Zehnder

“The Stonebranch solution controls jobs in Zehnder’s ERP system in many areas: invoicing to customers, material requirement planning, creating deliveries in logistics, order scheduling of the entire supply chain, and payment runs in finance.”

-Zehnder

Key Outcomes

• Reduced total cost of ownership through direct integration with SAP
• Simple, tool-supported migration without additional service costs
• Increased automation by aligning scheduling processes with the SAP environment, including transport management
• Extended workload automation capabilities for cross-landscape orchestration and long-term flexibility in SAP scheduling

Background

Zehnder Group is a global leader in indoor climate solutions, helping improve quality of life through products and systems for heating and cooling, comfortable indoor ventilation, and air purification. The company develops and manufactures its products in 16 of its own plants across Europe, China, and North America, and serves customers in more than 70 countries through local sales companies and agencies. Across its business areas, the company is recognized as both a market and technology leader. 

To support its business-critical SAP processes, Zehnder relied on automated batch job processing across key areas of the organization. However, a change in SAP support for its existing scheduling tool prompted the company to evaluate a future-ready replacement.

Challenges

Zehnder had been using SAP CPS by Redwood as its central job scheduling solution. At the time, the software’s license-free model provided a costeffective, proven foundation for batch scheduling. However, when support for CPS ended in 2021, Zehnder sought a future-ready alternative. 

During the evaluation process, Zehnder shortlisted two options: the paid CPS successor (Redwood BPA) and the Stonebranch SAP job scheduling solution. 

The team focused on several key requirements:

• Ability to map job networks and dependencies in a clear and manageable way
• Reliable execution of complex SAP process chains across the enterprise
• Support for transparent scheduling logic that IT teams could easily understand and maintain

The Search

Cost was an important factor, as Zehnder had previously used a license-free solution with limited but sufficient functionality. The company wanted to avoid unnecessary additional costs while ensuring that the new solution could support its future needs. 

Continuity was another key consideration. Zehnder wanted to retain its existing scheduling concept as much as possible, including SAP naming conventions, dependencies, and established process logic. The goal was to migrate to a new solution without requiring IT teams to redesign proven scheduling structures from scratch. 

While the license costs for Redwood BPA and the Stonebranch SAP job scheduling solution were comparable, the operating models differed significantly. Redwood BPA required centralized operation on a Java server, whereas the Stonebranch solution runs with ABAP on the SAP application server.

For Zehnder, introducing an additional Java server would have resulted in extra monthly operating costs through its managed system provider. This gave the Stonebranch solution a clear advantage early in the evaluation process. 

Beyond cost and infrastructure considerations, the Stonebranch solution also met Zehnder’s long-term scalability and flexibility requirements. It supported existing job dependencies and existing scheduling concepts, while also offering additional capabilities such as checkpoints, alerts, and documentation

The Solution

Zehnder IT found the Stonebranch solution straightforward to install and easy to manage, supported by a clear installation guide. Because the team already had experience with the solution from previous years, Zehnder was able to carry out the migration project independently. 

The migration was completed in steps. Zehnder began by gradually activating individual jobs and job networks, allowing the IT team to become familiar with the Stonebranch solution in a controlled manner. As confidence grew, the team migrated increasingly complex scheduling objects and transferred established batch processes into the new environment. 

The Stonebranch solution also aligned well with Zehnder’s SAP operating model. Stonebranch objects could be transported across multiple target systems, helping the team maintain scheduling consistency across the SAP landscape. This was a significant improvement over Redwood CPS, where jobs and job nets in the test environment had to be rebuilt after every production system copy. 

In addition, the familiar SAP GUI interface and the ability to work without a separate login made the Stonebranch solution easy for application teams to adopt. The migration was further supported by the SAP SM37 import tool, which helped Zehnder efficiently transfer existing scheduling objects. 

The project ran smoothly because both job schedulers could operate in parallel during the transition. Zehnder migrated jobs step by step, deactivated them in the old scheduler, and continued the process until all jobs had been transferred to the new solution.

The Results

With the Stonebranch SAP job scheduling solution, Zehnder successfully replaced SAP CPS by Redwood without operational disruption. The Stonebranch solution mapped all existing process chains as required and provided a stable foundation for reliable SAP job scheduling. 

With export, import, and transport capabilities in place, Zehnder no longer needed to manually recreate hundreds of jobs after system copies, reducing both manual effort and operational risk. 

The migration also improved job chain management by ensuring that required job sequences are executed reliably, helping maintain smooth business operations across the enterprise — all with a competitive total cost of ownership.