Case studies - global customers, multiple industries

Some interesting examples of our customers using Refresh AI Software on their data:

The world’s largest companies tend to have an enormous amount of items that they purchase globally in multiple languages and systems. There is often a significant hidden saving to be unlocked through prudent and targeted standardization efforts on these items, but it’s not without significant effort. In the past it didn’t make much sense to do it since, without algorithmic & AI automation, it ends up being an impractical task to do well fast. With Refresh software automation it is now much easier, so stubborn savings that were previously impractical are now firmly within reach.

This particular customer is a household-name Fortune 50 Chemical multinational with many materials – around 4 million SKU’s in their ERP systems spread around 200 sites in 35 countries worldwide. After demonstrating the potential for tangible savings on a successful test set of 10 000 Raw, Semi-Finished and Finished SKU’s, the global HQ in the USA signed up for a full global enterprise license of both Refresh Desktop and Refresh Server.

Case Study - AI Auto Materials and Services in SAP Read more

The World´s Largest Fine Paper Company

The world’s largest coated fine paper company was facing a challenge – how to ensure quality production and optimally manage an increasing number of materials, services and suppliers across multiple countries and languages. Two major strategies had been decided by the corporate procurement department: 1) to leverage Procurement by Spend Visibility / Spend Transparency across mills, and 2) to lower working capital by eliminating duplicates and permit sharing of critical items.

In terms of in-house Spend Analysis there already existed an internal SAP material group code but this was not consistently applied across the 340 000 material masters. Additionally, procurement selected UNSPSC as the benchmark external material group for spend reporting as well as two other important coding systems: ECCMA’s eOTD for commercially neutral material descriptions, and INTRASTAT/HTS for consistent commodity / VAT reporting.

Case Study - Auto SAP Material Masters - Global Paper Co. Read more

Global Top 5 University

For the last few years, one of the world’s leading universities has been working on a master data challenge in procurement – how to increase spend penetration in the right commodities with continued demonstrable savings for all shareholders. The university had already covered significant ground – with an excellent record in increasing the % spend covered over the last five years almost one hundred fold.

Even with this substantial success management had targeted even more future spend visibility and spend analysis for the majority of the university’s Purchase items, services and suppliers in the Oracle Financials system. In terms of in-house software tools, the organization had been running Oracle Financials successfully for many years as well as some best-of-breed reporting tools. However, the current tools were not the main problem – the underlying raw data was the real issue. It was extremely tough to get users to provide trustworthy spend classification across an extremely diverse group of commodity groups from stationery to building services to complex medical equipment.

Case Study - Auto UNSPSC Codes and Ontology for Oracle PO line items Read more

World’s Largest Mining & Commodities Company

The Nickel business unit of this global leader had just completed an SAP implementation and was looking to make significant procurement cost savings during a tough time for global commodity prices and volumes. Headquartered in Canada, with an annual managed production of more than 100,000 tons of nickel in seven countries, they had many lines of raw data passing through their ERP systems and now wanted to take the opportunity to drive better procurement decisions through standardization of their data.

Each site had an extremely diverse range of items of supply being bought daily from many suppliers through multiple purchasers in each country. They were running best of breed procurement tools however, the current tools were not the main problem – the underlying raw data was the real issue.

Case Study - Auto SAP Ontologies with UNSPSC and ISO8000 for MRO items Read more

Leading Sugar Co. in USA

For one of the world’s leading producers of sugar, a key challenge is always how to cut costs and spend on an increasing amount of materials from such a large supplier base. Their sugar plant is the largest, most technologically advanced, fully integrated cane sugar manufacturing facility in the world which means excellent production figures, but on the flip-side it also means quite a diverse range of items of supply being bought daily through many purchasing routes.

In terms of in-house software tools, the organization had been running SAP for many years as well as some best-of-breed Microsoft tools. However, the current tools were not the main problem – the underlying raw data was the real issue. It was extremely tough to get users to provide trustworthy spend classes / material groups across an extremely varied range of commodities - from services all the way through to specific bagasse-fired boiler spare parts. The main problem remained: how best to automatically tag all materials and purchase line items to UNSPSC?

Case Study - Auto UNSPSC Codes for SAP PO line items Read more

World’s Largest Gas Distributor

A key business issue for large energy companies is how to optimally manage CapEx represented by increasing project data, assets, spares, services, and suppliers across multiple projects & phases. Three major decisions had been agreed by the corporate supply chain & engineering departments: 1) to mandate to suppliers the full practical technical & purchasing data to be supplied early at RFP/RFI stage; 2) to build internal data knowledge in the Oil & Gas engineering data standards and purchasing specifications in-house as a foundation for their growing E&P assets; and 3) to make sure that these standards could be future-proofed – made valid across the whole asset lifecycle & integrated in Intergraph, PIM, Maximo and SAP for engineering operations and procurement – not just handed over “as designed”. The company had tried to solve the problem previously using a master data management system and outsourced data company but the underlying data and skills, particularly the characteristics and class library needed was the missing link.

Case Study - Auto ISO classes, ontology for SAP and Maximo items Read more

Global Top 3 Wood Products Company

With acquired operations in seven countries and on three continents, it had become very challenging to standardize any significant amount of procured materials and services for this large wood products multinational company. Items were being bought daily through many operational buyers in five different languages, some in countries where the head office language is not well-known. In terms of existing software tools, the organization had been running SAP for many years extremely well. However, the underlying material and service line item data was the real issue with 200 000 materials in the SAP system in a mix of 5 languages with duplicates, obsoletes and incorrectly / incompletely classified items.

The question was: how best to automatically clean and standardize these 200 000 materials correctly and simultaneously in all five languages in seven countries. And after that: how to keep them standardized and ensure this data standardization globally, at first point of entry?

Case Study - Auto UNSPSC and SAP item text generations Read more

Canadian Government Owned Power Co.

This Canadian Power Company manages some 600 000 MRO materials and services across multiple ERP systems and 75 locations. An in-house strategic P2P (procure to pay) initiative aimed to identify and categorize all materials and services procurement lines using the United Nations Standard Products and Services Code (UNSPSC). UNSPSC as well as internal material group / category was to be mapped to each of the 600 000 Materials and Services and then updated in Passport, Maximo and SAP to facilitate:

• consistent, accurate and uniform tracking of company spend

• easy company-wide visibility of all items, MRO in particular;

• the further development of strategies, benchmarks & analytics for strategic sourcing.

Case Study - AI Auto UNSPSC and SAP material groups Read more

Fortune 500 Consumer Goods Co. in USA

Master and transactional data within the supply chain in a large global business normally conceals a substantial number of duplicated items. These items almost always hide a significant saving which can only be unlocked through a deep standardization and then a de-duplication initiative.

This particular customer is a household-name Fortune 500 consumer goods company with many well-known brands to be found in almost every home in the United States. The supply process spans from sourcing and farming, production and packing and all the way through to delivery of the packaged consumer SKU at the supermarket.

Management was well aware of the potential for savings through standardization of all supply chain materials, but their teams had struggled in the past to get to grips with the half-a-million different items being purchased, stocked or sold, and especially indirect materials. Without software automation the project would simply not have been attempted.

Case Study - Auto-find Duplicates in SAP for USA CPG Co Read more

Global Top 10 Aluminium Company

With more than 30 years of excellence in high-quality aluminium production, the company expects the same high-quality standards for its master data. Being the world’s largest single site aluminium smelter with a captive power station means having close to 100 000 material masters in one SAP plant. The major facilities spread over 500 hectares (six square kilometers) include a 3 million metric tonne per- annum primary production, a 4000 megawatt power station, a 50 million gallon per day water desalination plant and a significant shipping port. Some years back the company had quickly implemented SAP and was dealing with the practical challenges of how to leverage the system to achieve its expected benefits. A previous effort of outsourcing the material data cleansing to a well-known off-shore data cleansing company had not achieved the level of quality desired and so the main problem remained: How best to increase the data quality of the existing materials, especially with consistent commercial and technical short and long descriptions & characteristics?

Case Study - AI Auto SAP Spare Parts Description and Enrichment Read more

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