Searching for a pretext to visit

see our software showcase and talk directly to our management in our headquarters building only 100 metres away from The Factory,” Ralf explains. In contrast, a global customer was able to stream the same experience to teams based across Europe, Asia, and South America simultaneously.

“Sometimes we have put on an overview and inspirational session for the top management, and then we will have three or four follow-up sessions for the whole team virtually,” explains Ralf.

SAP’s own teams value the interaction and are pleased to have in-person customers again, with direct feedback.

“We answer customer-specific questions and show the end-to-end value of supply chain – and SAP's ERP solutions integrated with our industrial hardware partners,” says Matthias.

The scenario is interconnected, and processes are visualised with lights.

“Imagine we are working here with liquid concentrate and have the standard production for the process industry with lots of tubes and tanks in there, all 100 percent realistic but our different ingredients are red, green and blue. We can mix different colours to demonstrate the customer scenarios,” says Ralf.

The key thing about The Factory at

SAP Industry 4.0 Center is this: it comes across as an evolution (although it may be a revolution) that provides a visual and actual representation of all the digital supply chain has to offer clients, customers and partners. That is because the physical factory is a genuine representation of a real-life scenario. So, when a customer first arrives, whether that is physically or virtually, their impression is not of a “too pristine to be believable” film set, but of something that could be their own production line, manufacturing facility or processing plant.

As Matthias explains, “It's really interesting to see how, when they enter our factory, our customers have a smile on their face because everything is not super-shiny or what you might expect from a marketing pitch. It's hands-on, with work centres of the kind you would find in real life.”

Maybe it’s the lab coat hanging up in the corner. Or perhaps it’s the (deliberate) tank overfill that Matthias