Two giant companies failed in deploying ERP&DX

1. company Z, a building materials manufacturer with nearly 40 manufacturing sites

The plan was to create a manufacturing DB and then implement ERP.

First, the DB was not completed as planned and the development vendor was changed.

Company IBM started implementation of ERP as the prime contractor.

The goal was to centrally manage purchasing, manufacturing, and shipping.

Manufacturing DB was not completed.

They had to implemented ERP including MES to 40 factories in a few years.

Output a new manufacturing plan/direction the next morning based on the previous day's manufacturing results, etc. This was not ready in time for the morning factory operation.

An IBM manager was fired in the middle of the project

The project was never completed and Company Z's IT department was thoroughly transformed.

I was impressed with IBM project leader, who was an excellent person,who may have had a lot of experience with SAP, but he had zero experience with Japan's kaizen-oriented factories.

2. Company L, a global manufacturer

A problem occurred in the production management part of the ERP system, resulting in delays in product shipments. Procurement from suppliers was also temporarily all suspended. Global vendor Accenture is prime contractor<Article August 2023>

Prior to this project, IBM integrated the headquarters and three companies' mission-critical systems with SAPHANA. <Article 2022>

Then, L asked Company Accenture to revise SAPHANA for DX at 319million USD. Accenture and L established a new company for company-wide DX, and started training DX human resources within the company.

L thought they are 20 years behind Komatsu's system. They wanted to catch up quickly to become the best in the world.

L has been thoroughly Kaizen-oriented. There are many innovations to reduce one second.

Therefore, even before SAP, the systemization of production control was a really tough job. I'm afraid that such experience was not utilized.

I imagine that Accenture's brilliant presentation of DX may have been too good and management considered they could jump up soon.

I believe leading company shoud have a high level goal. And if they try to achieve it, they can't sucess everytime.

I have reported on the failures of three companies so far, but in the next article, I will take a broader perspective.