The Training

Training is an essential part of any project – the best system without adequately trained people is of little worth and can even be a danger for the company.

The initial training is done on a demo system picturing a manufacturer of mountain bikes “Rocky Trail”. Bicycles have been selected because they do not require any prior technical understanding for taking the training whilst presenting similar challenges as any other mechanical device. They also lend themselves to the three manufacturing types: discrete manufacturing, make to order (eventually with variant configuration) and engineer to order. Rocky Trail is also a “live” company where customer orders are generated, Material Requirements Planning runs create production orders and purchase requisitions, materials are received in stock, payments are generated, … which enables the team members to train from the start in a “real” environment with all its complexity.

The training documentation is exhaustive and encompasses the following:

• General Presentations that address as large an audience as possible e.g. Introduction to Materials Management (SAP is an integrated system and each function in the company should have an understanding how it relates to the others)
• Topical presentations addressing the corresponding experts
• User documentation presenting the main transactions of the business processes
• Training scenarios covering the processes that the users have to deal with in their daily work (e.g. purchasing new computers starting with the purchase requisition, the vendor identification and master data creation, processing the purchase order, receiving the goods, processing the invoice and effecting its payment).