Overview
An innovative procurement platform to support future growth
Our client is an international company specializing in the design, development, manufacture, repair and overhaul of landing gear and components for the aerospace market.
Robust business growth requires efficient digital processes and a scalable platform for future expansion. This was especially true in procurement, where the legacy manual process did not support the close collaboration with suppliers and vendors needed to scale.
In partnership with HCLTech, the company decided to embark on a digital transformation program enabled by SAP. This included the implementation of:
- SAP S/4HANA 2022 Private Cloud Edition solution with SAP S/4HANA Best Practices and SAP provided standard FIORI apps
- SAP Ariba Supply Chain Collaboration (SCC), SAP Analytics Cloud (SAC), HCLTech iMRO, HCLTech Base90 for Aerospace
The Challenge
Excessive manual processes and lack of supplier collaboration
To meet the A&D industry's exacting quality and safety standards, manufacturers like our client need to ensure the full quality traceability of parts, materials and components. Doing this effectively requires multitier transparency and collaboration between supply, manufacturing and logistics partners across the procurement process — from supplier ship notice through distribution.
Excessive manual interventions, however, meant that our client's legacy procurement processes could not scale with growth. For example, manual updates of purchase orders and material unavailability due to changes to purchase orders had a knock-on effect, leading to customer requirements that couldn't be fulfilled on time.
Key pain points included:
- Excessive manual interventions throughout the production process
- Discrepancies between purchase order, goods receipt and vendor invoice
- Material shortages due to changes in the quantity or delivery date on purchase orders
- Lack of visibility and traceability of supplier non-conformance management
- Purchasers lacked actionable cards with multiple contents
The objective
Better collaboration with trading partners across purchase orders and quality tracing
The client wanted a single networked platform that would provide an opportunity for procurement automation and better collaboration with suppliers and vendors on two levels. First, they needed to ensure full quality traceability of batches from supplier ship notice through to distribution. And second, they wanted improved purchase order collaboration to guard against material shortages, discrepancies and to proactively plan in response to changing demand.
Key objectives included:
- Real-time monitoring and streamlined procurement processes
- Ease of insight into supplier performance and monitoring of non-managed spending or purchasing spending to quickly discover trends and areas of improvement
- Highly automated processes for batch management and serial number managed materials
- Improved cost control and compliance with company policies, legal requirements and industry regulations
The Solution
Innovation that supports the regulatory needs of complex manufacturers
While the company had initially decided to implement SAP Business Network to solve their procurement challenges, following an assessment, HCLTech determined that SAP Ariba Supply Chain Collaboration was better suited to solving their complex procurement needs. It would also be able to manage changes in MRP (material resources planning) in a compliant manner.
Complex manufacturers face specific regulatory challenges, especially around serial number tracking and monitoring of MRP traffic. HCLTech was able to leverage our deep industry and process knowledge to develop a solution optimized to meet these needs:
- Development of an innovative MRP Change Request App to streamline rescheduling proposals
- Serial number mapping to align the SCC solution to procure operating supplies — batch and serial-number-managed
- Integrated dashboards for the purchaser to perform daily activities smoothly without opening different reports and transactions
- Quality notification interface and workflow for suppliers to notify the buyer about problems with components
The Impact
A comprehensive, collaborative and integrated procurement platform
Because of our deep industry, SAP S/4HANA and Ariba implementation experience, HCLTech was able to coordinate and collaborate with the adjacent business processes and applications seamlessly. As a result, our solution delivered many core benefits, including:
- Enabling proactive decisions for materials requirements planning in response to changing demand
- Monitoring stock-outs and effectively guaranteeing the availability of required supplies at the right time
- Full traceability of customer and supplier-managed batches from supplier ship notice through distribution
- Simplified accounts payable processes and eliminated error-prone manual Invoice processing
- Quality notification collaboration brought better compliance in recording Non-Conformities (NCs) — analyzing, monitoring and closure of defects
- Increased supplier's adoption of SAP Ariba Business Network and willingness to support troubleshooting for error notifications
