Meet the Speakers

Matt Flood

VP of IT, Prestige Brands

Leveraging SAP Integrated Business Planning for Record-Breaking Growth at Prestige Brands

Prestige Brands decided to grow the business from $250 million to $1 billion in revenue.…

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Barrie Corp

Supply Chain Manager, Gainesville Regional Utilities

Data Management for Operational Success at Gainesville Regional Utilities

On Nov. 7, 2017, Gainesville Regional Utilities (GRU), a municipal-owned utility provider, acquired the biomass…

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Kumar Prashant

SAP Solution Architect, Belimo Americas

Belimo Americas Leverages Robotics for Fully Automatic Warehouse with Integrated Shipping

Learn how Belimo Americas, a global market leader in the development, production, and marketing of…

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Tina Jeyasekhar

Senior ERP Business Analyst, Johns Hopkins Health System

Business Procurement so Easy, Who Needs Training!

Experience the journey of Johns Hopkins in implementing an SAP Fiori® one-stop shopping cart application…

Read more >

Ken Harvey

Warehouse Supervisor, Loudoun Water

Loudoun Water Adopts Mobile Warehouse Management to Improve Productivity, Accuracy, and User Experience

The Loudoun Water inventory team conducted an internal review if its inventory management and warehouse…

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Tim Szendel

Director of Supply Chain Technology, Rockwell Collins

Achieving Supply Chain Operational Excellence

Learn how the integration of DSI’s supply chain apps with SAP ECC and SAP S/4HANA®…

Read more >

Rhonda Dawes

Purchasing Operations Director, Caesars Entertainment

Transaction Optimization: Sourcing Transformation Through Automation with SAP Ariba

Caesars Entertainment sets its sights high in delivering best-in-class sourcing practices and selected SAP® Ariba®…

Read more >

Mark Mullins

Project Manager, Ford Motor Company

Ford Motor Company’s EWM Implementation: Strategy, Challenges, and Lessons Learned

In this session, Ford Motor Company’s business and IT global EWM implementation managers will share…

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Dave Merko

Procurement Supervisor, Nutrien

Mergers Are Tricky, Nutrien’s Material Master Data Project

Join this session to leverage key lessons learned at Agrium for implementing a material master…

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Dr. Marc Teerlink

MBA/MBI - Global VP, Intelligent Enterprise Solutions and Artificial Intelligence, SAP

The AI Goldrush: How Do I Make Money off Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning?

We’re on the verge of the artificial intelligence (AI) gold rush. And just like past…

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Rudy Rios

SAP Solutions Architect, Monster Beverage Corporation

Monster Energy Transforms Its Product Launch Process

Learn how Monster Energy digitized and streamlined its product launch process with Winshuttle’s New Product…

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Christina Braud

Maintenance Support Team Lead, Shell

From Miserable BoMs to Visual BoMs at Shell Upstream Deepwater Gulf of Mexico

Shell Upstream Deepwater Gulf of Mexico has consistently received feedback that we need to improve…

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David Carroll

Associate Partner, Reveal

Strategically Considering SAP S/4HANA? What the Business Community Can Do Now to Prepare for the Impending Technology Change

The current digital wave is an indication of how fast the market can change direction and leave…

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Patrick Crampton-Thomas

VP Supply Chain, SAP

Enabling the Intelligent Enterprise: SAP Supply Chain and Asset Management Strategy for Digital Transformation

This keynote will highlight key observations from SAP customers, what changes they are having to…

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Jannell MacAulay, Ph.D.

Retired Lieutenant Colonel and Director Human Performance and Leadership, U.S. Air Force

Healthy Leader, Healthy Team

Focus on your personal human performance to better serve and lead your organization. Leaders set…

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Know Yourself. Lead Yourself. Lead Others.

Effective leadership is grounded in trust. However, you have to build relationships with those you…

Read more >

Joel Kreider

Global Supply Chain Supervisor, Hess Corporation

Hess Adopts Mobile Warehouse Management to Improve Productivity, Accuracy, and User Experience

Materials management processes at Hess Corporation relied on manual entry of material information, which increased…

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Justin Burnett

VP of Materials Management and Warehousing, BP America

BP Optimized Capital and Process Efficiencies Through Standardized and Consistent Approach with SAP for Supply Chain

Find out how BP’s Upstream organization extracted value across the global supply chain by using…

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Baskar Radhakrishnan

Senior Director, SAP Value Engineering, NTT DATA Services

Redefining MRO and Procurement Transformation in the Digital Age with SAP Ariba

Learn how Evergreen Packaging started its digitalization journey with SAP® Ariba® to simplify the indirect…

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Richard Kirker

Solution Owner, SAP

SAP Extended Warehouse Management: – More Innovations and Deployment Options

This session will cover the latest innovations in SAP EWM as well as new deployment…

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Paul Kurchina

Global EAM Thought Leader, ASUG

Journey to the Intelligent Enterprise: Customer Stories

Every day, organizations around the world are achieving incredible success with SAP technology in their…

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Justin Ladenburger

Director of Enterprise Solutions, Vesta Partners

Redefining Asset Management in the Digital World

Join SAP and Vesta Partners in a conversation about the digitalization of asset management and…

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Dominic Brennan

Director, Vesta Partners

SAP S/4HANA 101—Vesta’s EAM Codex

This session combines the 101 for SAP S/4HANA® 1809 with the accelerators and complementary products contained…

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Sanjay Srivastava

Director of SAP, GEC Packaging Technologies

Redefining MRO and Procurement Transformation in the Digital Age with SAP Ariba

Learn how Evergreen Packaging started its digitalization journey with SAP® Ariba® to simplify the indirect…

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Raquel McElyea

Vice President Operational Excellence, Dorman Products

Journey to a Paperless Warehouse in SAP WM

Upon selecting SAP to be our new ERP, we decided after careful review to stay…

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Tim McLain

Senior Manager of Warehouse and Inventory Management, Incitec Pivot Limited

Master Data Managed

After 25 years on SAP and next to zero effort on master data, Incitec Pivot…

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Erik Schrampf

Solution Expert, Digital Supply Chain Center of Excellence, SAP America

Redefining Asset Management in the Digital World

Join SAP and Vesta Partners in a conversation about the digitalization of asset management and…

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Martin Rowan

Senior Partner, Reveal

Are You Mature Enough for S/4? Greenfield or Brownfield: A Business Discussion on How to Make the Right Investment Decision

To be or not to be… Organizations running SAP are thinking about or planning to…

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Strategically Considering SAP S/4HANA? What the Business Community Can Do Now to Prepare for the Impending Technology Change

The current digital wave is an indication of how fast the market can change direction and leave…

Read more >

Andy Hancock

North America Regional Lead, Innovation and Industry 4.0, Digital Supply Chain, SAP

Journey to the Intelligent Enterprise: Customer Stories

Every day, organizations around the world are achieving incredible success with SAP technology in their…

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Redefining Asset Management in the Digital World

Join SAP and Vesta Partners in a conversation about the digitalization of asset management and…

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Murali Karra

Advisor, Puget Sound Energy

Puget Sound Energy Shines a Light on Warehouse Efficiency with SAP EWM

Learn how Puget Sound Energy (PSE) modernized the warehouse operations supporting its gas and electric…

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Michael Moore

Senior Manager, Application Technical Architect, NASA

NASA’s Journey to SAP Extended Procurement, Public Sector, and Regulated Industries Extension

This session will detail the journey of the NASA procurement community, beginning with the implementation…

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Bruce Birdsong

Manager, Information Technology, Ford Motor Company

Ford Motor Company’s EWM Implementation: Strategy, Challenges, and Lessons Learned

In this session, Ford Motor Company’s business and IT global EWM implementation managers will share…

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Martin Stenzig

Chief Technology Officer, Vesta Partners

SAP S/4HANA 101—Vesta’s EAM Codex

This session combines the 101 for SAP S/4HANA® 1809 with the accelerators and complementary products contained…

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Michelle Bianchi

Director, Strategic Sourcing, Marketing Portfolio, Caesars Entertainment

Transaction Optimization: Sourcing Transformation Through Automation with SAP Ariba

Caesars Entertainment sets its sights high in delivering best-in-class sourcing practices and selected SAP® Ariba®…

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Greg Courtney

Senior Business Process Analyst, Johns Manville

Enhance ERP and Deliver Business Value by Deploying Modern Applications

Business expectations of IT solutions continue to grow with business stakeholders demanding modern, user-friendly applications,…

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Bill King

Director, Southern California Edison (SCE) Solution Management, SAP

SAP Transportation Management – Innovations and New Strategies

There have been a lot of recent innovations in the SAP Transportation Management (SAP TM)…

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Bob Carver

VP, Cloud Inventory Solutions, DSI

Achieving Supply Chain Operational Excellence

Learn how the integration of DSI’s supply chain apps with SAP ECC and SAP S/4HANA®…

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Lynnanne Catron

Assistant VP of IT, Norfolk Southern Corporation

EAM Journey at Norfolk Southern: Turning Vision into Reality

Norfolk Southern (NS) faces the same key business challenges related to asset management as many…

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Tom Wery

Maintenance Systems Project Leader, Kohler Corporation

How to Decide Your Future Road Map in SAP S/4HANA for MRO

SAP is undergoing significant change. New SAP S/4HANA® core offerings, changes related to SAP Extended…

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Randy Bradley

Assistant Professor of Information Systems and Supply Chain Management, University of Tennessee

Digital Innovation: The Kryptonite for Digital Disruption

This session will stretch your thinking about the value and impact of digital supply chains…

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Phani Wuppalapati

Senior Advisor, Southern California Edison

MRP: Inventory Management and Work Management Integration

Inventory management and material requirements planning (MRP) utilization are truly dependent on each other. Almost…

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Peter Aynsley-Hartwell

Chief Technology Officer, Utopia Global

Smarter Data Management for Your Enterprise Asset Data

Data is your company’s most valuable asset, but ensuring master data integrity is a key…

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Mike Jordan

VP, EAM Practice, Utopia Global

Smarter Data Management for Your Enterprise Asset Data

Data is your company’s most valuable asset, but ensuring master data integrity is a key…

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Denise Powell

Director - Global Business Development, Supply Chain & Procurement, Vesta

How to Decide Your Future Road Map in SAP S/4HANA for MRO

SAP is undergoing significant change. New SAP S/4HANA® core offerings, changes related to SAP Extended…

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Bob Pennington

Senior Analyst and Non-Hydrocarbon Logistics SAP Systems Team Lead, CITGO Petroleum Corp.

Exploring the Synergies of Maintenance and Procurement Systems

Procurement and maintenance departments alike have pressures and competing priorities that keep planners and buyers…

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Sean Elliffe

Senior Partner, Reveal

Are You Mature Enough for S/4? Greenfield or Brownfield: A Business Discussion on How to Make the Right Investment Decision

To be or not to be… Organizations running SAP are thinking about or planning to…

Read more >

BP Optimized Capital and Process Efficiencies Through Standardized and Consistent Approach with SAP for Supply Chain

Find out how BP’s Upstream organization extracted value across the global supply chain by using…

Read more >

Strategically Considering SAP S/4HANA? What the Business Community Can Do Now to Prepare for the Impending Technology Change

The current digital wave is an indication of how fast the market can change direction and leave…

Read more >

Cindy Hoffman

Senior Manager, Enterprise Data Governance, Xcel Energy

Creating Enterprise Information Excellence in a Complex Utilities Environment

Every data transformation has its challenges, especially when working with large teams, multiple systems, and…

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John Olson

Supervisor Central Stores, Puget Sound Energy

Puget Sound Energy Shines a Light on Warehouse Efficiency with SAP EWM

Learn how Puget Sound Energy (PSE) modernized the warehouse operations supporting its gas and electric…

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Amy Gonzalez

Technical Specialist, Southern California Edison

MRP: Inventory Management and Work Management Integration

Inventory management and material requirements planning (MRP) utilization are truly dependent on each other. Almost…

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Kieran Dawson

Director of ERP Solutions, Pfizer

Redefining Safety Stock and Strategic Inventory Management at Pfizer

Leveraging the SAP Enterprise Inventory and Service-Level Optimization (EIS) tool, Pfizer can now calculate optimal…

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Armando De La Ree

Business Process Expert, Raytheon

Holistic Organizational Health Check: A Solution for Your Evolution

We are constantly looking for continuous improvement and ways to transform and enrich our organizations.…

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Colin Kirkwood

Asset Management, Coal Assets Australia, Glencore Coal Australia

Fit for “Our” Purpose Road Map: Making Simple, Yet Significant Change for Business Benefits

Most SAP journeys start out with a period of significant change as the business learns…

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Preeti Khurana

Senior Software Engineer, Johns Hopkins Health System

Business Procurement so Easy, Who Needs Training!

Experience the journey of Johns Hopkins in implementing an SAP Fiori® one-stop shopping cart application…

Read more >

Andy Zimmer

Materials and Logistics, Hess Corporation

Hess Adopts Mobile Warehouse Management to Improve Productivity, Accuracy, and User Experience

Materials management processes at Hess Corporation relied on manual entry of material information, which increased…

Read more >

Laura McLennan

Analyst, Master Data, Governance & Systems, Nutrien

Mergers Are Tricky, Nutrien’s Material Master Data Project

Join this session to leverage key lessons learned at Agrium for implementing a material master…

Read more >

 
 

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Leveraging SAP Integrated Business Planning for Record-Breaking Growth at Prestige Brands

Prestige Brands decided to grow the business from $250 million to $1 billion in revenue. Recognizing that the current infrastructure could not support this growth, Prestige Brands set out to find a new ERP system and rolled out a full SAP implementation in just 10 months. The next step was to free up the sales team from manual processes and data entry work. Implementing SAP Integrated Business Planning allowed the sales team to focus on more strategic work and created an accurate planning tool to support teams in offices across the globe. The acquisition of five new brands came with relative ease, given that there was a technology infrastructure in place to support the growth.

Key Business Benefits:

• Discover how Prestige Brands was able to quadruple business with an IT team of just 10.

• Learn implementation best practices and change management techniques.

• Hear what’s next for Prestige Brands as they roll out demand planning and forecasting in the U.S. and Australian offices.

Data Management for Operational Success at Gainesville Regional Utilities

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

Belimo Americas Leverages Robotics for Fully Automatic Warehouse with Integrated Shipping

Learn how Belimo Americas, a global market leader in the development, production, and marketing of actuator solutions for controlling heating, ventilation, and air conditioning systems, overcame significant inefficiencies and excessive financial resources with their deployment of warehouse artificial intelligence (AI) and SAP shipping integration.

Belimo executed order processing logistics with robotic arms that pull products using warehouse totes and deliver them to the correct packing stations for comprehensive packing and shipping functionality.

Complete state-of-the-art automation combined ingenious business rules for selecting optimal packaging materials and shipping carriers, along with real-time shipment processing and updating of information in SAP. The fully configurable solution eliminated unnecessary interfaces with third-party solutions while automating warehouse processes and improving freight cost analysis.

Key Business Benefits:

• Warehouse automation increased the number of orders processed per day by over 40 percent.

• Real-time integration with shipping carriers streamlined shipping processes, reduced shipping costs, and provided real-time visibility.

• Belimo increased revenue by $500,000 per day using warehouse automation.

Business Procurement so Easy, Who Needs Training!

Experience the journey of Johns Hopkins in implementing an SAP Fiori® one-stop shopping cart application with punch-out capability designed for simple shoppers. It provides the best of both worlds, combining the power of SAP with the online shopping experience of Amazon. We would like to share our story on the design approach, challenges faced, and lessons learned during this implementation.

Key Business Benefits:


  • Minimal data entry

  • No training

  • Flexibility to procure from desktop and mobile

Loudoun Water Adopts Mobile Warehouse Management to Improve Productivity, Accuracy, and User Experience

The Loudoun Water inventory team conducted an internal review if its inventory management and warehouse administrative processes. Two main areas were identified that required immediate attention: Better utilization of SAP Material Management software and enhancement of material management and EAM business processes.

The inventory team receiving, transferring, returning, tagging, and counting processes—approximately 27,000 transactions per year—for materials were being done manually. The manual processes created duplication of effort, less transparency, and inefficient use of staff’s time.

Senior staff, in coordination with the inventory team, determined that bar coding would be the best solution with the goal of streamlining work processes, improving accessibility, and increasing timeliness and accuracy of the material master data. With a bar code solution in play, the system would support complete material tracking and provide Loudoun Water with the ability to increase productivity and quality management. In addition, material entry would be more accurate and material flow would be automated, tracked, and controlled.

Key Business Benefits:


  • 30 percent acceleration in goods receipt process time and higher data capture accuracy

  • 60 percent decrease in truck count times and cycle count times

  • Real-time physical inventory movement visibility in SAP accelerates operational clock speed

Achieving Supply Chain Operational Excellence

Learn how the integration of DSI’s supply chain apps with SAP ECC and SAP S/4HANA® can help you achieve supply chain operational excellence. This session will focus on Rockwell Collins and its path to success.

Key Business Benefits:


  • Real-time transactions and inventory visibility and flexible receiving and put-away

  • Consolidated picking and effective cycle counting

  • Overall productivity gains

Transaction Optimization: Sourcing Transformation Through Automation with SAP Ariba

Caesars Entertainment sets its sights high in delivering best-in-class sourcing practices and selected SAP® Ariba® to accomplish this goal. As for Caesars and most other industries, one essential cornerstone of emphasis is automation. Purchasing automation allows for several key benefits to be realized:


  • Optimizes labor costs

  • Reduces the chance of process or strategy failure

  • Improves spend visibility and quality

  • Provides an easy ordering experience for our team members

  • Allows strategic sourcing to focus on strategic initiatives


In 2012, when Caesars stood up a complete procurement solution, the goal was to bring in polished, strategic-level skill sets and allow automation to manage the simpler transactions. This approach allows team members to be focused on value-add activities and allows the system to manage the simple day-to-day transactions.

Using SAP Ariba, the strategic sourcing department’s transactions are now around 80 percent automation and about 20 percent unplanned requests that need to be facilitated outside of normal pipeline events.

Ford Motor Company’s EWM Implementation: Strategy, Challenges, and Lessons Learned

In this session, Ford Motor Company’s business and IT global EWM implementation managers will share best practices, implementation challenges, lessons learned, and their future global implementation vision for Ford’s EWM implementation.

Key topics that will be presented in this session include Ford’s implementation strategy and timeline, integration with service parts planning, implementation challenges, supporting an EWM network, and an overview of Ford’s future plans for a global implementation of the SAP Service Parts Management suite, global process template, and migration to SAP S/4HANA®.

There will be time for Q&A with the presenters.

Mergers Are Tricky, Nutrien’s Material Master Data Project

Join this session to leverage key lessons learned at Agrium for implementing a material master data governance project. In 2016, Agrium undertook a project to improve the quality of its material master data and implement a robust governance process to meet a host of stakeholder requirements. The project was intended to improve the planning and scheduling process, but due the difficulty of selling a foundational data project, it was necessary to sell the project using a procurement savings approach.

After the merger of Agrium and Potash Corp in 2018 to form Nutrien, they were able to leverage many of the same lessons learned to scale the project and integrate the systems and data of the two different ERP systems.

Key Business Benefits:


  • Ease of material master data creation, editing, and expending for planners, including bill of materials (BOM) updates

  • A large reduction of "free text" material requisitions, improving procurement efficiencies

  • Expanded scope of outline purchasing agreements (information records), improving maintenance, repair, and overhaul (MRO) price negotiating power

The AI Goldrush: How Do I Make Money off Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning?

We’re on the verge of the artificial intelligence (AI) gold rush. And just like past gold rushes that have occurred in the past, a minority of players will make money from finding the gold. Yet, many more will become wealthy by living off the miners with food, supplies, and services.

Corporate innovation centers, startups, and incumbent tech companies have started using AI and machine learning to solve real business problems in domains such as enterprise asset management, procurement, contract management, supply chain management, and across industries such as manufacturing, consumer packaged goods, health care, transportation, energy, and nearly every other industry beyond high tech. The profound transformation for knowledge workers and professionals will be that AI and machine learning doesn’t do their job, but rather, humans will decide when to tell machine learning to do the work. This is a prime example of the human component of machine learning and the importance of creativity when machine learning is in play.

By 2020, experts predict that 50 billion things will become connected to the internet. To put this in perspective, that means nearly seven connected things for every person on the planet. Current predictions are that $19 trillion of value will be created as billions of things, data, business processes, and people become connected.

There will of course be success stories from companies that pan for gold and strike it rich. But the real economic growth will come to those selling the picks, shovels, and jeans equivalents for AI and machine learning.

Monster Energy Transforms Its Product Launch Process

Learn how Monster Energy digitized and streamlined its product launch process with Winshuttle’s New Product Introduction solution. You’ll learn how the company empowered people in the business to own the data and process, thus building a sustainable, systematic workflow, resulting in improved data quality, increased launch capacity, and clear visibility to tracking progress.

Monster was able to reduce the lead time for initial material setup by over 50 percent. Furthermore, data entry errors were significantly reduced by adding defaults and rules while data ownership and accountability resides within business groups. This allowed the master data management group to focus on data governance. This new workflow process allows Monster to better allocate people resources, improve data gathering efforts, and support a centralized database repository that includes reporting.

Key Business Benefits:


  • Improved data quality

  • Increased launch capacity

  • Clear visibility to tracking results

From Miserable BoMs to Visual BoMs at Shell Upstream Deepwater Gulf of Mexico

Shell Upstream Deepwater Gulf of Mexico has consistently received feedback that we need to improve our bills of materials (BoMs) to ensure we get the right parts offshore at the right time. Significant man-hours are consumed to research, validate, and order parts for maintenance activities. Inaccuracies in the current material master records (MMRs) and BoMs cause delays, rework, and poor-quality repairs that can result in unnecessary facility maintenance spend, production deferment, and/or regulatory attention. End users have little confidence in existing MMRs and BoMs and often defer to purchasing generic material specified by vendors, sometimes without an outline agreement. But how bad is it? Here are a few statistics:


  • As many as 70-80 percent of all MMRs are inaccurate or duplicated.

  • Over 20 percent of all MMRs have no manufacturer listed.

  • Over 20 percent of all MMRs have no manufacturer part number.


The result is BoM usage hovering around 5-10 percent. So, what is the path forward?

A zero-based BoM project was piloted on one of our offshore platforms. The pilot was designed to incorporate three distinct phases…build, fix, and sustain. The scope of the BoM project includes:

  • Creation of complete and accurate BoMs for centrifugal pumps and some non-solar compressors

  • Creation of an illustrated parts book (visual BoMs) for applicable equipment

  • Adoption of a BoM sustainment program


While the pilot is still underway, thus far the visual BoMs have been very well received by our end users (maintenance planning team members and technicians). It takes the guesswork out of ordering materials and will definitely help eliminate rework and increase maintenance planning efficiency. Over the past three months, we have created illustrated parts catalogs for 35 pumps and one compressor.

Strategically Considering SAP S/4HANA? What the Business Community Can Do Now to Prepare for the Impending Technology Change

The current digital wave is an indication of how fast the market can change direction and leave many companies unprepared. Most value chains are not geared for these radical changes, and most companies are finding that huge efforts are required within current supply chain design in order to cope with the market changes and new market demands. This unique workshop helps prepare the business community for the new technology by offering proven guidelines to reduce purchasing spend, optimize inventory, increase production capacity, improve supplier performance, reduce lead times, and increase services levels. Not only does this prepare the business for the prospect of SAP S/4HANA®, but the savings generated will help pay for the technology investment. Learn how to identify practical and tangible value opportunities quickly with tactical techniques and tools that enable you to ensure ROI within six to 12 months.

Enabling the Intelligent Enterprise: SAP Supply Chain and Asset Management Strategy for Digital Transformation

This keynote will highlight key observations from SAP customers, what changes they are having to respond to in the market, and key approaches and initiatives to transform and gain competitive advantage.

Hear how SAP is helping customers establish a digital platform across design to operate business processes and adding intelligence for improved decision support and automation. This will include a deeper dive in the areas of digital business planning, digital logistics, and digital assets.

Healthy Leader, Healthy Team

Focus on your personal human performance to better serve and lead your organization. Leaders set the tone of an organization. Their behavior and leadership style set the conditions for success or failure. Learn how a focus on your personal human performance can help you better serve and lead your organization. We will discuss cutting-edge research on mindfulness, nutrition, physical fitness, sleep, and human connection; specifically, how self-love and teamwork are foundational to effective leadership. We will also discuss ideas for developing a high-performing culture using evidence-based human performance initiatives.

Know Yourself. Lead Yourself. Lead Others.

Effective leadership is grounded in trust. However, you have to build relationships with those you lead and work with in order to facilitate a culture of trust…and it starts with having a relationship with yourself. You have to know yourself in order to lead yourself; a necessary first step before leading others. Learn how to use a two-pronged, relationship-based approach for being an effective leader. Rooted in a love of self, you must first develop a relationship with YOU. Who are you? What is it that you value? What is your philosophy in life, and thus, your leadership? Second, you need to develop a deeper relationship with those around you. Who are they? What is it that they value? Learn how to deepen these relationships through exercises and affective learning so that you can be a high-performing, trusted, and effective leader.

Hess Adopts Mobile Warehouse Management to Improve Productivity, Accuracy, and User Experience

Materials management processes at Hess Corporation relied on manual entry of material information, which increased the possibility of human error and caused bottlenecks across several processes.  Incomplete and manual entries also often resulted in inventory inaccuracies, leading to additional material orders, needlessly increasing inventory and needed storage space, and unexpected unavailability of materials that interfere with operations and production.

Hess implemented the mobile warehouse solution that provides a real-time, role-based, and intuitive user interface into SAP to transform how warehouse operators create value for the business. The mobile solution gets paired with rugged barcode scanning peripherals and portable label printers to drive speed and accuracy in data capture and labeling. The digital transformation aimed to enable the workforce to perform its tasks better and easier than before and increase employee satisfaction.

Key Business Benefits:


  • Over 100 percent acceleration in goods receipt process time and higher data capture accuracy

  • Real-time physical inventory movement visibility in SAP accelerates operational clock speed

  • Improvements in employee satisfaction and reduction in change management costs

BP Optimized Capital and Process Efficiencies Through Standardized and Consistent Approach with SAP for Supply Chain

Find out how BP’s Upstream organization extracted value across the global supply chain by using SAP and implementing it across BP’s regional assets. Focusing on working in SAP to drive value in the business, BP leveraged the tool with deep organizational and process integration to achieve a mindset shift in its end-to-end supply chain processes while driving a standardized approach to global performance management.

BP has witnessed how improving knowledge of the end-to-end supply chain process, using SAP, has led to the elimination of organizational silos via a collaborative, process-aligned team utilizing real-time data and a defined governance structure. Shifting the focus to an exception management process redirected efforts to proactive supplier management versus reactive chasing of late materials. With standard indicators developed across the organization, it achieved consistency in measuring performance across the regional business units with better identification of continuous improvement opportunities.

Key Business Benefits:


  • Reviewed and updated MRP settings for 80 percent of materials in the deployed regions

  • Reduced past due elements by 50 percent, pushing the adoption of exception management mindset

  • Reduced negative days of supply by 15 percent, resulting in better overall business performance

  • Reduced process inefficiency (MRP exceptions) by 42 percent, transitioning from manual MRP execution to automated

  • Improved budget performance as a result of changes in material demand due to the exception management process

Redefining MRO and Procurement Transformation in the Digital Age with SAP Ariba

Learn how Evergreen Packaging started its digitalization journey with SAP® Ariba® to simplify the indirect material procurement. Evergreen Packaging reduced cost and improved spend under management by providing a single global platform with common strategic sourcing across multiple companies and geography using disparate ERP systems. Today, Evergreen’s plant maintenance and maintenance, repair, and overhaul (MRO) users have seamless experiences in planning major outage and procuring parts for outage with SAP Ariba. MRO storeroom inventory optimization with SAP Ariba has reduced the working capital and inventory carrying cost for the plants.

Key Business Benefits:


  • Indirect spend consolidation and management across multiple companies and geography using SAP Ariba

  • Procure-to-pay digitalization leveraging SAP Ariba electronic document exchange

  • MRO storeroom inventory optimization to reduce working capital

  • Improved user experience and back-office efficiency

SAP Extended Warehouse Management: – More Innovations and Deployment Options

This session will cover the latest innovations in SAP EWM as well as new deployment options both on-premise and in the cloud. Learn how by leveraging a single line of code, SAP delivers a highly adaptable warehouse management system (WMS) solution for all kinds of warehouses. Get a peek into what’s coming in the many releases in 2019.

Journey to the Intelligent Enterprise: Customer Stories

Every day, organizations around the world are achieving incredible success with SAP technology in their asset management and supply chain operations. In this inspiring opening keynote presentation, Paul Kurchina and Andy Hancock will go through a highlight reel of some of the best stories of what SAP customers are doing to make their businesses run more efficiently, be more competitive, and innovate on a global scale. You’ll see examples of smart decisions and forward thinking that are driving these companies to continuous improvement.

Kick off two great days at SAP-Centric EAM and SAP-Centric Supply Chain with some inspiration from other SAP users about how you can achieve more on you your journey to becoming an intelligent enterprise.

Redefining Asset Management in the Digital World

Join SAP and Vesta Partners in a conversation about the digitalization of asset management and discover the SAP suite of next-generation cloud solutions for asset management that leverage the power of SAP Leonardo and machine learning.

Learn how we can help you develop an environment in which you can manage asset-related information and processes throughout the complete asset lifecycle. The resulting transformation will positively affect the core business processes and systems that ultimately make your business more competitive.

SAP offers a differentiated cloud suite that connects assets across networks to support Asset 4.0 digital transformation enabling:


  • Collaborative asset networks for maximum return on assets and new business models

  • New predictive maintenance approaches for lowest costs and maximum up time

  • Intelligently schedule resources and materials to reduce costs

  • Enable mobile workforce and manage distributed asset networks

  • Big data analytics combined with simulations for live asset performance management

SAP S/4HANA 101—Vesta’s EAM Codex

This session combines the 101 for SAP S/4HANA® 1809 with the accelerators and complementary products contained in Vesta’s EAM Codex offering. We will show a fully EAM-configured SAP system and its functionality and provide ideas around how you can harness SAP S/4HANA’s features and functionalities.

Key Business Benefits:


  • Learn about what’s available in the EAM functionality of 1809 and how is it different than SAP R/3

  • What is Vesta Codex and how can it help me get to EAM in SAP S/4HANA faster


Learn about options to enable SAP S/4HANA EAM functionalities.

Redefining MRO and Procurement Transformation in the Digital Age with SAP Ariba

Learn how Evergreen Packaging started its digitalization journey with SAP® Ariba® to simplify the indirect material procurement. Evergreen Packaging reduced cost and improved spend under management by providing a single global platform with common strategic sourcing across multiple companies and geography using disparate ERP systems. Today, Evergreen’s plant maintenance and maintenance, repair, and overhaul (MRO) users have seamless experiences in planning major outage and procuring parts for outage with SAP Ariba. MRO storeroom inventory optimization with SAP Ariba has reduced the working capital and inventory carrying cost for the plants.

Key Business Benefits:


  • Indirect spend consolidation and management across multiple companies and geography using SAP Ariba

  • Procure-to-pay digitalization leveraging SAP Ariba electronic document exchange

  • MRO storeroom inventory optimization to reduce working capital

  • Improved user experience and back-office efficiency

Journey to a Paperless Warehouse in SAP WM

Upon selecting SAP to be our new ERP, we decided after careful review to stay with the SAP Warehouse Management versus Extended Warehouse Management platform. Throughout our conversion, we kept our WM customization to a minimum by printing all sales orders for a distribution specialist to pick, pack, and complete. Eighteen months after our implementation, we decided to investigate the EWM functionality to see if it would allow us to eliminate the manual reliance of people and paper within our warehouse. While the EMW would definitely allow for this, it would also complicate other behind-the-scenes data tables and process compliance we were not able to comply with. Instead, we decided to push our WM platform to the “likeness” of an EWM without the “handcuffs” of an EWM.

We spent the next six to 12 months designing and implementing functionality in SAP WM to automatically have our batch system release sales orders to our various customer-demanded business rules. Before this, we had to execute over 20 different variants, multiple times per day through t-codes such as VL10C, VT04, and VL06P. Once the orders were released in the system, rather than printing all outputs, we designed two new t-codes to electronically organize, prioritize, and assign dock placement. The final piece of the customization would then allow us to place distribution specialists (pickers) into a queue where we would send the orders to. We can split the orders into multiple people picking, a single person picking, etc. These two customized enhancements allowed us to improve the following areas:


  1. Indirect clerical labor

  2. Quality on the orders and reduction in picking errors and missing errors

  3. Downtime and waiting on work

  4. Lead time to the customers

  5. Paper and label savings


The five-year savings of this project is over $5 million net of the investment along with improving quality from four sigma to five sigma and reducing overall lead time of a sales order. It also allows Dorman to grow as a company without having to add back labor as the volume of orders increases.

Master Data Managed

After 25 years on SAP and next to zero effort on master data, Incitec Pivot Limited (IPL) has learned its lesson! Data is the lifeblood of any business in today’s world, and this is no different for IPL.

As IPL began its journey down the path to SAP S/4HANA®, it didn’t take long for the business to realize that we have been asleep at the wheel when it comes to master data governance and data quality. So we began to look for a tool that could effectively manage all our maintenance, repair, and overhaul (MRO) materials, assets, procurement, vendors, customers, and any other discipline that we required. We feel that we found a tool that meets our needs that is helping us move from a space of ignorance to one of understanding that has generated questions we never knew that we needed to ask.

In this presentation, I will take you on the journey that we took to get to a place that has set us up for an environment where we use data management as a strength and competitive advantage. High-quality data is critical to building a platform that is necessary in today’s world, and IPL is finally travelling down a path to take us to a level not experienced before.

Key Business Benefits:


  • Lessons from a journey that continues to evolve and grow

  • The realization that data management must be part of any company’s business strategy

  • SAP partners can provide significant value to fundamental transnational processes

Redefining Asset Management in the Digital World

Join SAP and Vesta Partners in a conversation about the digitalization of asset management and discover the SAP suite of next-generation cloud solutions for asset management that leverage the power of SAP Leonardo and machine learning.

Learn how we can help you develop an environment in which you can manage asset-related information and processes throughout the complete asset lifecycle. The resulting transformation will positively affect the core business processes and systems that ultimately make your business more competitive.

SAP offers a differentiated cloud suite that connects assets across networks to support Asset 4.0 digital transformation enabling:


  • Collaborative asset networks for maximum return on assets and new business models

  • New predictive maintenance approaches for lowest costs and maximum up time

  • Intelligently schedule resources and materials to reduce costs

  • Enable mobile workforce and manage distributed asset networks

  • Big data analytics combined with simulations for live asset performance management

Are You Mature Enough for S/4? Greenfield or Brownfield: A Business Discussion on How to Make the Right Investment Decision

To be or not to be… Organizations running SAP are thinking about or planning to move to S/4 in the near future. However, the question of Greenfield (Fresh Implementation) vs Brownfield (Migration) is a constant debate. This is not an IT question, but rather a Business one. The workshop will explore how to establish your business maturity for the digital change, how to adjust and prepare for it, and ultimately decide whether Greenfield or Brownfield is best for your organization. In addition, you will learn what your organization can do NOW in the meantime to prepare the business for S/4 by optimizing the business processes, and in doing so, begin the journey to be an innovative world class supply chain. Lastly, we will discuss how to pay for a large portion of the S/4 conversion with hidden savings and value in your existing Supply Chain.

Key business benefits:


  • Know how to measure the business maturity of the organization for S/4 and future technologies.

  • Understand the various options that exist between Greenfield and Brownfield initiatives and the impact they have on the organization.

  • Understand what can be done now to better align Demand, MRP and Supply operations to prepare the business for the digital (S/4) change while significantly improving product delivery.


Gain benefit and savings from maximizing the current SAP and business processes to help pay for the S/4 conversion and in doing so prepare the business for S/4.

Strategically Considering SAP S/4HANA? What the Business Community Can Do Now to Prepare for the Impending Technology Change

The current digital wave is an indication of how fast the market can change direction and leave many companies unprepared. Most value chains are not geared for these radical changes, and most companies are finding that huge efforts are required within current supply chain design in order to cope with the market changes and new market demands. This unique workshop helps prepare the business community for the new technology by offering proven guidelines to reduce purchasing spend, optimize inventory, increase production capacity, improve supplier performance, reduce lead times, and increase services levels. Not only does this prepare the business for the prospect of SAP S/4HANA®, but the savings generated will help pay for the technology investment. Learn how to identify practical and tangible value opportunities quickly with tactical techniques and tools that enable you to ensure ROI within six to 12 months.

Journey to the Intelligent Enterprise: Customer Stories

Every day, organizations around the world are achieving incredible success with SAP technology in their asset management and supply chain operations. In this inspiring opening keynote presentation, Paul Kurchina and Andy Hancock will go through a highlight reel of some of the best stories of what SAP customers are doing to make their businesses run more efficiently, be more competitive, and innovate on a global scale. You’ll see examples of smart decisions and forward thinking that are driving these companies to continuous improvement.

Kick off two great days at SAP-Centric EAM and SAP-Centric Supply Chain with some inspiration from other SAP users about how you can achieve more on you your journey to becoming an intelligent enterprise.

Redefining Asset Management in the Digital World

Join SAP and Vesta Partners in a conversation about the digitalization of asset management and discover the SAP suite of next-generation cloud solutions for asset management that leverage the power of SAP Leonardo and machine learning.

Learn how we can help you develop an environment in which you can manage asset-related information and processes throughout the complete asset lifecycle. The resulting transformation will positively affect the core business processes and systems that ultimately make your business more competitive.

SAP offers a differentiated cloud suite that connects assets across networks to support Asset 4.0 digital transformation enabling:


  • Collaborative asset networks for maximum return on assets and new business models

  • New predictive maintenance approaches for lowest costs and maximum up time

  • Intelligently schedule resources and materials to reduce costs

  • Enable mobile workforce and manage distributed asset networks

  • Big data analytics combined with simulations for live asset performance management

Puget Sound Energy Shines a Light on Warehouse Efficiency with SAP EWM

Learn how Puget Sound Energy (PSE) modernized the warehouse operations supporting its gas and electric transmission and distribution business by implementing SAP EWM to enable better fulfillment processes. Running SAP for nearly 20 years, managing storeroom inventory was a labor-intensive, paper-based process. With space constraints being a constant challenge, new regulations for tracking materials emerging, and a migration to Amazon Machine Images opportunities for process innovation were limited with the existing tools. By partnering with Ernst & Young to implement leading warehouse practices enabled by SAP EWM, quality management, batch management, and employ barcoding, PSE was able improve space utilization, increase inventory accuracy, empower its workforce to be more efficient, and service its field technicians more effectively.

Key Business Benefits:


  • Improve management and utilization of limited warehouse space to support a complex array of maintenance parts, tools, construction materials, and operating supplies.

  • Increase inventory accuracy through bin-level management of the warehouse, and barcode scan verification and data entry vs. paper.

  • Accelerate business benefit realization through the use of an SAP Rapid Deployment solution/pre-configured approach and adoption of SAP Best Practices.

NASA’s Journey to SAP Extended Procurement, Public Sector, and Regulated Industries Extension

This session will detail the journey of the NASA procurement community, beginning with the implementation of SAP Financials in 2002 followed by the implementation of a seamless integration between financials and contract writing using SAP Extended Procurement on SAP HANA®. Learn about the technology’s architecture, security, and the benefits that drove NASA to take the plunge. Hear the challenges, best practices, and lessons learned throughout the project implementation, go-live, and operation. NASA will also discuss the vision for the future, including operational efficiency and additional functionality.

Key Business Benefits:


  • Lessons learned from design, development, go-live, and stabilization of the first SAP Extended Procurement implementation on HANA

  • Seamless integration between NASA financials and contract writing

  • Enhanced access management and infrastructure security through the elimination of nonstandard applications

Ford Motor Company’s EWM Implementation: Strategy, Challenges, and Lessons Learned

In this session, Ford Motor Company’s business and IT global EWM implementation managers will share best practices, implementation challenges, lessons learned, and their future global implementation vision for Ford’s EWM implementation.

Key topics that will be presented in this session include Ford’s implementation strategy and timeline, integration with service parts planning, implementation challenges, supporting an EWM network, and an overview of Ford’s future plans for a global implementation of the SAP Service Parts Management suite, global process template, and migration to SAP S/4HANA®.

There will be time for Q&A with the presenters.

SAP S/4HANA 101—Vesta’s EAM Codex

This session combines the 101 for SAP S/4HANA® 1809 with the accelerators and complementary products contained in Vesta’s EAM Codex offering. We will show a fully EAM-configured SAP system and its functionality and provide ideas around how you can harness SAP S/4HANA’s features and functionalities.

Key Business Benefits:


  • Learn about what’s available in the EAM functionality of 1809 and how is it different than SAP R/3

  • What is Vesta Codex and how can it help me get to EAM in SAP S/4HANA faster


Learn about options to enable SAP S/4HANA EAM functionalities.

Transaction Optimization: Sourcing Transformation Through Automation with SAP Ariba

Caesars Entertainment sets its sights high in delivering best-in-class sourcing practices and selected SAP® Ariba® to accomplish this goal. As for Caesars and most other industries, one essential cornerstone of emphasis is automation. Purchasing automation allows for several key benefits to be realized:


  • Optimizes labor costs

  • Reduces the chance of process or strategy failure

  • Improves spend visibility and quality

  • Provides an easy ordering experience for our team members

  • Allows strategic sourcing to focus on strategic initiatives


In 2012, when Caesars stood up a complete procurement solution, the goal was to bring in polished, strategic-level skill sets and allow automation to manage the simpler transactions. This approach allows team members to be focused on value-add activities and allows the system to manage the simple day-to-day transactions.

Using SAP Ariba, the strategic sourcing department’s transactions are now around 80 percent automation and about 20 percent unplanned requests that need to be facilitated outside of normal pipeline events.

Enhance ERP and Deliver Business Value by Deploying Modern Applications

Business expectations of IT solutions continue to grow with business stakeholders demanding modern, user-friendly applications, dashboards, and other tools to enable business processes and access to data without being tethered to their PC. These types of requests and initiatives always seem to be accompanied by a dizzying array of new products to buy, frameworks to adopt, and skills to learn.

Johns Manville has developed a shipping and logistics toolset, known internally as JMShip, to deliver mobile functionality and visual dashboards to position us a supplier and shipper of choice. This application serves as a case study for taking advantage of existing IT skill sets and leveraging existing software investments to deliver new and exciting solutions to our operations. By utilizing Agile project management, rapid development, and a “minimum-viable-product” mindset, we’ve been able to quickly go from idea to reality.

Key Business Benefits:


  • Improved process adherence at facilities once metrics and data were in place

  • Provide common "view of the world" that can be shared between warehouse operations, management, and sales groups

  • Eliminate need for manual collection of data and email distribution of several reports (i.e., loaded trailers report, overdue customer pickup list, etc.)

SAP Transportation Management – Innovations and New Strategies

There have been a lot of recent innovations in the SAP Transportation Management (SAP TM) solution, including new features in load/pallet building, Gantt charts user interface (UI), vehicle scheduling, and forwarding order management. There have also been major changes to the available deployment options.

Join this session to get key insights on the latest changes to SAP TM and learn more about:


  • Deployment options for both on-premise and cloud solutions, plus how much SAP TM works with SAP S/4HANA

  • How supply chain execution solutions from SAP take advantage of digitalization, cloud computing, the Internet of Things (IoT), big data, blockchain, and networks to unlock new opportunities for transportation logistics

  • The future direction of the solution, including new functionalities for SAP TM and the SAP Logistics Business Network


 

Achieving Supply Chain Operational Excellence

Learn how the integration of DSI’s supply chain apps with SAP ECC and SAP S/4HANA® can help you achieve supply chain operational excellence. This session will focus on Rockwell Collins and its path to success.

Key Business Benefits:


  • Real-time transactions and inventory visibility and flexible receiving and put-away

  • Consolidated picking and effective cycle counting

  • Overall productivity gains

EAM Journey at Norfolk Southern: Turning Vision into Reality

Norfolk Southern (NS) faces the same key business challenges related to asset management as many asset-intensive industries. Specifically, lack of standard business processes, limited visibility of TCO of an asset, disparate systems and technologies lacking data integration, warranty management, spare parts and inventory management, and desired capability to run the business. Further, to harness the power of emerging digital technologies, conventional maintenance management systems and business processes do not deliver and require paradigm shifts. NS is embarking on an EAM journey with the vision to build enterprise-wide, best-in-class solutions that can be leveraged and adopted by various asset classes, with SAP as the primary technology.

Our core principle is “Build once… deploy many times.” Design thinking principles guide our user-centric design methodology to develop solutions that are intuitive and optimize the user experience. NS will share our targeted business benefits, including maximize asset reliability, availability and utilization, and improve operational efficiencies and inventory optimization. NS will share its EAM vision, journey, lessons learned, and how you can leverage SAP technology for your organization.

Key Business Benefits:


  • Business process standardization

  • Asset health measures, improving maintenance practices

  • Lower TCO for technology supporting EAM

How to Decide Your Future Road Map in SAP S/4HANA for MRO

SAP is undergoing significant change. New SAP S/4HANA® core offerings, changes related to SAP Extended Warehouse Management integrated cloud tools such as SAP® Ariba®, changes in functionality … how do we decide our future SAP road map? The number of options can be overwhelming in trying to make that determination. In this session, we will discuss the changes in SAP S/4HANA Supply Chain, the integrated tools available, and Kohler’s journey in making these decisions.

The session will include:


  • Changes in SAP S/4HANA core for materials management and procurement

  • Changes in SAP EWM

  • Integration options between SAP Ariba and S/4HANA core

  • Kohler Corporation’s challenges in making road map decisions

    • What about our customizations?

    • Warehouse management decision

      • Consider newly embedded SAP EWM





Digital Innovation: The Kryptonite for Digital Disruption

This session will stretch your thinking about the value and impact of digital supply chains and their implications the supporting innovative technologies have for enterprise asset management. In order to respond to the voice of the customer, we must enable and leverage the “voice of the product.” Emerging digital innovations afford organizations an opportunity to give their assets and products a voice. If you've wondered about the "Amazon effect" and/or “Uberization” and how they’re affecting customers’ and employees’ expectations and behaviors, this is the session for you. This session will highlight three common approaches to digital disruption and present the two most common approaches to implementing a digital strategy, as well as what's needed to make them successful.

MRP: Inventory Management and Work Management Integration

Inventory management and material requirements planning (MRP) utilization are truly dependent on each other. Almost 10 years on SAP and we have realized that MRP driven-demand planning and forecasting continue to feed and impact optimal inventory management techniques. The challenges and business expectations to maintain the right inventory mix at optimal costs to support projects has grown exponentially in the utility industry. It is to be noted that SAP Plant Maintenance work order data quality is a critical contributing factor to MRP in support of best inventory management methodologies, along with MRP materials master data such as lead times, safety stock, and vendor performance.

As Southern California Edison continues its tech journey down the path to SAP S/4HANA®, in collaboration with our work management teams, we refreshed our strategies within IPSEC model when it came to materials master data governance and data quality. We began to start using SAP to effectively manage all our materials master data, MRP settings, procurement, vendors, transmission and distribution (T&D) field needs, and any other discipline that we required. We have made minor business and technology custom enhancements to support better inventory management techniques.

In this presentation, I will take you on the journey that we took to get to a place that has set us up for an environment where we use data management as a strength and to its competitive advantage by integrating with work management to save inventory carrying costs with elevated focus on inventory and vendor management.

Key Business Benefits:


  • Forecasting of long lead, single, and sole source materials within bills of material (Initiate)

  • Accurate MRP demand signals by closing unwanted reservations (Plan)

  • Material recirculation within the network locations to minimize stock outs (Schedule)

  • Better management of safety stocks, MRP settings, and vendors (Execute)

  • Advanced perfect line rate (PLR) management (Close and Effectiveness)

Smarter Data Management for Your Enterprise Asset Data

Data is your company’s most valuable asset, but ensuring master data integrity is a key challenge across all industries, especially those counting on it to help maximize asset uptime, optimize materials inventory, and streamline operations. Your data should fuel trusted cross-functional analytics to drive performance management and business decision-making, so you need to be able to integrate structured data, unstructured content, engineering systems, and machine data captured by the Internet of Things to create one golden record of truth.

To stay operationally efficient, you must base plant and equipment management decisions on data you can trust. With SAPs Master Data Governance, enterprise asset management extension by Utopia and SAP Asset Information Workbench by Utopia, you can create and manage asset master data in the plant maintenance process centrally. The result: effective asset lifecycle management that allows you to leverage accurate master data to anticipate regular maintenance needs, keeping parts handy for necessary repairs, and demonstrating compliance with safety guidelines. Increased visibility into asset lifecycles and raw material usage helps tighten IT resource planning and identify and correct potential risks to product quality or hazardous practices before they degrade performance or profitability.

This workshop will cover:


  • Elimination of inaccuracies and omissions in master data for asset management

  • Improving the quality of information for managing the asset lifecycle

  • Speeding up the transition between build and operational phases for assets

  • Reducing downtime due to maintenance issues

Smarter Data Management for Your Enterprise Asset Data

Data is your company’s most valuable asset, but ensuring master data integrity is a key challenge across all industries, especially those counting on it to help maximize asset uptime, optimize materials inventory, and streamline operations. Your data should fuel trusted cross-functional analytics to drive performance management and business decision-making, so you need to be able to integrate structured data, unstructured content, engineering systems, and machine data captured by the Internet of Things to create one golden record of truth.

To stay operationally efficient, you must base plant and equipment management decisions on data you can trust. With SAPs Master Data Governance, enterprise asset management extension by Utopia and SAP Asset Information Workbench by Utopia, you can create and manage asset master data in the plant maintenance process centrally. The result: effective asset lifecycle management that allows you to leverage accurate master data to anticipate regular maintenance needs, keeping parts handy for necessary repairs, and demonstrating compliance with safety guidelines. Increased visibility into asset lifecycles and raw material usage helps tighten IT resource planning and identify and correct potential risks to product quality or hazardous practices before they degrade performance or profitability.

This workshop will cover:


  • Elimination of inaccuracies and omissions in master data for asset management

  • Improving the quality of information for managing the asset lifecycle

  • Speeding up the transition between build and operational phases for assets

  • Reducing downtime due to maintenance issues

How to Decide Your Future Road Map in SAP S/4HANA for MRO

SAP is undergoing significant change. New SAP S/4HANA® core offerings, changes related to SAP Extended Warehouse Management integrated cloud tools such as SAP® Ariba®, changes in functionality … how do we decide our future SAP road map? The number of options can be overwhelming in trying to make that determination. In this session, we will discuss the changes in SAP S/4HANA Supply Chain, the integrated tools available, and Kohler’s journey in making these decisions.

The session will include:


  • Changes in SAP S/4HANA core for materials management and procurement

  • Changes in SAP EWM

  • Integration options between SAP Ariba and S/4HANA core

  • Kohler Corporation’s challenges in making road map decisions

    • What about our customizations?

    • Warehouse management decision

      • Consider newly embedded SAP EWM





Exploring the Synergies of Maintenance and Procurement Systems

Procurement and maintenance departments alike have pressures and competing priorities that keep planners and buyers very busy. These groups need to communicate closely but both are consumed by meetings, time away from the desk field planning, and time on the phone with vendors, making this task sometimes a big challenge. This presentation will highlight some of the common information that is readily available to exploit by planners and buyers alike. SAP makes the task of keeping informed without talking or dropping by an office while providing simple historical review of procurement and warehouse activities from a maintenance perspective. The presentation will walk through some of the common means of doing just that in additional to looking at ways to enhance your reporting.

Are You Mature Enough for S/4? Greenfield or Brownfield: A Business Discussion on How to Make the Right Investment Decision

To be or not to be… Organizations running SAP are thinking about or planning to move to S/4 in the near future. However, the question of Greenfield (Fresh Implementation) vs Brownfield (Migration) is a constant debate. This is not an IT question, but rather a Business one. The workshop will explore how to establish your business maturity for the digital change, how to adjust and prepare for it, and ultimately decide whether Greenfield or Brownfield is best for your organization. In addition, you will learn what your organization can do NOW in the meantime to prepare the business for S/4 by optimizing the business processes, and in doing so, begin the journey to be an innovative world class supply chain. Lastly, we will discuss how to pay for a large portion of the S/4 conversion with hidden savings and value in your existing Supply Chain.

Key business benefits:


  • Know how to measure the business maturity of the organization for S/4 and future technologies.

  • Understand the various options that exist between Greenfield and Brownfield initiatives and the impact they have on the organization.

  • Understand what can be done now to better align Demand, MRP and Supply operations to prepare the business for the digital (S/4) change while significantly improving product delivery.


Gain benefit and savings from maximizing the current SAP and business processes to help pay for the S/4 conversion and in doing so prepare the business for S/4.

BP Optimized Capital and Process Efficiencies Through Standardized and Consistent Approach with SAP for Supply Chain

Find out how BP’s Upstream organization extracted value across the global supply chain by using SAP and implementing it across BP’s regional assets. Focusing on working in SAP to drive value in the business, BP leveraged the tool with deep organizational and process integration to achieve a mindset shift in its end-to-end supply chain processes while driving a standardized approach to global performance management.

BP has witnessed how improving knowledge of the end-to-end supply chain process, using SAP, has led to the elimination of organizational silos via a collaborative, process-aligned team utilizing real-time data and a defined governance structure. Shifting the focus to an exception management process redirected efforts to proactive supplier management versus reactive chasing of late materials. With standard indicators developed across the organization, it achieved consistency in measuring performance across the regional business units with better identification of continuous improvement opportunities.

Key Business Benefits:


  • Reviewed and updated MRP settings for 80 percent of materials in the deployed regions

  • Reduced past due elements by 50 percent, pushing the adoption of exception management mindset

  • Reduced negative days of supply by 15 percent, resulting in better overall business performance

  • Reduced process inefficiency (MRP exceptions) by 42 percent, transitioning from manual MRP execution to automated

  • Improved budget performance as a result of changes in material demand due to the exception management process

Strategically Considering SAP S/4HANA? What the Business Community Can Do Now to Prepare for the Impending Technology Change

The current digital wave is an indication of how fast the market can change direction and leave many companies unprepared. Most value chains are not geared for these radical changes, and most companies are finding that huge efforts are required within current supply chain design in order to cope with the market changes and new market demands. This unique workshop helps prepare the business community for the new technology by offering proven guidelines to reduce purchasing spend, optimize inventory, increase production capacity, improve supplier performance, reduce lead times, and increase services levels. Not only does this prepare the business for the prospect of SAP S/4HANA®, but the savings generated will help pay for the technology investment. Learn how to identify practical and tangible value opportunities quickly with tactical techniques and tools that enable you to ensure ROI within six to 12 months.

Creating Enterprise Information Excellence in a Complex Utilities Environment

Every data transformation has its challenges, especially when working with large teams, multiple systems, and tools in a complex utilities environment. When Xcel Energy kicked off its Productivity Through Technology (PTT) initiative in 2012, its goal was to uncover innovative solutions to ease employee work challenges while improving operational reliability. Xcel Energy, with the help of Utopia Global, underwent a data migration in a multi-parallel implementation environment to streamline, simplify, and improve work processes across the company.

Puget Sound Energy Shines a Light on Warehouse Efficiency with SAP EWM

Learn how Puget Sound Energy (PSE) modernized the warehouse operations supporting its gas and electric transmission and distribution business by implementing SAP EWM to enable better fulfillment processes. Running SAP for nearly 20 years, managing storeroom inventory was a labor-intensive, paper-based process. With space constraints being a constant challenge, new regulations for tracking materials emerging, and a migration to Amazon Machine Images opportunities for process innovation were limited with the existing tools. By partnering with Ernst & Young to implement leading warehouse practices enabled by SAP EWM, quality management, batch management, and employ barcoding, PSE was able improve space utilization, increase inventory accuracy, empower its workforce to be more efficient, and service its field technicians more effectively.

Key Business Benefits:


  • Improve management and utilization of limited warehouse space to support a complex array of maintenance parts, tools, construction materials, and operating supplies.

  • Increase inventory accuracy through bin-level management of the warehouse, and barcode scan verification and data entry vs. paper.

  • Accelerate business benefit realization through the use of an SAP Rapid Deployment solution/pre-configured approach and adoption of SAP Best Practices.

MRP: Inventory Management and Work Management Integration

Inventory management and material requirements planning (MRP) utilization are truly dependent on each other. Almost 10 years on SAP and we have realized that MRP driven-demand planning and forecasting continue to feed and impact optimal inventory management techniques. The challenges and business expectations to maintain the right inventory mix at optimal costs to support projects has grown exponentially in the utility industry. It is to be noted that SAP Plant Maintenance work order data quality is a critical contributing factor to MRP in support of best inventory management methodologies, along with MRP materials master data such as lead times, safety stock, and vendor performance.

As Southern California Edison continues its tech journey down the path to SAP S/4HANA®, in collaboration with our work management teams, we refreshed our strategies within IPSEC model when it came to materials master data governance and data quality. We began to start using SAP to effectively manage all our materials master data, MRP settings, procurement, vendors, transmission and distribution (T&D) field needs, and any other discipline that we required. We have made minor business and technology custom enhancements to support better inventory management techniques.

In this presentation, I will take you on the journey that we took to get to a place that has set us up for an environment where we use data management as a strength and to its competitive advantage by integrating with work management to save inventory carrying costs with elevated focus on inventory and vendor management.

Key Business Benefits:


  • Forecasting of long lead, single, and sole source materials within bills of material (Initiate)

  • Accurate MRP demand signals by closing unwanted reservations (Plan)

  • Material recirculation within the network locations to minimize stock outs (Schedule)

  • Better management of safety stocks, MRP settings, and vendors (Execute)

  • Advanced perfect line rate (PLR) management (Close and Effectiveness)

Redefining Safety Stock and Strategic Inventory Management at Pfizer

Leveraging the SAP Enterprise Inventory and Service-Level Optimization (EIS) tool, Pfizer can now calculate optimal safety stock values and automatically increase or decrease safety stock values to match demand and supply variabilities within the supply chain. Planners can use strategic stock in supply network planning (SNP) to reduce or increase safety stock for a single period or multiple periods to cover planned downtimes, product launches, or to recover from unforeseen events, returning to the normally planned safety stock levels without having to maintain manually outside the system. Simple reports measure the difference between the EIS-proposed safety stock and the current static safety stock and enables the right sizing of targets to meet customer service levels. Because of the tool, Pfizer has saved over $36 million in inventory costs and has created standardized processes across the globe.

Holistic Organizational Health Check: A Solution for Your Evolution

We are constantly looking for continuous improvement and ways to transform and enrich our organizations. Many times, we strive to implement best practices for planning and scheduling and leverage on the innovative solutions of others. However, not all organizations are at the same maturity level to embrace change. In order to determine your organization readiness, a holistic organization health check is needed prior to a new initiative. Assessing the maturity of fundamental elements of an organization such as people, culture, resources, technology, processes, and strategy will better equip your organization for your next initiative.

Key Business Benefits:


  • Assess readiness and maturity

  • Clarity of main goal and positive and negative impacts

  • Align organizational structure

Fit for “Our” Purpose Road Map: Making Simple, Yet Significant Change for Business Benefits

Most SAP journeys start out with a period of significant change as the business learns a new system and comes to terms with more integrated processes. Implementation focuses on process and data with little time dedicated to user experience. Three years into Glencore Coal’s SAP journey, the business was comfortable with SAP. However, there was still significant scope for improving user engagement and efficiency.

Having already invested substantially in SAP ERP Central Component, it was important that the solutions would use tools that the organization already owned and could develop itself. Improvements needed to be made without a move to SAP HANA®, SAP S/4HANA®, or required further investment in additional third-party solutions.

Glencore Coal’s next steps were based on a deep dive into its users’ needs and then designed to three core principles: engagement, efficiency, and reinforcing business process.

This session will provide insights on the steps taken:


  • Conducting a company-wide survey to gain insights into user pain points and role-based needs

  • Developing simplified screens in SAP without customizing SAP transactions, upgrades, or testing burden

  • Developing custom dashboards and screens tailored to supervisors’ needs

  • Overcoming technical challenges with SAP Screen Personas

  • Future opportunities for SAP Screen Personas for asset management


Hear practical examples demonstrating how top-down design thinking has provided a path to incremental, user-focused changes. Most notably, these efforts resulted in a 50 percent reduction in transaction time, translating to $500,000-plus of opportunity time back for front-line supervisors at Glencore Coal.

Business Procurement so Easy, Who Needs Training!

Experience the journey of Johns Hopkins in implementing an SAP Fiori® one-stop shopping cart application with punch-out capability designed for simple shoppers. It provides the best of both worlds, combining the power of SAP with the online shopping experience of Amazon. We would like to share our story on the design approach, challenges faced, and lessons learned during this implementation.

Key Business Benefits:


  • Minimal data entry

  • No training

  • Flexibility to procure from desktop and mobile

Hess Adopts Mobile Warehouse Management to Improve Productivity, Accuracy, and User Experience

Materials management processes at Hess Corporation relied on manual entry of material information, which increased the possibility of human error and caused bottlenecks across several processes.  Incomplete and manual entries also often resulted in inventory inaccuracies, leading to additional material orders, needlessly increasing inventory and needed storage space, and unexpected unavailability of materials that interfere with operations and production.

Hess implemented the mobile warehouse solution that provides a real-time, role-based, and intuitive user interface into SAP to transform how warehouse operators create value for the business. The mobile solution gets paired with rugged barcode scanning peripherals and portable label printers to drive speed and accuracy in data capture and labeling. The digital transformation aimed to enable the workforce to perform its tasks better and easier than before and increase employee satisfaction.

Key Business Benefits:


  • Over 100 percent acceleration in goods receipt process time and higher data capture accuracy

  • Real-time physical inventory movement visibility in SAP accelerates operational clock speed

  • Improvements in employee satisfaction and reduction in change management costs

Mergers Are Tricky, Nutrien’s Material Master Data Project

Join this session to leverage key lessons learned at Agrium for implementing a material master data governance project. In 2016, Agrium undertook a project to improve the quality of its material master data and implement a robust governance process to meet a host of stakeholder requirements. The project was intended to improve the planning and scheduling process, but due the difficulty of selling a foundational data project, it was necessary to sell the project using a procurement savings approach.

After the merger of Agrium and Potash Corp in 2018 to form Nutrien, they were able to leverage many of the same lessons learned to scale the project and integrate the systems and data of the two different ERP systems.

Key Business Benefits:


  • Ease of material master data creation, editing, and expending for planners, including bill of materials (BOM) updates

  • A large reduction of "free text" material requisitions, improving procurement efficiencies

  • Expanded scope of outline purchasing agreements (information records), improving maintenance, repair, and overhaul (MRO) price negotiating power