As one of the world's largest suppliers of systems and components to the food, beverage and pharmaceutical industries, this international technology group, has built over many decades an unmatched competency in supplying complex plant, machinery and components to an ever-growing customer footprint. A modern supply chain such as this demands an increasing commitment to data quality. Thanks to a forward-looking top management team, this data quality is now being entrenched in the global SAP systems using Refresh Software.
Prior to licensing Refresh Desktop, the company was facing some real issues within the master data governance team. Despite having access to all the master data tools from SAP, including MDG, there existed no global classification schema in place to categorize/classify and describe spare parts in detail, and added to that, no translation tools were available to technically translate materials using tried-and-tested sets of engineering attributes, specific to each type of part being described.
Now that Refresh Desktop is being used, the team is leveraging the Refresh dictionary with mandatory attributes per material category to support implementation of a global data standard description including translation support for all key SAP languages. Refresh’s cleanse functionality also supports migration activities by standardizing descriptions, collating classification data and assigning external codes to enhance data with valuable information for procurement, import/export, engineering and the governance team, all prior loading it to SAP S4/Hana.
So far, high priority parts from 2 large divisions globally have been loaded (around 10 000 material masters), with Refresh Desktop providing the right noun-modifier class, characteristic specification template and characteristic values, fully translated. This will enable a timely go-live of each new division, delivering a full professional long and short description for each material, supporting customer order fulfilment right-first-time whilst optimizing supply chain working capital globally.