A major beverage manufacturer’s UK warehouse was in complete breakdown. The facility responsible for blending and packing tea for millions of customers had descended into chaos. Nobody trusted the most basic operational data.
The breakdown was so severe that material planners had given up on the system. “I’d ask one of them, ‘Margaret, why did you order that?’ And she would say, ‘I don’t believe the numbers. I’ll order that and another pallet, just in case.’”
The team always over-ordered.
“That put pressure on the storage space within the factory,” said the digital director. Storage areas overflowed. The physical environment reflected the chaos in their data. Desperation drove them to endless fire-fighting.
“We were doing physical stock checks every month to try and put the numbers right. And, as soon as you do that, they were going out of whack again.”
They’d count everything by hand, correct the numbers, then watch accuracy crumble within weeks. Each cycle consumed time and energy while solving nothing.
The dysfunction spread beyond their walls. External partners lost faith. The Port of Tyne “would use their own system, rather than use ours,” she said.
Stock differences ran into “thousands of pounds.” Each discrepancy represented not just lost inventory but lost confidence in their ability to manage basic business functions.
The Breakthrough Moment That Changed Everything
The transformation began with a single breakthrough insight. Alongside Pivot, the digital director realised they were approaching the entire problem wrong.
“As a company, we kept trying to make it a Work Management project,” she said.
“Once you get a teabag packing line going, it goes. You’re making 2800 tea bags a minute out of one machine. It got to a certain point, and we realised something. This is Repetitive Manufacturing. That’s what we’re talking about.”
Work Management projects are unique, temporary endeavors with specific goals and custom approaches. Repetitive Manufacturing projects focus on standardised, ongoing production processes designed for consistent output at scale.
“How do you expect to run your business in SAP if you don’t tell SAP what your business looks like?” said the digital director.
This insight transformed the warehouse management system. The transformation was remarkable.
The most striking change was achieving perfect inventory accuracy.
“Inventory accuracy was absolutely spot on,” said the digital director. This represented a fundamental shift from the chaos of unreliable data to the confidence that comes with knowing exactly what you have, where it is, and when you need more.
“How do you expect to run your business in SAP if you don’t tell SAP what your business looks like?”
Operational benefits followed. Stock checks, once a dreaded monthly ritual that consumed valuable time and resources, became a smooth process occurring twice yearly. Variances shrank from thousands of dollars to mere “pounds and pennies”. It was the kind of minor differences that reflect normal business operations rather than systemic problems.
But the most powerful outcome was the cultural transformation. The implementation created “SAP advocates” throughout the organisation. This wasn’t about software. It was about honest, accurate communication between people and systems, creating a foundation of trust that enabled everything else to work smoothly.
The solution proved so robust it operated reliably for 15 years with minimal intervention. The company also implemented it in their US operations.
The Ultimate Breakthrough
The contrast between breakdown and breakthrough couldn’t have been more dramatic. It required changing fundamental behaviours.
“We moved away from, ‘I’m the person on the forklift truck. I know where the space is. I’ll put it where I think is the right place to put it.’ Now, it was all computer-guided operations.”
This represented the final breakthrough. Ongoing developments were then built on proven success rather than crisis recovery.
“It was a good understanding,” said the digital director. “Once you’ve got that, it then becomes more obvious about what your processes are and what you’re trying to do.”
The 15-year journey proved that sustainable excellence comes from getting the fundamentals right. In supply chain management, the difference between breakdown and breakthrough often comes down to a single question. Do you trust your own data?
For this major beverage manufacturer, the answer changed from a resounding “no” to an unshakeable “yes”. And that made all the difference.
