Case Study

From manual calculations to PLM in six months

At the 2019 Trace One User Conference, the Vice President of R&D, Innovation, and Consumer Affairs for a global food brand shared the company's journey from the kind of informational chaos that comes from organizational growth to the smooth control that resulted in their standardization of Trace One Devex PLM.

The challenge Brand acquisitions and rapid portfolio growth

Nearly a decade and a half into an impressive acquisition streak of at least one company per year, a spice company was acquired that literally doubled the size of the organization overnight. The goal was to launch $100 million in new products under the newly acquired brand. This VP—just six months into his new role with the company—was charged with making growth goals feasible by getting a handle on the company's ballooning portfolio of product specifications. "We could no longer write formulas on a piece of paper and hope that we could survive. What was really critical to us was to create a system," he said.

Creating that system was easier said than done. As a result of the acquisition streak, the company worked with more than 80 manufacturers totaling upwards of 100 plants. Just 12 of those plants included over 17,000 pieces of product information that would need to be migrated to the new system. Add to that wildly varying specifications and it quickly became clear that harmonizing information would be a challenge.

The goal Six months to harmonize specs post-acquisition

Adopting a PLM solution was the only viable oath forward. "We need one system," the VP said. "We need to get all of our formulas and recipes in that system."

The company had six months to move all data, including records of old formulas and current information, out of the old company's SAP and into Trace One Devex PLM. "It was an impossible task," the VP said. "We had no resources. We had no funding. But we had a plan. And the plan was to get there in six months."

And this daunting challenge soon got harder. The acquired company was hit with a computer virus, which effectively crippled their manufacturing systems for a month. An entire month of effort, in effect, was lost.

Roadblocks Business transformation pain points

The hurdles described are actually common to harmonization and transformation of the product development process. They include:

Lack of funding. "We didn't have time to think about future costs," the VP said. "Nor did we have the knowledge to understand it. As we built out this plan, we worked with Trace One to figure out that multi-year plan and what's it going to cost. That was critical.”

Lack of people and resources. Resources were scarce. "We still don't have enough. We'll never have enough. We're trying to do what we can with what we have," he said.

Resistance to change. The VP noted that change management is the common thread in nearly every story presented at the Trace One User Conference. "It's the hardest part," he said. "We had a lot of resistance, but we got the buy-in we needed."

Lessons learned 7 Best practices to accelerate PLM adoption

Scope the entire project: The VP wished his team had been more specific at the outset about what it is they were trying to accomplish. "Because it affects your timing. It affects your cost, implementation and stakeholders."

Define the funding: Timing was everything when it comes to funding, he said. "Our budget process happens once a year. So if you're thinking about capital or other expenses that you need to implement this system, you can't just do that midyear. We didn’t consider this aspect and then had to expand the scope midyear—and it was very painful."

Identify your resources: During the rollout to internal plants, the team relied on the skills and expertise of our quality managers in those plants. "It was taxing them to a very high level. First, they're doing their day job, and then they're doing some input and qualification for us. Making sure everyone knows that's what's happening, that's really important."

Lessons learned Major takeaways

Identify system needs: Plan for both the expected and unexpected, the VP warns. In their case, they needed to consider how they would manage cyber attacks, and what aspects of the PLM project could be affected.

Define the extraction process: “With different ERP systems, sometimes you have to have an intermediary. So product data goes from Trace One Devex PLM to some kind of spreadsheet or SharePoint, and then back into the ERP. How is the extraction process going to work? Defining that is critically important."

Determine document formatting: "Packaging was our biggest challenge," the VP said. “We went into the PLM transformation project expecting that we'd have corrugated, flexible, rigid formats. Once we got into the project, we also learned we had grinders in our spices that have a specific spec format because there is some assembly required. We learned that we have 16 different packaging specification formats."

Plan for change management: "That was the biggest challenge for us, ensuring that you top-to-bottom alignment on this project." Getting buy-in is the hardest part, the VP admitted. "We made sure IT was completely engaged, and particularly our CIO and the executive team."