A big > Thank You < to these CWG members for making it a bestseller

I´m sure, that most of you are aware of some available publications regarding the topic SAP Variant Configuration.

In this blog I would like to take the opportunity to highlight that one of the most known publications “Variant Configuration with SAP” was written with a tremendous help from people being part of this Configuration Workgroup.

And therefore I would like to thank, also in the name of Dr. Manfred Muench and Dr. Uwe Blumoehr, following CWG members for their contribution to the actual (german) 3rd Edition of this book, which came out this summer and made it directly to the bestseller list of all actual available SAP publications from SAPPRESS.

To be as fair as possible the following list of contributors is in alphabetical order.

Nevertheless, especially for this 3rd edition, we need to give a special round of applause at the beginning to Michael Zarges and Steve Lenz for their extraordinary input - both have been or are actual CWG board members.

So again, thanks to:

-       Dr. Christian Cuske, Co-founder and chairman of the CWG partner In Mind Computing AG is responsible for technology and company strategy. Before his time at In Mind, he was responsible for the high-tech industry solutions at SAP. He contributed his knowledge to the chapter about the Insight selling suite, which contains the Solution Sales Configurator in a Cloud Environment.

-       Markus Deger, a project manager at SAP Germany, is project lead at SAP Deutschland AG & Co. KG. In addition to Variant Configuration projects in SAP ERP, he has led several larger implementation projects, including the Internet Pricing and Configurator. He provides the recommendations for performing implementation projects and He shows us, how to setup a team and a project when handling with SAP Variant Configuration.

-       Karin Fischl, Manager Configurations at Maschinenfabrik Reinhausen GmbH, is the Leader of product management and responsible for all worldwide Variant Configuration implementations, the masterdata management, Order Change Management and logistics. Together with Franz Stang she explaines the implementation of LOVC at Maschinenfabrik Reinhausen.

-       Lars Frerichs, Manager for Process Projects and member of the global VC-Modeler-Team at Danfoss Power Electronics A/S handles since his entry at Danfoss the topics PLM, ECM, E-Commerce and especially Variant Configuration. His chapter shows how electronic devices could easily be configured at Danfoss Electronics. Lars is actually member of the CWG board of directors.

-       Dr. Albert Haag - what should I say about this famous Development Manager from the early days of IPC?He wrote the foreword (THANK YOU). 20 years in development of product configuration at SAP, being developer, development manager and architect. Focus on Configuration technology and the logic behind (especially constraint management).

-       Jens Hennecke, Sascha Rauhe und Rainer Foerster are managing directors of the aicomp | group and explained the solution VCPowerpack in the partner chapter.

-       Marc Herling is Managing Director of Lumo Graphics GmbH. His focus in the last 10 years was on 3D-visualization of configurable products during the configuration process based on standard software. Before this time he served as product manager and chairman assistant at FESTO (also CWG member). His contribution makes the Configuration task visual and therefore much more attractive.

-       Volker Landt, Senior Project Manager for SAP Configuration at Draeger Medical GmbH, is a project lead for more than 15 years in the area of product configuration. He explained, how to document the data which are needed to run Variant Configuration.

-       Steve Lenz, a very friendly colleague of mine, is part of the Product and Solution Configuration Center of Expertise at the SAP Custom Development department. As one of the developers of Solution Sales Configuration, he documented the actual status of this new SAP offering for complex configuration tasks.

-       Henk Meeter (sorry Henk for naming you a godfather in this area) is Solution Architect in Product and Solution Configuration Center of Expertise at SAP Custom Development. Based on his expertise for solving complex configuration tasks, he wrote a chapter about the bookstore configuration. He is Co-Founder of the CWG.

-       Dr. Petra Meyer leads a development Team at SAP, with the focus on Variant Configuration on SAP HANA. She showes how the future of SAP Variant Configuration could look like.

-       Peter Muthsam, as long with SAP as I am (time flies) and one of these guys I would immediately hire, if I had a company on my own, is consultant at SAP germany. Since more than 15 years in LOVC, IPC and SSC variant configuration projects, expert in modeling and process implementation, he contributed the knowledge about product data replication, where he is the first to stop at resource.

-       Daniel Naus, managing director of Configair LLC is Co-Founder of the CWG. An expert in LOVC, IPC, SSC and since years focused on the visualization in 2D and 3D when using one of these three engines.  

-       Michael Neuhaus is managing director of the treorbis GmbH, a CWG partner. Since many years active in the IT-area, he knows a lot in the SAP world and is very well experienced in the Variant Configuration landscape. He contributed with his knowledge about the treorbis solutions in the partner chapter of the book.

-       Timotheus Nikolaus is Senior Consultant and project lead at SAP Germany. He explains the possibilities to use Microsoft Excel for maintaining rules and master data of LOVC.

-       Wolfgang Schildmann, Consultant at Atos IT Solutions and Services gave us excellent feedback on some chapters to make them more crisp and easy to read.

-       Steve Schneider – i cannot imagine a CWG Conferences without Steve ;-) - one of my favourite presenters, is an employee at a large office furniture enterprise. With regard to Variant Configuration, he assumes responsibility for the implementation and operation of the SAP business process solution within this enterprise. He has engaged with the Variant Configuration topic since 1993 and has worked with many different configurators. Since 1997, however, he has focused on SAP. He wrote the field report on the implementation of SAP Variant Configuration

-       Richard Servello,developer in the area of variant configuration at elogic Group LLC showes with a very nice example, why the use of constraints could be the easier and better way to solve configuration tasks.

-       Norbert Specht at SEW-EURODRIVE is responsible for the development of the Variant Configuration at SEW and covers the integration of this process since the 90ies. His department Innovation Services Variant Configuration takes care for the development projects when implementing the VC and IPC into the sales and logistics process chain.

-       Franz Stang, Head of Process Approval at Maschinenfabrik Reinhausen GmbH, takes the responsibility for productdatamanagement, productdocumentation and productkonstruction in the area of product- and assetmanagement. Together with Karin Fischl he wrote the customer experience report of Maschinenfabrik Reinhausen.

-       Rudolf Strauss works atDürr Systems GmbH in the Division Application Technology as project lead and is responsible for implementation and ongoing development of variant configuration and complexity management. He takes care for LOVC since 2007 and for the IPC since 2011. His customer report helps us to understand the implementation at DUERR Sytems.

-       Rolf Thye, management consultant and productmanager at treorbis GmbH in Hamburg helped us with his longstanding experience in dozens of projects around variant configuration. Together with his colleagues he wrote the descritpion of the treorbis solutions and how to build the ideal data model with an easy to use modeling approach.

-       My wife, Kirsten Ukalovic – yes, you are right, she is not a CWG member, but I love her anyway. She helped us a lot in translating all this stuff Steve Schneider, Richard Servello and Daniel Naus sent us in english to have it readable in german. And she found all these errors and typos in the initial script. She is a graduated translator and manages a small but complex family enterprise ;-)

-       Ernst Wegener was Manager of the SAP-Support at Gebhardt Fördertechnik GmbH in Sinsheim. Since decades in the area of Variant Configuration and projects especially in the IM&C industry, he wrote about his experiences when implementing this software at customer site. He got help by his colleagues Rolf Eder and Stephan Riemensperger and the development team of itelligence AG.

-       Stefan Weisenberger, is solution director of mill products in the Mill Products & Mining industry business unit at SAP AG. In this role, he has contributed to the further development of industry-specific, characteristic-based logistic processes in the paper, metal, and textile industry over many years, particularly in the integration of supply chain planning, manufacturing, and CRM.If you are in this industry, you have to get in contact with him.

-       Frank Wietzorrek is development architect at SAP and works for the Custom Development department. He focuses also on Variant Configuration and was responsible for the development of the Order Engineering Workbench, means leading in specification, development and Go To market for this solution. If you are in the ETO area and CU51 is one of the needed for transactions – take a look on the OEW.

-       Michael Zarges, works in customer management in the Industry Solutions area at SAP SE. Thanks to his support on more than 50 customer projects and cooperation in the product configuration area in SAP CRM, he’s gained extensive knowledge, based on which he wrote a large portion of Chapter 5. Additionally, as a member of the Board, he considerably contributed to the success of the Configuration Workgroup

-       Prof. Dr. Peter Zencke, unfortunately not a CWG member – yet, has been board member of SAP and through his longtime focus on the area of product configuration he helped all of us to make these processes run. He wrote a foreword in the book and we are very thankful for his contribution.

 

Actually, the book finds itself on the 8th place on the list of bestsellers. I wish all contributors to the book, that their visibility may increase even better.  They deserved it.

If you want to follow the development of this success, you can find the list of bestsellers here: https://www.rheinwerk-verlag.de/sap/bestseller/

If you need a copy, just let me know. And unfortunately yes – the 3rd edition is actually only available in german…

 

Thank you

 

marin