Projects

Automated SAP Data Integration & Quality Assurance

Executive Summary & Objective

Objective: Eliminate manual bottlenecks and data entry errors in the raw material receiving process for master steel coils.

The existing process required teams to manually download, cross-reference and log extensive vendor material specifications into SAP before Accounts Payable (AP) could release payments. The goal was to automate data ingestion, standardize quality checks across multiple manufacturing plants and accelerate payment processing to capture early-payment incentives.

rolls of steel are lined up in a warehouse
rolls of steel are lined up in a warehouse

The Challenges

  • Capital Leakage: Delays in manual material data entry caused early payment discounts (0.5% of gross material costs) to expire before AP processing could occur.

  • Extreme Volatility & Volume: Received millions of pounds of steel per quarter, with a massive influx arriving in the first month, creating severe operational bottlenecks.

  • Data Complexity: Each master coil required tracking twenty unique technical specifications, resulting in roughly 50,000+ new data points to manage every four months.

  • System Friction: Users had to navigate and populate multiple distinct screens within SAP for every material coil.

  • Quality & Consistency Risks: Manual entry led to inaccurate material characteristics, triggering administrative rework. Furthermore, varying data-logging standards across different manufacturing plants created a fragmented, inconsistent database.

The Impact & Takeaways

  • 80% Reduction in Cycle Time: Cut transaction processing time by 80%, eliminating the bottleneck and enabling AP to consistently secure early-payment discounts.

  • Cross-Plant Standardization: Scaled and adopted the tool across multiple manufacturing facilities, establishing a single, consistent corporate standard for material data integrity.

  • Proactive Quality Control: Shifted quality control upstream; early identification of non-conforming steel minimized production rework and streamlined vendor compliance.

Supply Chain EDI Integration with Steel Vendor
Executive Summary & Objective

Objective: Modernize and automate the procurement data pipeline to increase data velocity, accuracy, and real-time material visibility across manufacturing and processing facilities.

The manual exchange of procurement documents via email created operational lag and increased data entry risks. This initiative sought to establish a direct, native Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) integration between the internal ERP system and a Tier-1 steel vendor. Initially deployed to automate 12.5k supply chain documents per quarter at a single facility, the architecture was engineered to scale across all manufacturing plants, bringing the total enterprise impact to approximately 37,500+ documents per quarter.

aerial view of city
aerial view of city

The Challenges

  • ERP Compatibility & Technical Feasibility: Required a comprehensive technical mapping of both systems' capabilities to ensure seamless data alignment between disparate ERP platforms.

  • Cross-Functional Technical Coordination: Initiating and aligning multi-organizational IT support teams across both internal departments and external vendor networks.

  • Scalability Constraints: Designing a solution robust enough to handle a single facility's localized needs while keeping the underlying framework standard enough to deploy enterprise wide.

  • Change Management & Stakeholder Buy-In: Securing operational buy-in from purchasing, logistics, and plant leadership who were accustomed to legacy email-driven workflows.

The Solution

Led the cross-functional scoping and technical framework design for a secure, automated EDI integration to bypass manual data touchpoints:

  • End-to-End Document Automation: Replaced manual email exchanges with secure, system-to-system EDI mapping for five critical document types: Purchase Orders (POs), Order Acknowledgments, Material Documents, Shipping Documents, and Billing/Invoices.

  • Real-Time Logistics Visibility: Enabled a continuous data pipeline that feeds real-time transit and compliance information directly into native manufacturing systems.

  • Scalable Architecture Blueprint: Built the initial deployment with a standardized data model, ensuring it could easily replicate across other business units (processors) without requiring custom development from scratch.

The Impact & Takeaways

  • Immediate Local Relief: Successfully automated the processing of 12.5k documents quarterly at the pilot plant, liberating staff from repetitive data entry and accelerating supply chain velocity.

  • Enterprise-Wide Scalability: Created an enterprise-ready framework capable of processing 37.5K+ documents quarterly when fully deployed across all corporate manufacturing plants.

  • Eliminated Communication Latency: Moved the organization from lagging email updates and input delay into instant, native notifications, drastically improving inventory planning and production scheduling.

  • Strategic Blueprint for Scaling: Successfully managed stakeholder alignment and cross-organizational IT collaboration, creating a highly repeatable technical framework for future vendor onboarding.