The world’s biggest non-alcoholic beverage producers faced a trust crisis. Tea moved from manufacturing to a nearby distribution centre, but the numbers never added up.
Stock figures were rarely aligned with the warehouse management system. The client had never upgraded the third-party system and was causing operational and IT nightmares.
When you can’t trust your own stock figures, every decision becomes a guess.
Planners couldn’t trust stock figures in ERP. Their response was predictable and expensive. They purchased too much raw material as safety buffer against unreliable data.
When surplus raw material was issued to manufacturing, teams had no tools to estimate what remained on partial pallets. Guesswork replaced precision.
Users could override system selections, leading to stock write-offs. When people lack trust in the system, they work around it, exacerbating existing problems.
Interfaces to the core SAP system were prone to errors. They needed continual support from the Global Information Systems team. The warehouse system had become an inhibitor to process change, rather than an enabler.
Internal knowledge about the system was decreasing. Even the original supplier struggled to find people who understood it.
Trust collapse created a vicious cycle. Unreliable data led to workarounds. Workarounds made data less reliable. Less reliable data required more workarounds.
People signed on as shared users because nobody knew who did what. The system was so unreliable that individual accountability became impossible.
The company decided to implement SAP Extended Warehouse Management (EWM). But they knew technology alone wouldn’t solve a trust problem. They needed supply chain consulting expertise to redesign processes.
They chose Pivot for the breadth of knowledge and expertise in delivering successful implementations. The challenge wasn’t just replacing technology – it was rebuilding operational confidence.
Pivot ran workshops to design new processes with SAP EWM. The key was involving existing users who knew all the workarounds in the old system.
Because everyone worked around the system differently, it was challenging to understand actual processes versus theoretical ones. Pivot involved users in developing new methods. We created ownership and eliminated the need for shared users.
Pivot provided a detailed project blueprint. It formed the foundation for system build by SAP consultants and ABAP developers. But the real value was in implementation recommendations that ensured smooth go-live.
A 750-task go-live plan meant everyone knew what to do and when. Data validation before go-live ensured correct loading before transactions restarted. A test go-live over a weekend identified 43 remedial actions. None recurred during Go-Live.
The streamlined supply chain delivered all year-one cost savings. Raw tea was now shipped on a Just-in-Time basis. SAP EWM fed 40 production lines producing 240 million tea bags weekly, consuming three trailer loads of tea every 24 hours.
Finished goods pallets were scanned and loaded directly onto outbound trailers. Complete visibility across the process meant reduced product handling.
Now the warehouse could make informed decisions about delivering from stock or waiting for inbound factory deliveries. Delivery failures minimized. On-time, in-full deliveries improved.
The company redeployed headcount. It reduced write-offs and racked supplier orders more effectively. It reduced packaging stock levels by 10%. But the biggest win was restored confidence in their own data.
Pivot delivered systems that people could believe in and processes they could trust.
The supply chain finally had data it could trust. And trust, it turned out, was the foundation of everything else.
