DSM and Syngenta like many other major manufacturing corporations have presence in diverse geographies around the globe. Their desire to standardize asset management processes globally required a different strategy and approach to implementing SAP. For these companies a global SAP template was developed supporting a common design of data structures, work processes and organizational framework.

The Plant Maintenance global templates we have designed contain globally defined data structures like asset hierarchies, failure reporting codes, asset data standards, and common work processes like corrective, preventive and project-based maintenance. We consider a global template to be more than a pre-configured system. It also contains all design documentation, process descriptions, training and data migration tools to support the global rollout.

From our experience the majority (> 80%) of functionality is defined on global level. The remaining functionality is defined locally e.g. language, currency, legal requirements, names and descriptions.