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Manufacturer: ERP adjacency without freezing the plant

Problem

Plants ran 24/7 with tightly coupled MES, WMS handoffs, and an ERP that had grown custom extensions for twenty years. Leadership wanted planning accuracy and inventory truth in one place, but any “stop the line” migration was unacceptable.

Constraints

Seasonal peaks, union rules on overtime for recovery windows, and supplier SLAs that penalized missed ASN windows. IT had limited cloud skills; most expertise sat with plant engineers who distrusted “central projects.”

Approach

We introduced a canonical inventory and routing hub fed by event streams from MES and scanners. ERP remained authoritative for financial inventory until each plant reached a defined maturity gate. Planning algorithms moved last—after telemetry proved the hub matched floor reality.

Rollout

One pilot line, then one plant, then a region. Each step had a maximum allowed outage budget in minutes, rehearsed rollback, and a visible “line health” board for operators. Training happened on the night shift first, with champions embedded per crew.

Risks mitigated

• Phantom inventory: cycle-count cadence tied to divergence alerts
• Hidden coupling: integration maps regenerated from traces, not interviews alone
• Change fatigue: fewer simultaneous initiatives; explicit “no project” weeks

Outcomes (illustrative)

Unplanned downtime attributable to the program stayed within the agreed envelope across twelve plants. Planning cycle time improved enough to retire two shadow spreadsheets that had been “risk management by folklore.”

Lessons

Credibility came from operators seeing their own metrics on the hub—not from architecture slides. When the hub lied even once, trust took weeks to rebuild; we optimized for truth over speed after that.