Apollo Tyres Ltd : SAP Version Upgrade

This fast growing Indian MNC recently acquired Dunlop International, South

Africa and was keen on expanding its SAP implantation to all of its global

locations. Before expanding the application company came across the need to

upgrade SAP version. The challenge for Apollo tyres was to complete upgradation

at present locations before starting implementation at any of its global

locations and as it may lead to delays in starting any of its global SAP

rollout. Earlier Apollo Tyres was using SAP version 4.7 Enterprise and upgraded

it to ECC6 version which is an entirely new platform as it runs on Netweaver.

Biggest challenge Apollo tyres faced was in terms of user comfort, downtime

requirement of business transactions. Project was started in November and

downtime requirement for version upgrade was 48 Hours. Suitable timeframe

available for this was only on 26th Jan-27th jan 2008 and if this timeframe was

missed, the next available timeframe was in August. Despite all these challenges

and various complexities involved, Apollo tyres managed to finish the project

within the deadlines. As per bench marking and SAP, this is fastest version

upgrade they have ever encountered.