Integrated supply chain project for a leading agro-chemicals company
Our client, a multinational joint venture, was set up to develop and market agricultural chemicals in two principal areas, crop protection and environmental health. In some areas these two areas overlapped and had conflicting boundaries.
To improve customer service and information, and to reduce products' time to market, the client decided to develop a single supply chain system to integrate all its activities for every supply chain step across its core businesses, as part of a unified and logical data stream.
PA and client experts were grouped into three teams: a build team responsible for the SAP programs in the new supply chain; an implementation team responsible for communication, training and planning of the delivery; and a solution team to test the system and demonstrate it to users at various stages. Workshops and meetings began quickly in purchasing, stock management, production planning and sales. Staff were given demonstrations of how business processes would change as the SAP software was introduced.
The potential benefits of the new system quickly became apparent: purchasing procedures became streamlined and simplified, with levels of purchasing authority standardized. Plant maintenance schedules were completely overhauled and linked with all relevant control documents.
All of the company's UK sites and depots were using the system within a year of start up, involving over 500 users. Purchasing - one of the first areas to have the system in full use - benefited immediately, with more than 2,000 orders smoothly processed in eight weeks.
Following the implementation, every process is controlled as a single stream, meaning that internal plant operations have become more efficient. This has resulted in improvements in customer service and reductions in time-to-market of many products.
