A production line is a set of sequential operations established in a factory where components are assembled to make a finished article or where materials are put through a refining process to produce an end-product that is suitable for onward consumption.
45-445: Typically, raw materials such as metal ores or agricultural products such as foodstuffs or textile source plants like cotton and flax require a sequence of treatments to render them useful. For metal, the processes include crushing, smelting and further refining. For plants, the useful material has to be separated from husks or contaminants and then treated for onward sale. Early production processes were constrained by
90-421: A contraption of many chains and links that moved to place different parts into various places throughout the car. The chassis of the car was moved along the 45-metre line by a chain conveyor and then 140 workers applied their assigned parts to the chassis. Other workers brought additional parts to the car builders to keep them stocked. The assembly line decreased the assembly time per vehicle. The production time for
135-561: A lack of raw materials as a reason for their supply chain issues. Forecasting for 2023, 50% of respondents expect a reduced availability of raw materials in the US to drive supply chain disruptions. Raw materials markets are affected by consumer behavior, supply chain uncertainty, manufacturing disruptions, and regulations, amongst other factors. This results in volatile raw materials markets that are difficult to optimize and manage. Companies can struggle when faced with raw material volatility due to
180-459: A lack of understanding of market demands, poor or no visibility into the indirect supply chain, and the time lag of raw materials price changes. Volatility in the raw materials markets can also be driven by natural disasters and geopolitcal conflict. The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted the steel industry, and once demand rebounded, prices increased 250% in the US . The Russian invasion of Ukraine caused
225-490: A private partnership named Systemanalyse und Programmentwicklung ( System Analysis Program Development ). SAP GbR became in 1981 fully Systeme, Anwendungen und Produkte in der Datenverarbeitung ( Systems, Applications and Products in Data Processing ) abbreviated SAP GmbH after a five-year transition period beginning in 1976. In 2005, it further restructured itself as SAP AG . Since 7 July 2014, its corporate structure
270-529: A result, its German subsidiary was renamed to SAP Deutschland SE & Co. KG. The conversion cost the company approximately €4 million. Since 2012 SAP has acquired several companies that sell cloud-based products , with several multi-billion-dollar acquisitions seen by analysts as an attempt to challenge competitor Oracle . In 2016 SAP bought Concur Technologies , a provider of cloud-based travel and expense management software, for $ 8.3 billion, SAP's most expensive purchase to that date. Analysts' reactions to
315-827: A single car dropped from over twelve hours to just 93 minutes. Raw material A raw material , also known as a feedstock , unprocessed material , or primary commodity , is a basic material that is used to produce goods , finished goods , energy, or intermediate materials that are feedstock for future finished products. As feedstock, the term connotes these materials are bottleneck assets and are required to produce other products. The term raw material denotes materials in unprocessed or minimally processed states such as raw latex , crude oil , cotton , coal , raw biomass , iron ore , plastic , air , logs , and water . The term secondary raw material denotes waste material which has been recycled and injected back into use as productive material. Supply chains typically begin with
360-453: A usable state. Metallic ores are first processed through a combination of crushing, roasting, magnetic separation, flotation, and leaching to make them suitable for use in a foundry . Foundries then smelt the ore into usable metal that may be alloyed with other materials to improve certain properties. One metallic raw material that is commonly found across the world is iron , and combined with nickel , this material makes up over 35% of
405-557: A wide range of products to support SAP technology, including vendors of hardware, database, storage systems, networks, and mobile computing technology. Extensions partners are companies which provide functionality that complements SAP product capabilities. Their products are certified, sold, and supported by SAP. These partner companies include Adobe , CA Technologies , GK Software , Tricentis , Hewlett-Packard , IDS Scheer , Mendix , OpenText , Knoa Software, and BackOffice Associates. SAP has also partnered with Apple to work on
450-442: Is SAP's largest outside Germany as of 2016. In order to manage SAP Labs, SAP Labs Network (SLN) was created. SLN is a global unit that manages regional Labs and shares best business practices. It coordinates and distributes development projects among individual SAP Labs locations, accelerates product delivery, gives SAP full access to talent, and drives SAP corporate strategy regarding innovation and business growth. SAP Research
495-452: Is not provided by the field organizations but by a unified organization called Active Global Support (AGS). For the fiscal year 2017 SAP reported earnings of €4 billion, with an annual revenue of €23.5 billion, an increase of 6.3% over the previous fiscal cycle. SAP's shares traded at over US$ 154 per share, and its market capitalization was valued at US$ 180 billion in December 2023, making it
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#1732852704242540-525: Is that of a pan-European societas Europaea (SE); as such, its former German corporate identity is now a subsidiary, SAP Deutschland SE & Co. KG . It has regional offices in 180 countries and over 111,961 employees. SAP is a component of the DAX and Euro Stoxx 50 stock market indices. The company is the largest non-American software company by revenue and the world's third-largest publicly traded software company by revenue. As of December 2023, SAP
585-621: Is the Democratic Republic of the Congo . SAP SAP SE ( / ˌ ɛ s . eɪ ˈ p iː / ; German pronunciation: [ɛsʔaːˈpeː] ) is a German multinational software company based in Walldorf, Baden-Württemberg , Germany. It develops enterprise software to manage business operation and customer relations. The company is the world's largest enterprise resource planning (ERP) software vendor. Founded in 1972 as
630-646: Is the global technology research unit of SAP SE with a network of 21 research locations worldwide. Each center is located in close proximity to an SAP development center or on a university campus. The group significantly contributes to SAP's product portfolio and extends its leading position in the market by identifying and shaping emerging IT trends and generating breakthrough technologies through applied research. In contrast to SAP's product groups and development labs that work on new functions and releases, its researchers explore opportunities that have not yet been developed into products. The business model of SAP Research
675-495: Is the largest German company by market capitalization . As well as its main ERP products, the company also sells database software and technology (particularly its own brand, SAP HANA ) and cloud-engineered systems . It sells other ERP software products such as: When Xerox exited the computer hardware manufacturing industry in 1971, it asked IBM to migrate its business systems to IBM technology. As part of IBM's compensation for
720-641: The Frankfurt and Stuttgart stock exchanges . In 1995, SAP was included in the German stock index DAX and, on 22 September 2003, SAP was included in the STOXX Europe 50 . The company's official name became SAP AG (a public limited company) after the 2005 annual general meeting . On 21 May 2014, SAP AG announced during the Annual General Meeting of Shareholders that 99% of the shareholder votes approved
765-573: The Internet of things (IoT) as part of a strategy to capitalize on the growth in that market. For that purpose, €2 billion is planned for investment in relevant sectors by the end of 2020. SAP will also launch a new product line called SAP IoT, which "will combine large amounts of data from things connected to the Internet with machine learning and SAP's real-time database S/4 HANA." On 29 January 2019 SAP announced plans to cut approximately 4,000 positions at
810-411: The factory as exemplified by the cotton mills of Richard Arkwright , started the move towards co-locating individual processes. With the development of the steam engine in the latter half of the 18th century, the production elements became less reliant on the location of the power source, and so the processing of goods moved to either the source of the materials or the location of people to perform
855-613: The water to create very stable and hard materials. Without the presence of clay on the riverbanks of the Tigris and Euphrates in the Fertile Crescent, such kilns would have been impossible for people in the region to have produced. Using these kilns, the process of metallurgy was possible once the Bronze and Iron Ages came upon the people that lived there. Many raw metallic materials used in industrial purposes must first be processed into
900-604: The United States. The Executive Board currently has eight serving members. 45 employee representatives were elected in 2022 to the SAP SE Works Council , including 15 candidates from the Ver.di and IG Metall trade union lists. They represent 17,000 employees of Germany. Headquarters is responsible for overall management as well as core engineering activities related to product development. Worldwide customer support
945-569: The acquisition or extraction of raw materials. For example, the European Commission notes that food supply chains commence in the agricultural phase of food production. A 2022 report on changes affecting international trade noted that improving sourcing of raw materials has become one of the main objectives of companies reconfiguring their supply chains. In a 2022 survey conducted by SAP , wherein 400 US-based leaders in logistics and supply chain were interviewed, 44% of respondents cited
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#1732852704242990-409: The availability of a source of energy , with wind mills and water mills providing power for the crude heavy processes and manpower being used for activities requiring more precision. In earlier centuries, with raw materials, power and people often being in different locations, production was distributed across a number of sites. The concentration of numbers of people in manufactories, and later
1035-423: The cloud, although significant portions of that partnership were reduced to two years. SAP teams up on cloud sales with Microsoft In 2020 SAP announced that together with Wipro it will co-develop and market "solutions for the retail and fashion industry." SAP Labs are research and development locations that develop and improve SAP core products. SAP Labs are strategically located in high-tech clusters around
1080-421: The company in a strategic plan to shift to more modern cloud-based technologies such as blockchain , quantum computing , machine learning , Internet of Things , and artificial intelligence . On 13 April 2021 SAP announced the formation of the joint venture SAP Fioneer , a dedicated Financial Services Industry (FSI) Unit between SAP and investment company Dediq GmbH. Dediq GmbH invested over €500 million in
1125-446: The conversion of legal form to a European stock corporation ( Societas Europaea , SE) and at the same time, elected the first supervisory board of SAP SE. The conversion of the company's legal form would take place upon entry in the commercial register, expected to be in July 2014. On 7 July 2014, SAP announced it had changed its legal form to a European Company (Societas Europaea, SE). As
1170-462: The data on punch cards mechanically, as IBM did, they stored it locally in the Electronic System while using a common Logical database for all activities of Organization. Therefore, they called their software a real-time system, since there was no need to process the punch cards overnight (for this reason their flagship product carried an R in its name until the late 1990s). This first version
1215-563: The expansion in its cloud business and the success of SAP HANA. The growth can also be partially attributed to the acquisitions of Concur and Fieldglass. Since 2017, SAP is a founding member of the EU Cloud Code of Conduct . Since May 2021 SAP has listed selected Cloud Service adherent to the EU Cloud Code of Conduct as one of the first Cloud Service Providers. The company announced plans in 2016 to invest heavily into technology relating to
1260-430: The first sources of iron ore is bog iron . Bog iron takes the form of pea-sized nodules that are created under peat bogs at the base of mountains. Places with plentiful raw materials and little economic development often show a phenomenon known as " Dutch disease " or the " resource curse ", which occurs when the economy of a country is mainly based upon its exports because of its method of governance. An example of this
1305-417: The following year to Walldorf , Germany. In 1979, SAP launched SAP R/2 , expanding the capabilities of the system to other areas, such as materials management and production planning . In 1981, SAP brought a re-designed product to market. However, SAP R/2 did not improve until between 1985 and 1990. In 1992, SAP released SAP R/3 . SAP developed and released several versions of R/3 through 1995. In
1350-690: The globe. The four most prominent labs of SAP SE are located in Germany, Japan, Israel and the US. Labs Walldorf was founded in 1972 and became SAP's primary location. At the beginning, the focus of SAP's expansion was entering highly developed IT markets; in 1993, Palo Alto became a part of SAP Labs. Aiming to acquire talented employees, SAP opened another lab in Bangalore in 2003. SAP Labs in Czech Republic, Slovakia and Poland were established in 2016. The lab in India
1395-570: The humans of that time period were able to excavate. The nickel content of the meteoric iron made it not necessary to be heated up, and instead, it was hammered and shaped into tools and weapons. Iron ore can be found in a multitude of forms and sources. The primary forms of iron ore today are Hematite and Magnetite . While iron ore can be found throughout the world, only the deposits in the order of millions of tonnes are processed for industrial purposes. The top five exporters of Iron ore are Australia, Brazil, South Africa, Canada, and Ukraine. One of
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1440-999: The largest German company by market capitalization . The key trends for SAP are (as at the financial year ending 31 March): As of 2016, SAP was the world's fourth-largest software and programming company. The corporation operates in Europe, Asia, Africa, the Middle East, North America, and South America. SAP focuses on 25 industries and six industry sectors: process industries, discrete industries, consumer industries, service industries, financial services and public services. It offers integrated product sets for large enterprises, mid-sized companies and small businesses. SAP partners include Global Services Partners with cross-industry multinational consulting capabilities, SAP University Alliances, Global Software Partners providing integrated products that complement SAP Business Suite solutions, and Global Technology Partners providing user companies with
1485-494: The material in the Earth's inner and outer core . The iron that was initially used as early as 4000 BC was called meteoric iron and was found on the surface of the Earth. This type of iron came from the meteorites that struck the Earth before humans appeared, and was in very limited supply. This type is unlike most of the iron in the Earth, as the iron in the Earth was much deeper than
1530-574: The mid-1990s, SAP transitioned from mainframe computing to a client–server architecture . In 2004, R/3 was replaced with SAP ERP Central Component (ECC) 5.0. Architectural changes were also made to transition customers to a service-oriented architecture . In 2006, SAP ERP 6.0 was released. SAP ERP 6.0 is the latest version has since been updated through SAP enhancement packs, the most recent being enhancement package 8 for SAP ERP 6.0 in 2016. In August 1988 SAP GmbH became SAP AG , and public trading started on 4 November 1988. Shares were listed on
1575-542: The migration, IBM was given the rights to the Scientific Data Systems (SDS) /SAPE software repository. Five IBM engineers from the AI department ( Dietmar Hopp , Klaus Tschira , Hans-Werner Hector, Hasso Plattner , and Claus Wellenreuther , all from Mannheim , Baden-Württemberg) were working on an enterprise-wide system based on this software, only to be told that it would no longer be necessary. Rather than abandoning
1620-576: The mobile experience for SAP enterprise customers. As part of the partnership, a new SAP HANA Cloud Platform SDK would be delivered exclusively for iOS . As a result, developers can build applications based on the SAP HANA Cloud Platform for the iPhone and iPad devices. The partnership was announced in May 2016. In 2019 SAP announced a three-year partnership "Embrace" with Microsoft that should allow its clients to move their business process into
1665-458: The newly formed unit and received an 80 percent share in return. SAP brought its products, organizational units and the sales network into the business and holds 20 percent of the shares. SAP had the following ownership structure in early 2024: SAP uses a two-tier structure of boards with an executive board and a supervisory board . In October 2019 Jennifer Morgan and Christian Klein were appointed as co- CEOs of SAP. In April 2020 it
1710-529: The price of natural gas to increase by 50% in 2022. While pottery originated in many different points around the world, it is certain that it was brought to light mostly through the Neolithic Revolution . That is important because it was a way for the first agrarians to store and carry a surplus of supplies. While most jars and pots were fire-clay ceramics , Neolithic communities also created kilns that were able to fire such materials to remove most of
1755-460: The processing of raw materials into useful goods, the next step was the concept of the assembly line , as introduced by Eli Whitney . This was taken to the next stage at the Ford Motor Company in 1913, where Henry Ford introduced the innovation of continuously moving the cars being assembled past individual workstations. This introduced the idea of standardization . The assembly line was
1800-569: The project, they decided to leave IBM Tech and start another company. In June 1972 they founded the SAP Systemanalyse und Programmentwicklung ("System Analysis and Program Development" / "SAPD") company, as a private partnership under the German Civil Code. Their first client was the German branch of Imperial Chemical Industries in Östringen , where they developed mainframe programs for payroll and accounting. Instead of storing
1845-732: The purchase were mixed, with Thomas Becker of Commerzbank questioning whether Concur was the right choice for SAP, while Credit Suisse called the acquisition an "aggressive" move. In 2014 IBM and SAP began a partnership to sell cloud-based services. Likewise, in 2015, SAP also partnered with HPE to provide secure hybrid cloud-based services running the SAP platform. Both HPE and IBM provide infrastructure services to SAP, and SAP runs its SAP HANA cloud solution on top. SAP has announced additional partnerships with Microsoft in order to give customers tools for data visualization, as well as improved mobile applications. SAP exceeded its revenue projections due to
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1890-466: The tasks. Separate processes for different treatment stages were brought into the same building, and the various stages of refining or manufacture were combined. With increasing use of steam power, and increasing use of machinery to supplant the use of people, the integrated use of techniques in production lines spurred the Industrial Revolutions of Europe and North America . Thus, from
1935-451: The use of a centralized data storage, improving the maintenance of data. From a technical point of view, therefore, a database was necessary. In 1976 SAP GmbH Systeme, Anwendungen und Produkte in der Datenverarbeitung ("Systems, Applications, and Products in Data Processing") was founded as a sales and support subsidiary. Five years later, the private partnership was dissolved and its rights were passed on to SAP GmbH. The headquarters moved
1980-485: Was also a standalone software that could be offered to other interested parties. Since 1991, SAP has acquired more than 70 companies. In 1973, SAP launched its first commercial product, the RF financial accounting system. This system served as the cornerstone in the ongoing development of other software modules of the system that eventually bore the name SAP R/1. This offered a common system for multiple tasks. This permitted
2025-505: Was announced that Jennifer Morgan will leave SAP and Christian Klein will continue to operate as the sole CEO, citing that the current environment of the COVID-19 recession requires "companies to take swift, determined action which is best supported by a very clear leadership structure". The majority of the company's employees are in Germany and United States. About 20,000 employees are based in Germany and about 19,311 employees are based in
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