An exciting project with a well-known premium fashion brand retail leader who are putting the User Experience (UX) and employee brand engagement at the heart of their digital supply chain values and operations.

A refreshing outlook from this forward-thinking business, that will bring many benefits to the business and workforce.

The solution will be underpinned by SAP Digital Supply Chain Platform Extended Warehouse Management (EWM), combined with the high performance mobile UX framework for SAP, Rocket Mobile.

The Challenge

The business has a large mobile workforce across multiple worldwide locations, compounded by very seasonal demand requiring a significant contingent workforce during the peak periods.

As with every business, optimising operating processes for efficiency, accuracy and cost are central to this project. However, this project is taking a more cutting-edge approach with an appreciation of the additional workforce benefits to be gained from the creation of an enhanced UX implementation.

The project goals include:

• Creation of optimised warehouse mobile execution processes
• Alignment to company brand
• Optimised user experience to:
  • Accelerate on-boarding and minimise training time and cost
  • Increase clarity and ease of use
  • Provide greater user self-sufficiency
  • Align user behaviours and performance to company goals

The adopted solution needs to be robust, scalable, high performance and not add technical complexity.

The project is running as part of a wider program in which the business is undergoing a business systems and process transformation around the implementation of SAP S/4 HANA platform and as such needs to take advantage of the latest S/4 development techniques to drive up performance for the high throughput operation.

The Approach - Rocket Design & Operation Thinking Mobile UX Design Methodology

Selected as the specialist SAP mobility partner for all aspects of the mobile solution. Chosen for our Enterprise Mobility approach, methodology and know-how combined with our SAP EWM experience and turn-key mobility services and extensive innovation IP:

• Design, project management and implementation of SAP EWM Mobile Solution.
• Mobile UX design using the Rocket Design & Operation Thinking UX design methodology.
• Interactive prototyping using SAP Build.
• ‘Rocket Mobile’ high performance SAP Mobile UX framework.

Benefits of Approach

Using the Rocket Design & Operational Thinking UX Design Methodology puts the user at the centre of the design process to ensure the user persona and user experience is designed considering all the necessary aspects to ensure a robust, fit for purpose, high performance outcome.

The Solution

The overall solution is being built on the SAP Digital Supply Chain platform, Extended Warehouse Management (EWM), with the mobile execution.

• SAP EWM 9.5 on HANA - providing all warehouse process logic and data.
• SAP EWM Mobile Framework – providing the core mobile process structure and integration into EWM processes.
• SAP ITS (Internet Transaction Server) – the core SAP mobile architecture for on-premise / RF connected devices.
• Rocket Mobile – significantly enhancing the standard SAP EWM Mobile Framework within the SAP ITS architecture.
• Mobile Devices - running Rocket Mobile through SAP ITS and executing directly against SAP EWM.

The project includes optimisation and extension of standard EWM mobile transactions and the development of bespoke tailored mobile processes.

Mobile device selection and deployment will be carried out with the benefit of the Rocket mobile technology SAP provisioning library and SAP Digital Supply Chain mobile device validation program.

Benefits of Solution

The solution keeps the core SAP EWM application and technical architecture standard, ensuring ease of support, performance and compatibility with the SAP roadmap & release strategy.

The Rocket Mobile UX framework is built on SAP ITS mobile and keeps the solution 100% on-premise and without any middleware, while providing significant uplift to the standard capability and resulting benefits to the operation and mobile workforce:

• Improve productivity, clarity and ease of use.
• Faster user on-boarding & lower training costs.
• Higher adoption by meeting user expectation trends.
• Underpin new distribution centre mobile scenarios.
• Optimisation of UI to mobile device types (buttons, touch screen, scan/voice).
• User empowerment with rich value-add features.
• Strong employee brand engagement.
• Align design with any broader mobile / UI strategy.
• Easily apply corporate style guidelines & logos.

Supporting the UK growth strategy for LDH (La Doria) Ltd the leading UK Own Label supplier of canned tomato products, fish, fruit and vegetables, dried pasta and other ambient foods to the major UK supermarkets.

As part of their continued UK growth, LDH has commissioned a new distribution centre, to be built in Suffolk, UK. The warehouse will be highly automated, including a Swisslog ASRS (Automated Storage & Retrieval System), high bay cranes, monorails, automated checks (pallet structure) and pallet wrappers.

“In dealing with Rocket I took great comfort in that they understood my industry and my business instantly. I felt that Rocket listened and were experts in their business understanding, speaking my language, taking the time to understand the goals and business outcomes I needed to achieve. Even before we made our formal partner selection Rocket were very willing to go the extra mile to help, they have become a trusted sounding board.

Rocket have a mature approach to multi-vendor projects and very strong warehouse automation knowledge. Their methodology helped us establish a clearly defined and effective collaboration between Rocket our EWM partner & our automation provider Swisslog.

Since starting the project in July, Rocket have lived up to their promises, having put in place a strong, experienced team who are very aligned to the ‘Rocket’ ways of working that we expected from the pre-sales engagements with them. The Blueprint workshops are running well, to a very good level of detail and the consultants are all extremely knowledgeable.” Mark Anson, IT Director, LDH (La Doria) Ltd.

Part of an overall program covering the DC construction, fit-out, automation and Warehouse Management software and technology.

LDH, who are an existing SAP ERP user, were keen to retain the benefits of an integrated SAP landscape and have selected the SAP Extended Warehouse Management platform to control the entire operation at the new distribution centre. This is where Rocket has been selected as the preferred partner to bring its valuable experience and expertise and lead the full implementation lifecycle of the SAP EWM aspects of the program and lean on their project methodology to integrate closely with the overall program, including close collaboration with Swisslog for the automation integration to ensure the Key Operational Performance Targets can be met and sustained.

• Capacity to handle in excess of 3m pallet movements per annum
• Integrated design with low total cost of ownership
• All business logic in SAP EWM = one controlling system = no interfaces
• Harnessing state of the art solutions
• Remaining on the SAP roadmap
• Brexit Ready design

SAP EWM will be used to meet an extensive scope including the following highlights:

• Goods Receiving Optimisation
• Production Integration
• Kitting
• Value Added Services
• Picking, Packing, Staging, Loading
• Batch Management
• Mobile Workforce
• Quality Inspection
• Yard Management

The project includes fully integrated mobile execution of which Rocket are also responsible, providing the SAP EWM mobile solution which will leverage the SAP EWM RF Framework and ITS mobile through Rockets turn-key SAP mobility provisioning framework including mobile devices, software and content libraries.

The project will use the following Rocket EWM project accelerators and benefit from numerous pre-built EWM add-ons ‘Rocket Packs’:

Project Accelerators

EWM Overview Training – accelerating LDH project understanding of SAP EWM

Blueprint Accelerator – using Rocket rapid deployment content to accelerate To-Be process design and understanding of future ways of working.

A leading Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) manufacturer needed to transform their country-based forecasting, demand and supply planning processes and realise the benefits of a standardised Sales & Operations Planning (S&OP) organisation and processes.

The challenge

Our customer, a leading Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) manufacturer and marketer of branded consumer lawn and garden products was managing very seasonal business demand with manual planning processes that were very iterative and time consuming and had to deal with the complexities of constrained warehouse and production capacity, and raw materials supply constraints. This situation was making it impossible for the business to break the cycle of reactive demand and supply adjustments, resulting in regular production capacity problems and too much inventory.

This situation was compounded with the challenge of managing across 7 global sales offices that were independently creating sales forecasts without any consensus between them and independent demand plans onto shared suppliers (both own and outsourced) at different times and across multiple iterations, resulting in poor forecasting accuracy.

The business was also undergoing a transformation and restructuring program including the implementation of SAP S4 HANA ERP platform.

The Approach

Working as the SAP IBP Implementation partner across the full project lifecycle Rocket are responsible for:
• Design and implementation of SAP IBP S&OP
• Integration between S4/HANA & SAP IBP
• SAP IBP training

Using the Rocket Cloud Accelerator Methodology for SAP IBP provided the client with three key success factors:
- Best Practices led approach to quickly define new Sales & Operations Planning, organisational structure and ways of working with high alignment to SAP IBP S&OP
- Provide a fixed price, fixed scope rapid implementation timeline across the entire organisation
- Allow the business planning teams to quickly explore SAP IBP S&OP using the Rocket S&OP model company, giving visibility of the end solution very early in the project to accelerate scope and design decisions

Benefits of Approach
o Combined business process engineering and system led design process
o Rapid deployment using predefined best practices
o Minimised theoretical design
o Agile approach to refinements based on hands on experience
o Roll-Out plan to suit organisation

The Solution

It was decided to tackle the planning challenges with the design and implementation of a globally aligned Sales and Operations Planning (S&OP) process underpinned by the SAP Integrated Business Planning (IBP) S&OP platform fully integrated using SAP Cloud Platform Integration Data Services (SAP CPI-DS) into SAP S4 HANA.

We created a tailored Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) Sales & Operations (S&OP) cycle with planning views to support all steps across 7 countries:
Forecasting Preparation (Week 1)

- Revise Portfolio, Substitutions and Modifications
- Cleanse Sales History
- Revise Segmentation
- Revise Statistical Forecast Models

Demand Planning (Week 2)
- Statistical Forecast Calculation (Load and revise Statistical Forecast)
- Sales and Marketing Forecast (Discuss Sales & Marketing Forecast, Add Campaigns, Events, Promotions etc)
- Demand Corrections (Review Demand Plan Alerts & Take Action)

Supply Planning (Week 3)
- Release Forecast
- Supply Planning Calculation (Review Safety Stocks & Supply Targets, Run Heuristic Planning)
- Supply Corrections (Review Planning Alerts & Take Action)

S&OP Review (Week 4)
- Plan Versioning / Simulations, (What If Scenarios, Capacity Review, Supply & Demand Versions)
- S&OP Meeting (Review Planning Versions and Discuss/Agree Financial Adjustments)
- Publish Plan (Live Version)

Integration

The real time integration to and from SAP S4 HANA using SAP CPI-DS includes S4 master data (products, locations, customers, transportation lanes, vendors) and transactional data (actuals, stocks, forecasts, orders) sent to IBP. SAP IBP data interfaced back to S4 HANA includes planned orders, purchase requisitions, stock transfer requisitions to drive S4 supply chain processes.

The Rocket Cloud Accelerator Methodology for SAP IBP allowed the solution to be highly aligned to standard SAP IBP S&OP, with additional value being driven by a small number of key enhancements and Rocket IBP add-ons:
- Capacity Check at Subcontractors Production: Using new key figures for capacity check and capacity levelling including alerts of overloaded resources at Subcontractors.
- Promotions Management: Using purpose made views including prices, discounts and promotions IDs per days to facilitate the work of sales and marketing departments and easily see the impact in the forecast as well as in the financial key figures of these promotions.
- S4 HANA Localisation of Orders IDs: New planning levels with orders IDs allow easy localisation of orders in S4 HANA system. The tailored view allowed historical analysis of orders (production, purchasing and stock transfer orders) to be easily performed.
- Safety Stock Calculations: Bespoke safety stock calculations that takes into account variability of demand and supply. Formulae include forecast, actuals, service level and lead times to generate an accurate and variable in time safety stock in both units and days that comes into the Heuristic calculation.

Planned Go-Live

Q1 2019

One of Europe's largest and fastest growing technology distribution and specialist service providers, needed to reduce overall freight cost per unit.

Rocket Consulting enabled transport process automation to speed up decision making and drive down cost per pallet.

The Challenge

To provide a transportation management platform to reduce logistics cost of supplying products from over 350 technology brands to a customer base of 22,850 retailers and resellers and improve decision making capability.

The Solution

A UK first for Rocket who, as a trusted SAP partner, has been approved to deploy the latest Ramp-up release of SAP Transportation Management (TM) 9.3 on HANA which will be used to automate and optimise package building, resource planning, carrier selection and freight costing. Real time access to logistics business intelligence and embedded analytics has been achieved thanks to SAP HANA and Smart Dashboards from Fiori.

Business Outcomes

• Transport process automation
• Moving away from time-consuming siloed manual processes and system
• Drive up vehicle fill rates
• Drive down cost per pallet
• Speed up decision making based on real-time business intelligence
• Running better and better decision making

Planned Go-Live

Q1 2018

One of Europe's largest and fastest growing technology distribution and specialist service providers needed to decrease their cost-to-serve and increase profitability.

Implementing SAP Extended Warehouse Management, Smart business and HANA Fiori, Rocket Consulting provided true operational excellence.

The Challenge

Rocket’s client required a tightly integrated logistics execution platform, supplying products from over 350 technology brands to a customer base of 22,850 retailers and resellers as part of a supply chain expansion programme. Key challenges include improving profitability of high-volume, low margin business.

The Solution

Another UK first for Rocket who, as a trusted SAP partner, has been approved to deploy the latest Ramp-up release of SAP Extended Warehouse Management on HANA. Extensive warehouse process optimisation, automation and mobilisation will form the foundation.
HANA will enable third party billing to significantly reduce third party logistics operational overheads, additionally, real time business intelligence and embedded analytics will improve visibility, traceability and operational management through Fiori’s Smart Dashboards.

Business Outcomes

• Reduce the logistics component of cost-to-serve
• Provide profitable customer services
• Simplify the management and profitability of third party logistics services
• Provide real-time business intelligence
• Speed up decision making and help to run a better operation overall
• Provide true operational excellence

Planned Go-Live

Q1 2018