Post-Merger-Integrationsprojekt at Getec

GETEC PARK.SWISS - an industrial park for the chemical and life science industries - is located near Basel in Switzerland, directly on the Rhine and the border with Germany. Major companies such as Clariant, Novartis, Bayer and BASF are based in Muttenz on around 51 hectares. Others - such as Syngenta - will be added from 2020. A total of 25 companies have settled here so far, ranging from specialty chemicals and pharmaceuticals to medical gas production and laboratory automation.

Until the end of 2018, today's GETEC PARK.SWISS still consisted of two separate but directly adjacent parks: Infrapark Baselland with the operating company Infrapark Baselland AG and the Schweizerhalle plant. Infrapark Baselland AG was owned by Clariant Plastics & Coatings AG (as a subsidiary of Clariant AG) and the Schweizerhalle plant was part of Novartis Pharma Schweizerhalle AG.

At the end of 2018, the two companies divested their infrastructure units and sold their activities and asset shares to G+E GETEC Holding GmbH of Magdeburg. With the acquisition of Infrapark Baselland AG and its activities as well as the production and infrastructure facilities from Novartis, the two parks were merged on 1 January 2019. Since 1 January 2020 they have been operating under the name GETEC PARK.SWISS AG.

With the acquisition and merger of the two parks, GETEC continued its internationalisation course and broadened its service portfolio. G+E GETEC Holding GmbH is an energy provider with around 1,400 employees in Saxony-Anhalt, primarily offering "green" energy solutions. GETEC is active in eleven countries and most recently generated sales of around 600 million euros.

With GETEC PARK.SWISS AG, the GETEC Group now also provides all services for the companies based in Muttenz. These include facility management and energy supply for the companies, site logistics and technical services as well as waste disposal and wastewater pretreatment.

However, the takeover and merger of the two industrial parks also meant that GETEC had to take over the corresponding IT processes and data from the companies and facilities taken over - initially from Clariant's operating company Infrapark Baselland AG. The procedure in this order resulted from the need to take over the complete operation of the Schweizerhalle plant exactly one year after signing the contract. This required a prepared IT infrastructure separate from Clariant AG - including a functional SAP system.

GETEC therefore planned to detach the processes, settings and data of Infrapark Baselland AG from Clariant AG's SAP system and transfer them to a company-owned, existing SAP system - as a separate accounting and controlling area in this existing system. The SAP system belongs to a subsidiary of GETEC, EMMTEC in Emmen, the Netherlands - operating company of the second largest industrial park in the Netherlands.

Detailed process with six project phases

GETEC commissioned the experts from GAMBIT Consulting with the PMI integration and SAP migration - and they will implement the project together with GETEC and Clariant in a total of seven months. Initially, a total duration of six months had been planned for the project, however, the go-live date had to be postponed by one month during the course of the project - at the customer's request - due to necessary adjustments in the logistics area.

At the beginning the SAP specialists of GAMBIT developed a detailed process plan with six project phases: Project preparation and implementation, two consecutive functional and integration tests as well as cut-over preparation and final go-live.

On the basis of this plan, the processes and interfaces in the modules FI, CO, PM, CS, PS, MM and WM as well as master data, inventory values and open transactions - after the corresponding preparations - were extracted from the old system of Clariant AG and transferred to the existing SAP system of EMMTEC.

For this purpose, the experts used various migration tools: The proven SAP Legacy System Migration Workbench (SAP LSMW) was used as well as additional and partly specially developed migration tools for the migration of particularly complex structures. In the course of the project, GAMBIT's specialists also supported their customers in the network definition which is currently being established as well as in the installation of necessary interfaces.

At the end of the project a satisfied customer was achieved, because the goal of a smooth transfer of the Infrapark Baselland business processes as well as the necessary data from the CLARIANT systems and applications was completely achieved. GETEC PARK.SWISS AG can now concentrate on further improving the range of services offered at the industrial park and providing local companies with further growth opportunities.