On Nov. 7, 2017, Gainesville Regional Utilities (GRU), a municipal-owned utility provider, acquired the biomass facility formerly known as Gainesville Renewable Energy Center (GREC) and renamed it Deerhaven Renewable Generating Station (DHR). There was a lot of prep work for the change of ownership. But after the sale was complete, the hard work of integrating staff, equipment, and materials into the GRU culture began.
Challenges:
- Adding a new plant into SAP system
- Developing process for adding materials and quantities
- Cleaning up data of around 5,000 materials from legacy system for transition
- Change management: transition time of purchase to inventory go-live date, including business processes and training for personnel
Solutions:
- Develop and record process for adding plant
- Develop and record processes for mass adding different materials types—retain this for future use for loading data with EAM implementation
- Review, modification, and clean-up of all data associated with legacy system prior to load into SAP
- Transition plan for moving from their processes to ours
Key Business Benefits:
- Step-by-step documentation for adding a new plant into our existing system
- Processes developed for mass adding different material types, which will be used prior to EAM implementation
- Change management: development of good working relationship with personnel from new plant as they learn our processes
