Christian Lang, member of the management board at FIS Informationssysteme und Consulting GmbH (FIS), officially opened the new FIS-SAP Laboratory on November 17 together with laboratory manager Professor Dr. Alexander Dobhan. Due to the current COVID-19 pandemic, however, the first lectures in the new laboratory will not be able to take place until the next semester.
The SAP Laboratory of the Faculty of Business and Engineering at FHWS was founded in 2013 as part of the ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) Laboratory by Professor Dr. Friedrich von Loeffelholz with the aim of making the IT-supported business processes of a company clear to students in a laboratory environment and examining new developments in the ERP area. This approach has been continued by the head of the laboratory, Professor Dr. Alexander Dobhan, since 2017.
As an associate lecturer, Jan Senner ensures that the students can experience the SAP laboratory environment. With Mr. Senner as the project manager, SAP was implemented in the c-factory of FHWS and an SAP-controlled miniature factory as well as an “Assemble by light” system (a process for system-guided assembly) with connection to SAP software were put into operation in the last two years.
“In times of progressive digitization, Internet of Things and artificial intelligence, the importance of ERP software as a digital center for planning, document creation and data transformation is rising. Training and research in this area are correspondingly important. As the market leader, SAP plays a decisive role here. At the same time, there is a skills shortage in this area so that the corresponding training of skilled labor must be speeded up. The goal of this cooperation is to promote SAP training at the faculty and to show possible career prospects for students of the faculty of Business and Engineering and of the entire FHWS,” comments Prof. Dr. Dobhan on the background of the cooperation between FHWS and FIS.
Since September 2020, the laboratory has existed as the FIS-SAP Laboratory. Due to many years of FIS expertise in consulting and the implementation of SAP projects and its own development of innovative SAP-based solutions, FIS has proven to be the perfect partner for the cooperation. As part of the cooperation, the existing activities are to be expanded and, above all, the efforts towards a hands-on SAP training and an expanded research participation of the FIS-SAP Laboratory are to be accelerated.
