Digitisation at MAPAL
Chief Information Officer Erwin Schuster explains why speed is everything in his job
Between big data analytics, artificial intelligence and new business models, Erwin Schuster and his teams create the general conditions so that technological progress is a reality at all levels every day at MAPAL.
“The core task of my position is to act as a hinge between the business and IT departments”, says Erwin Schuster, describing his role as CIO at MAPAL. He manages the IT structure, communicates with Management and exchanges information with the various departments to establish requirements. The latter is particularly important to him because understanding the day-to-day operational business of individual disciplines is enormously valuable in his role. Especially in IT, you always have to be open to change and sometimes use new methods to achieve success. This drive towards combinatorial thinking can be seen early in his CV. After training as an electrotechnical assistant, he studied computer science with a focus on software engineering, followed by a PhD as an engineer at the Fraunhofer Institute in Stuttgart. Most recently, he worked as IT Manager for a plastics specialist in Baden-Württemberg until 2018, when he decided to take on the challenge of a medium-sized family business and international supplier of precision tools.
链接的两个世界
在玛帕集团，他遇到了一个已存在世界和演化世界的共存共立。两者都深深扎根于组织构架中日夜运转，相互间不仅并行发展，同时还在互相影响。例如，人们面临着这样的任务，针对一个业已存在 20 多年的强大 SAP-系统，通过对接基于云的卫星系统，要对其进行现代化的改造。他预测说：“将这两个世界整合到一起并且使得其中一个由另一个替换或者进行相互的融合，对于我们来说，无疑是重大的挑战。”端-到-端（End-to-end）被认为是新流程执行的方式，并且总是可以实现跨部门的效力，对此需要一个非同以往的全新推动方法。基于他所担任的是关键职位，Erwin Schuster先生得以自始至终参与到为数众多的大项目之中，这些项目涉及到各种流程、主数据、SAP直至微软（Microsoft）的应用等等。在玛帕集团，数字化进程在不断发展的刀具-和工艺技术领域表现的尤为显著。“对于我们的年轻员工来说：这些工艺技术是非常令人振奋的，因为我们这里正在实施的项目和课题，通常在一家中型的企业是不会设想到的。”Erwin Schuster先生确信无疑。
