OVERVIEW

A German manufacturer was implementing a SAP S/4 Hana system including Ariba, Finance & EWM as the core IT components to support their manufacturing process. Numerous interfacing applications were present to manage all aspects of the manufacturing process including import / export, parts catalogue, and the hardware involved in actual manufacturing.

A number of factories were involved spanning multiple countries in a phased implementation process.

CHALLENGE

The customer had not previously been involved with performance testing. While this was a very large transformation project, day to day activities with legacy applications still needed to be maintained.

At the core of the warehouse operation was SAP S/4 Hana Interfacing applications which supported a parts catalogue, engineering designs and the machines used in the manufacturing process. Multiple locations were involved including warehouse storage and manufacturing. The data and functionality were complicated with many interfaces, and data progressing backwards and forwards across those interfaces.

There were no existing processes, tooling or infrastructure to support performance testing. Commercial engagement was an extended process, and as a result, timelines for delivery of performance testing were short.​

SOLUTION

Detailed planning took place which determined the scope, objectives, timelines and deliverables. Such was the scale of the transformation that changes to the plan were required on the fly as the performance test pack was built, working around delays, blockages and obstacles as well as adjusting the scope to cater for important interfaces that subsequently came to light.

The LoadRunner performance testing tool was superb in its ability to work with the SAP GUI client interface with licensing options to support the customers requirement. Cloud-based load generators as well as load generators set in the warehouse locations captured front and backend response times. A number of batch jobs were measured and tuned for performance with individual reports issued for each batch process examined for performance.

A number of interfaces were examined in detail with the limits of the interface in terms of messages processed per second determined and where these failed to meet expectations, the tuning process was supported and functionality retested. Numerous performance tests of online functionality were used to measure SAP performance and where interfaces were involved, performance of the interface and interfacing application was inferred. Comprehensive reports were generated detailing measured performance as well as the prediction for production.​

RESULTS

With so much change taking place, risks to the business were high. Performance testing demonstrated that all major components could support the workloads required.

Some areas of functionality, especially where the level of change was the greatest showed ongoing continued stability issues with the message from performance testing being that the customer must be prepared to deal with stability issues more urgently at go-live. ​

​OUTCOME

While under no illusion of the challenge facing the customer, performance testing provided the assurance from a performance perspective for the customer to go-live.​

Along the way, the performance testing process uncovered a mixture of functional and non-functional issues, helping teams to resolve these and to retest following implementation of the fixes.​

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