SAPinsider Issue 3 2020

the case of the long-running MRP process, an MRP specialist at Riddell went through all the program calls with the various plants and worked out which could run simultaneously, according to Buckner. “That allowed me to redesign the flow so the MRP job was reduced from 31 steps to 12, where instead of each step running one program, each step could now run multiple programs at the same time,” he says. “The concurrent running of the jobs merged the elapsed times, thus reducing the runtime from more than 10 hours for the MRP job down to about four hours for the whole process.” Now jobs are orchestrated so that those that can run simultaneously do so, and those that need to run in sequence wait for the completion of one job before the next begins. “We put in a step at the end of the MRP job that kicks off the BI process directly instead of scheduling them separately,” Buckner says. “We coordinated the two, so they don’t bump into each other. The BI job would never start before the MRP job was done, even if the MRP process ran long. And if the MRP job only took two hours, then the BI process would start two hours early. Plants no longer have to wait to start production because the planning job has not finished for them yet, and one job chain can run a process for multiple SAP systems together.” Event Triggering, Calendaring, and Customizable Security With RunMyJobs, Riddell has benefited from auto- mation that not only saves time, eliminates manual work, and simplifies formerly complex processes, but also improves performance. The flexibility of the solution is another aspect that Buckner found useful. In addition to the BI process that starts auto- matically after the MRP process completes, Riddell uses RunMyJobs to trigger processes based on real- time events, such as for electronic data interchange (EDI) transactions. “When EDI files arrive from ven- dors, RunMyJobs sees the file appear and kicks off the process to deal with it immediately, as opposed to scheduling a job that wakes up every hour to look for something,” he says. “This way, we can process transactions as they happen rather than having a built-in artificial delay.” The organization also uses the Redwood applica- tion on the financial side of the business to elimi- nate manual effort in scheduling. Riddell follows an accounting calendar of four 13-week quarters — that means every five to six years, the fiscal year is 53 weeks rather than 52. In the past, these tasks had to be scheduled manually to account for this. Today, sophisticated calendaring functional- ity helps to automate the financial close process. RunMyJobs automatically schedules end-of-month and end-of-quarter tasks based on this complicated calendar. “We put a calendar together that details all our close days, and then we can schedule tasks that are centered around that particular day,” says Buckner. “So, if a certain job needs to run five days before the close, RunMyJobs can look up the close day, subtract five days from it, and that’s the day that it automatically schedules that job to run. I have some jobs that run three times a day the entire week of the close.” Another way Riddell gained flexibility with the solution is by enabling self-service functionality for internal customers that allows them to access their own data or start jobs they are responsible for. In the past, they had to rely on IT, which meant some- times jobs had to wait while IT completed other important work. The self-service functionality instilled a sense of ownership in internal customers If a certain job needs to run five days before the close, RunMyJobs can look up the close day, subtract five days from it, and that’s the day that it automatically schedules that job to run. — Alan Buckner, Basis Administrator and SAP HANA Database Administrator, Riddell 11 SAPinsiderOnline.com