­ra­ti­on, effects on indi­vi­du­al pri­ce items are thus imme­dia­te­ly reco­g­nisable. For a more effec­ti­ve con­fi­gu­ra­ti­on pro­cess, users can save and load their own tem­pla­tes cen­tral­ly in a data­ba­se. In addi­ti­on, spe­ci­fic tem­pla­tes (e.g. from the sales depart­ment) can also be used. By imple­men­ting a glo­bal search func­tion for text phra­ses, a fast and con­ve­ni­ent full text search via fea­ture names is pos­si­ble. Fur­ther texts can be saved at the con­fi­gu­ra­ti­on of the main and sub ins­tances. The­se notes are visi­ble in SAP CRM, cus­to­mi­sable and sub­se­quent­ly visi­ble again during con­fi­gu­ra­ti­on. For sales and engi­neers, this func­tion­a­li­ty ensu­res rapid and error-free com­mu­ni­ca­ti­on.