Your S/4HANA program will not fail because you picked the “wrong template.”

It will fail because you staffed the plant-floor last.

After reviewing 950 S/4 jobs this January across the US market, the loudest hiring signal isn’t for generic SAP consultants.

It’s PP / PPDS / MES / QM / EWM / TM roles in aerospace, medical devices, and complex assembly – exactly where bad designs show up as missed shipments and scrap, not in a status report.

What the data is telling us:

→ COOs and Ops leaders are finally pulling S/4 out of the ivory tower and into the plants.

→ The most urgent roles are hybrid: people who understand routings, quality holds, warehouse constraints and S/4 configuration.

→ Programs that staffed FI/CO and “core ERP” first are now scrambling for Manufacturing Deployment SMEs, PP/MES Architects, and EWM leads to rescue go-lives.

If you’re a hiring manager on an S/4 journey, three uncomfortable questions:

Who really owns your plant-floor scope – IT, operations, or your SI?

Do you have a named lead for “plan-to-produce” and “plan-to-ship,” or just a list of PP, QM, and EWM tickets?

Are you hiring module silos, or end-to-end flow owners who can live in the plant for a few months and make decisions?

From a staffing lens, what’s working right now:

Anchor 1–2 senior “floor generals” (PP/MES or PPDS/EWM) who can own design trade-offs with production, quality, and logistics.

Back them with a small squad of doers; local super-user types plus 1–2 strong configurators, not a cast of thousands.

Write job descriptions in plant language (changeovers, downtime, fill rates, compliance) instead of just SAP buzzwords.

The companies that treat plant-floor staffing as a line item under “rollout support” will keep paying for rework after go-live.

The ones that treat PP/MES/QM/EWM/TM staffing as a strategic decision will get stable operations months faster, and with far less noise from the shop floor.

If you’re leading S/4 in manufacturing and want a quick view of what the best-run programs are doing with plant-floor roles, drop a comment or DM “PLANT S4.”