CASE STUDY // TEXTRON
Textron Drives Manufacturing Insights From SAP Data
Databricks Data Intelligence Platform and Qlik Cloud Data Integration empower business users.
Minutes
To refresh business data
By connecting Qlik Replicate to new data every few minutes, TSV is making it available to users in near-real time.
25%
Reduction in time
With less time spent on running and maintaining the data environment, TSV staff can focus on other high-value priorities.
Lower
Computing costs
TSV is now implementing best practices to maximize operational efficiency and optimize business performance.
CHALLENGE
Supporting architecture for a major ERP upgrade
Textron Specialized Vehicles (TSV) manufactures a wide range of vehicles for customers in various industries. In the process, it generates vast amounts of manufacturing and sales data.
TSV decided to migrate from SAP ERP Central Component (SAP ECC) to SAP S/4HANA to standardize its SAP environment and upgrade the extract, load, transform (ELT) process. In doing so, TSV needed to be able to extract data directly from this new platform. It also wanted to deliver data to business users for use in multiple key purposes, including analytics on Qlik.
APPROACH
A single source of truth for a diverse business
TSV explored the Databricks Data Intelligence Platform and found that using it with Qlik Data Integration, specifically Qlik Replicate®, would be a powerful solution.
TSV set up a flexible but secure architecture. Qlik uses change data capture calls to SAP and replicates data into the data lake. Databricks Delta Live Tables then performs the data transformation and applies best practices to deploy reliable pipelines at scale. The process makes silver-level tables accessible to the data lake, with Qlik helping to normalize the SAP data table names.
RESULTS
Streaming data meets needs with less human involvement
TSV’s goal is to make data available to business users in near-real time. With Databricks and Qlik, the company now streams data throughout the day, connecting Qlik Replicate to new data every few minutes.
Previously, TSV’s business data was only available to users in batches on request. The new process involving Databricks and Qlik is helping the company save man-hours and lower compute costs. TSV hopes to reduce the amount of time its team spends running and maintaining the data replication process from 80% to less than 10%.
WHAT THIS MEANS FOR YOU
Building a single source of truth
Having vast quantities of data in multiple locations, formats and structures doesn’t have to stop it delivering for your business quickly and effectively.
With the Databricks Data Intelligence Platform and Qlik Cloud® Data Integration, TSV is now set to continue its journey to maximize operational efficiency and deliver more of the revolutionary technology its customers want.
By establishing a single source of truth for SAP data, manufacturers like TSV can also spend much more time on productive activities that serve their business and generate revenue.
Databricks Data Intelligence Platform and Qlik are the backbone of our new data architecture supporting SAP S/4HANA. These solutions are driving easier data access and improved reliability across our business.
