SAP S/4HANA Manufacturing Case Study: Real-Time Planning Across Plants

Three plants, three systems, an overnight close

Each plant ran its own system, and group finance pulled the numbers together overnight in batch jobs. By the time a report was ready, it was already a day behind, and nobody could see live cost or stock across the group.

• Plant systems did not share a common data model.
• Finance consolidated overnight, so the books were always a day late.
• Group inventory was hard to value because stock sat in separate ledgers.
• The month-end close took nine days of manual reconciliation.

One SAP S/4HANA platform, updated in real time

We rolled out SAP S/4HANA on a single instance across all three plants, with the universal journal, embedded analytics and real-time material planning. Production and finance now read from the same live data.

• One instance and one data model across every plant.
• The universal journal posts finance and controlling together.
• Real-time material planning replaces overnight batch runs.
• Embedded analytics give live cost and stock without a separate report build.

A phased rollout that kept every plant running

We started with a global template, piloted it at the largest plant, then rolled it to the other two with the lessons built in. Cutover ran over a weekend per plant so production never stopped for long.

Go-live took sixteen weeks, with TCB on site for each plant cutover and the first month-end close.

A three-day close and inventory under control

The month-end close fell from nine days to three because the data is already consolidated and live. Inventory dropped 22 percent once planning worked from one real-time view, and leaders see group cost as work happens.