Design Thinking · SAP Fiori · SAP BTP
How a global chemical manufacturer went paperless on asset movement with SAP Design Thinking and BTP
A Large Chemical Manufacturing Company Delivered 2023
Mindset ran a Design Thinking engagement that exposed the full cost of paper, Excel, and email in asset movement, then built the paperless SAP app on BTP that replaced it, giving the chemical manufacturer a single source of truth and real-time notifications across every asset entry and exit.
By the numbers
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100%
Paper, Excel, and email removed from asset movement
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1 source of truth
For asset location and status across all facilities
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Real-time
Notifications to workflow participants at every stage
Before
Paper, Excel, and email
- Asset entry and exit tracked with paper forms, Excel files, and manual email chains across facilities.
- No real-time visibility into asset location or status, causing production interruptions and rising downtime.
- Inconsistent site-by-site workflows made audits slow and records unreliable.
After
A paperless SAP system on BTP
- A single Fiori app on BTP gives every facility the same consistent, digital asset movement workflow.
- Real-time notifications reach the right people at every step, cutting delays and preventing production interruptions.
- Audit-ready asset records and a single source of truth for location and status across the company.
Built on
- SAP Fiori
- SAP BTP
- Full-stack BTP development
- SAP Design Thinking methodology
Why this matters
Design Thinking that turned into a real build. A one-week workshop diagnosed the paper-and-email problem, and then Mindset actually built the SAP BTP app to fix it, giving a global chemical manufacturer its first consistent, paperless asset movement process.
The challenge
At plants and facilities across this global chemical manufacturer, asset entry and exit ran on paper forms, Excel files, and back-and-forth email. The process worked until it didn't. Production got interrupted when the right people couldn't track down the right asset. Downtime climbed. Information got lost between handoffs. Audits were painful because there was no clean record of where things had been.
There was no real-time visibility into asset location or status. Workflows varied from site to site, and there was no consistent way to notify the right people when an asset moved. The company needed a single system that worked the same way everywhere and kept everyone informed without dumping a new pile of master-data maintenance on the people using it.
What we did
Mindset ran a one-week SAP Design Thinking workshop with the company's team to map the problem end to end and design a company-wide solution. The workshop drew on existing flow-chart artifacts from one of the company's business units, covering asset return management and site entry-exit management, which helped bound the scope and keep the design grounded in real workflows rather than theory.
The engagement did not stop at a deck of recommendations. It expanded into full-stack BTP application development, with a Mindset developer building the app itself. The scope covered the complete solution: a paperless workflow for asset movement, real-time notifications pushed to the right people at each stage, status tracking throughout the asset lifecycle, and a consistent process that any facility could follow.
A follow-on BTP architecture advisory supported the company's own internal BTP workshop, helping the team understand how to build on the platform going forward.
The outcomes
The company validated both the Design Thinking approach and the paperless workflow concept the workshop produced. Paper forms, Excel files, and email are gone from the process.
The new system gives everyone a single source of truth for asset movement. Real-time notifications reach the right people when assets move, cutting the back-and-forth that used to delay work and cause production interruptions. Asset records stay current and are easy to pull during audits. Consistent workflows across sites mean the same steps happen in the same order, regardless of which facility is running the process.
The team captured it plainly: digitizing the process prevents costly delays, and the ability to work on these jobs from anywhere reduces equipment downtime.
If we built this today
Concept · not delivered scopeAsset movement, paperless and self-tracking.
This is a forward-looking concept, not the scope we delivered on this engagement. It is the build we would reach for now, grounded in SAP that ships today.
The paper forms, Excel files, and email chains that tracked asset entry and exit across this global chemical manufacturer's plants would now run as a single live record with an agent watching every move.
The Joule agent
Asset Movement Tracker Agent
Reads asset entry and exit requests, equipment master records, and plant location data, then drafts the movement record, routes it to the right approvers, and fires real-time notifications when an asset changes hands or location. Flags any asset that left a site without a logged return so nothing falls back to paper.
SAP BTP, SAP S/4HANA Asset Management, SAP Fiori · PROPOSE · Equipment downtime from lost or unlogged asset movements
The Fiori app
Create Maintenance Request / Order (Joule-embedded)
The standard maintenance and asset apps in SAP S/4HANA now take a plain-language request inside Joule, so a plant worker can log an asset move or condition note from the floor instead of a paper form or a spreadsheet. Joule fills the structured fields and points the record at the right workflow.
Embedded in the Fiori launchpad
The data product
Asset and maintenance data product on SAP Business Data Cloud
A governed data product that brings equipment master, location, and movement history into one trusted source the agent reads from, so every notification and status check runs on live data instead of email threads. SAP Knowledge Graph gives it the business meaning of an asset and its plant.
Data product on Business Data Cloud
We'd mine the real entry and exit process in SAP Signavio first, map the current and target asset landscape in SAP LeanIX, and let our MIND accelerators carry the old paper workflow into the new BTP build.
What we built
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Design Thinking workshop
A structured one-week UX Design Thinking engagement that mapped the current-state asset movement process and designed a company-wide paperless replacement, reusing existing business-unit flow-chart artifacts to bound scope.
Company-wide solution designed in one week
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Paperless asset movement application
A full-stack SAP Fiori app built on BTP that replaces paper forms, Excel, and email with a digital workflow covering asset entry and exit across company facilities.
Paper, Excel, and email fully replaced
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Real-time notification system
Automated notifications pushed to the right workflow participants at each stage of asset movement, removing the manual coordination that caused delays.
Right people notified at every stage
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Asset status tracking
End-to-end status visibility throughout the asset lifecycle, from entry through exit, giving teams a reliable record for daily operations and audits.
Audit-ready asset records at all times
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Consistent cross-site workflow
A standardized process that any facility can follow, eliminating the variation that came with site-by-site improvisation on paper-based steps.
One consistent workflow across all sites
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BTP architecture advisory
Follow-on advisory that supported the company's internal BTP workshop, giving the team the architecture guidance to build on the platform independently.
Internal team enabled to build on BTP
A look at the work
