us sugar: how mobilizing sap erp delivered sweet results
DESCRIPTION
Why SAP? US Sugar Corporation found: They are now the lowest cost producer in US and Mexico.TRANSCRIPT
US Sugar SAP Mobile Applications
June 2010
Company History
• Began as Southern Sugar Company in 1926
• Acquired by Charles Stewart Mott, principal shareholder and co-founder of General Motors, and restructured
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Motors, and restructured as U.S. Sugar in 1931
• Rapidly became America’s largest and most productive sugarcane farming and sugar manufacturing business
• Primarily owned by employees and charitable foundations (Flint, MI)
Company Location
• We are headquartered on the South shore of Lake Okeechobee in Clewiston, Fl, “America's Sweetest Town”.
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US Sugar Sugar Statistics
• 40% of Florida’s sugar industry• 1000 jobs.• 180,000 acres harvested annually• 6.5 million tons sugarcane produced• 700,000 tons of sugar produced
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• 195,000 tons bagasse (green fuel) produced• 225,000 tons of molasses produced
Renewable Energy
• The sugar facilities are powered by, renewable green energy from bagasse, the residual
plant fiber from
sugarcane.
• Each ton equates
1 barrel of fuel oil.
• Partnership with Coskata
to explore ethanol production.
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US Sugar Citrus Statistics
• Process 10-15% of Florida crop.
• 750 jobs.• We grow 4 million boxes of
oranges.• We can process 20 million
boxes.• 120 million gals of 100%
pure, premium orange juice.• 200,000 disease-free citrus
trees per year grown in our nursery in northern Florida.
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• We can process 20 million nursery in northern Florida.
Why SAP?
• We are a commodity business, constrained by available land.
• As such we don’t have the same expansion opportunities as other types of business.
• We’ve been around a long time, doing the same thing in the same place.
• We realized several years ago that there was room for significant business process and production process improvement.
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Why SAP?
• We embarked upon a sugar manufacturing process improvement project.
• Spending several $100MM in sugar milling.
• The project was termed “Breakthrough”
• 60% fewer employees.
• Highly automated.
• We are now the lowest cost producer in US and Mexico.
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Why SAP?
• SAP was a key part of our business process improvement plan.
• Wanted a “best of breed” ERP that we could continue to leverage and could use to implement “best business practices”.“best business practices”.
• We have implemented the following modules:– FI/CO
– PM
– PP
– MM
– SD
– HCM
– PS
– BW
– myAgri
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Why Mobile SAP?
• With our 300 square miles of land and two large factory campuses, mobile solutions are key for our business.
• We have several mobile applications running on three different mobile device types.three different mobile device types.
• We have two SAP mobile application areas in production with a third and a fourth planned.
• All US Sugar mobile apps for SAP use Syclo software.
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Syclo Smart Inventory Manager
• We have approx 75,000 sq ft of warehouse space and recently consolidated from 13 warehouses to 4.
• We wanted a system that could:– Wirelessly and tightly interface with SAP– Wirelessly and tightly interface with SAP
– Leverage barcodes for as many items as possible:• Reservations, part locations, parts, people (employee badges)
etc.
– Use a simple interface on minimal real estate.
– Be rugged and reliable.
– Help us further streamline processes and reduce cost.
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Syclo Smart Inventory Manager
• We also wanted a company that would be a partner, not just a vendor.
• We were a little nervous as Syclo did not have a live customer on ECC 6.0 at that time.
• Syclo worked closely with us to develop an EEC 6.0 solution that would work for US Sugar.
• Implementation of the first phase took longer than planned but was very successful.
• Project was on budget.
• We started in our smaller citrus warehouse.6/7/2010 12
Syclo Smart Inventory Manager
• We were able to:– Reduce cycle count time by a factor of 10.
– Gain an accurate picture of our inventory for the first time.
– Perform cycle counts with a frequency tied to stock – Perform cycle counts with a frequency tied to stock item criticality.
• This had other effects on the warehouse team:– They became comfortable with the technology and
excited about other potential opportunities.
– This led to the big sugar warehouses following suit.
– We began to take the parts kitting process mobile.
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Syclo Smart Inventory Manager
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Syclo Smart Rounds & Work Manager
• We wanted a handheld, wireless solution to be able to:
– Perform maintenance inspections based upon:• Inspection routes (“entry lists”).
• Functional locations.• Functional locations.
• Equipment.
• Measurement points.
– Create automatic notifications based on readings.
– Allow trending of measurement values such that predictive maintenance could be performed.
– Be easy to use with very little scope for error.
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Syclo Smart Rounds & Work Manager
• The existing paper process for route based inspections was:
– Inaccurate.
– Slow.
– Prone to error.– Prone to error.
– Prone to abuse.
– Purely reactive.
– Fundamentally broken.
• We chose Syclo again because of our existing relationship and server infrastructure.
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Syclo Smart Rounds & Work Manager
• Smart Rounds & Work Manager was implemented:
– In 2 months, ahead of schedule and under budget.
– With minimal IT involvement.
– With custom screen layouts, defaults and config.– With custom screen layouts, defaults and config.
• The project achieved all the desired objectives.
• Each mill area supervisor has an SAP variant -“What happened yesterday”.
• If the notification is approved, a WO is created and sent to a planner for scheduling.
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Next Steps
• Inventory Manager for W/H inventory receipts.
• Our agriculture department is looking to leverage Smart Rounds and Work Manager.
– Pilot project, loaning a handheld from the sugar mill using mill planner expertise for set-up.using mill planner expertise for set-up.
• Citrus processing want to use Smart Rounds and Work Manager later this year.
• We have a project in the pipeline to barcode and scan premium pulp in drums for citrus processing.
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Next Steps
• We are considering a barcoding and handheld project for our nursery:
– Barcode each tree for exception management and tracking through the life of the plant (even for our tree customers).customers).
– Barcode trays of trees during the growing and budding process in the nursery.
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Lessons Learned
• Start small.– Start in one area to gain confidence in the device and
the software.
• Like SAP, it’s best when user driven and owned.– That does take time to achieve, but is extremely – That does take time to achieve, but is extremely
powerful when it does work.
• Maximize the real estate and usability.– It’s a small device, take the time to make it as easy as
possible to use.
– Don’t be afraid to ask “can you make it do this?”
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Lessons Learned
• Take advantage of supporting technology– myMobiler – freeware to run Syclo on a PC (projector)
for training and config.
– For Smart Rounds & Work Manager, use Excel to create measurement points, drop down list groups and create measurement points, drop down list groups and inspection routes and then upload to SAP (LSMW).
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