The company involved in this case study is one of the
world’s leading consumer goods manufacturer (CPG), with sales exceeding $60 billion in 2013.
This company is headquartered outside the United States and
employs over 170,000 people worldwide.
The company was in the process of an SAP Advance Planner and Optimizer - SAP APO implementation, and wanted to incorporate the PPDS (Production Planning and Detailed Scheduling) tool. The biggest challenge was that the company has over 25 manufacturing sites spread over North America.
Although some sites were similar, owing to different product categories, they all had their own unique considerations for scheduling and comfort levels in regards to system usage. The actual scheduling process at each location was not well understood by others and most efforts at cross training on this activity were not successful.
The goal was to deploy a training and implementation strategy that would cover all end users and drive engagement that would achieve the following objectives at go live:
The challenge was to engage dispersed key stakeholders on a regular basis, have them execute the required activities and “buy in” to the new system and process so that the company did not waste time, money and resources on a system not utilized. Adverse impact to services during the learning curve was to be avoided.
Since the production scheduling was done outside of SAP and involved multiple off line spread sheets, the core team had limited understanding of each manufacturing site’s constraints in regards to output, shift schedules and work calendars. This information is critical to having an effective, efficient application of PPDS.
Upon further evaluation it was apparent that the legacy system was poorly maintained in regards to critical master data such as: resources, production rates, Bill of Materials and available future capacity.
In order to maximize available capacity at multiple locations, allow the “re direction” of scheduled production from one site to another, or understand when it would be required to “front load production” of seasonal demand before capacity constraints, it was critical to have all sites implement and sustain PPDS.
A core PPDS team was created that was tasked with end user engagement, skills enhancement and system preparation.
Team involvement was key. Therefore, a robust engagement strategy was developed that included the following:
The agenda covered the following:
The core team was supported with a rigorous meeting plan that included managing attendance tracking of the 35 plus team and, monitoring to completion, the required weekly SAP system activities to accomplish the following objectives:
Simultaneously, “live meeting” was used to introduce team members to the new ways of working with the new system. The core team identified critical end user activities that were required in the new system. After this, a delivery schedule was developed and executed in such a way that the team was introduced to the new system and its usage, months before “go live”.
Detailed training material was created including numerous screen shots of the new system for every activity that was covered in the meetings. This was distributed to the team members and also included in a “training library” that was created on SharePoint.
Understanding the unexpected demands at manufacturing locations, the core team identified end users who had been “absent” for key sessions and scheduled “make up sessions” to keep the team aligned with expectations and skill development.
In an attempt to provide maximum support for the end users a “pre cutover session” was scheduled at the NA Corporate Headquarters location 2 weeks before go live. All end users participated. This allowed the “real time validation” of system required activities and provided the opportunity for end users to practice activities such as:
The core PPDS team also took this opportunity for some “team building” activities which were much deserved after the intense preparation and training period that the team had endured.
As a result there were no issues in the PPDS space that interrupted operations or negatively impacted customer service.
The format, structure and implementation approach that were developed and executed produced successful results in the following ways:
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