KNAPP celebrates 10 years of SAP® EWM by KNAPP

For 10 years KNAPP has been offering a wide range of services for SAP^® Extended Warehouse Management, SAP^® EWM for short, as an SAP Partner via KNAPP IT Solutions. Founded in July 2012, the competence center of the KNAPP group for SAP^® solutions has grown from an original 4-person team to more than 100 SAP^® EWM experts at four locations in Austria, Germany, Switzerland, and Bulgaria. Since then, KNAPP has already implemented SAP^® EWM solutions in 98 warehouses worldwide.

“Strictly speaking, this summer 2022, we are celebrating two anniversaries, the foundation of KNAPP IT Solutions and the introduction of the software solution SAP^® EWM by KNAPP,” tells Gerald Lassau, Managing Director of KNAPP IT Solutions. Together with Thomas Furthmayr, he took over the management 10 years ago and thus, the development of this KNAPP competence center. “The decision to expand the KNAPP software portfolio with SAP^® EWM was never driven solely by the intention to only offer our customers with SAP^® IT strategy the classic services of an SAP consulting company. On the contrary, in addition to our SAP^® EWM expertise, we always provide our group-wide experience from more than 3,000 WMS and WCS projects in the KNAPP core industries in the form of KNAPP Best-Practice solution approaches and preconfigured SAP^® EWM software modules, KNAPP Building Blocks. Thus, our customers benefit from end-to-end SAP^® processes with direct integration of automation solutions for an optimal material flow. In other words, the best of both worlds: SAP and KNAPP,” explains Thomas Furthmayr.

More than SAP^® EWM

This approach turned out to be promising. Within a decade, KNAPP has executed 98 Go-Lives with SAP^® EWM by KNAPP solutions in manual, RF- or voice-operated, up to highly automated warehouses worldwide. In these projects, KNAPP, as a full-service provider, takes care of all aspects from the solution concept to the realization with development and customizing, as well as training of key users up to the Go-Live and subsequent support with its own 24/7 SAP^® EWM Service Desk. “We have probably already trained hundreds of key users of our customers and held at least as many workshops for specifications. For a big retailer, we created an SAP^® EWM template including pick-by-voice and then rolled it out to around 50 European locations of this retailer within a short period of time,” notes Thomas Furthmayr. “For this, we always go the extra mile. Sometimes proverbially, as in a project where our team traveled over 25,000 kilometers on-site with rental cars. Or when it comes to quality assurance with our test procedures. For example, we performed a total of around 64 tests for a customer at their five locations before the subsequent error-free Go-Live,” adds Gerald Lassau.

From Greenfield to Retrofit to 24/7 Service Desk

Not only customers with KNAPP automation such as VOIGT or Hungaropharma rely on this decades-long KNAPP expertise in SAP^® EWM, but also customers with other automation solutions such as Kwizda Pharmahandel, Rauch, or EGLO, appreciate it for pure SAP^® EWM incl. material flow (MFS) implementations for greenfield, extension, or retrofit projects. “In recent years, we have established our expertise for the material flow module (MFS) in SAP^® EWM in the course of retrofit projects of WMS and WCS systems with automation technology from various manufacturers. On the one hand, this know-how benefits our WMS and WCS retrofit projects, but also our customer service. We offer our customer service to all companies, regardless of whether the SAP^® EWM implementation was done with us,” emphasizes Thomas Furthmayr.

The in-house customer service with the ITIL^® certified 24/7 SAP^® EWM Service Desk currently supports around 40 warehouses with and without KNAPP automation. The takeover is based on a detailed analysis of the processes, material flows, and systems in the warehouse and is done step by step. This approach enables the KNAPP team to best support the individual SAP^® EWM features of the customer.

Outlook for the next 10 years

KNAPP will successfully complete a lighthouse project this year, which will set new standards for complex and highly automated warehouses with SAP^® EWM incl. MFS. In the next few years, both the existing locations in Bulgaria, Germany, Austria, and Switzerland will be further expanded and new subsidiaries will be opened in markets relevant to KNAPP. It is the goal to offer KNAPP customers, who rely on an SAP^® IT strategy, optimal solutions for their value chain. “We are looking forward to the next hundred projects, both for template solutions with subsequent rollouts as well as complex automation projects with SAP^® EWM and MFS,” state Gerald Lassau and Thomas Furthmayr confirming the expansion course of KNAPP IT Solutions and SAP^® EWM by KNAPP.

About KNAPP

KNAPP is your technology partner for intelligent value chain management. Headquartered in Austria, the KNAPP group provides all-in-one solutions for automation and digitalization, from production and distribution to the point of sale. Excellent service and long-term collaboration make KNAPP the strong partner behind the success of their customers in the sectors healthcare, retail, food retail, fashion, wholesale and industry.

KNAPP IT Solutions GmbH has been the KNAPP group’s SAP^® EWM (Extended Warehouse Management) expert since 2012. As an official SAP partner, over 100 SAP^® EWM specialists at KNAPP provide all the services involved in the conception, implementation, testing, installation and support (including 24/7 Service Desk) of SAP^® EWM. This also includes MFS for greenfield and retrofit projects, integrating automation solutions by KNAPP and third-party suppliers. Find out more at knapp.com/kis.