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A customer amid construction of a state-of-the-art containerboard and packaging facility needed a state-of-the-art Yard Management system (YMS) integrated with SAP to pair with it. Both SAP Yard Logistics (SAP YL) and Westernacher were a natural fit to fulfill this business need. This implementation of SAP YL wasn’t merely a migration of one YMS to another but an ambitious leap into intertwining digital systems into the heart of the company’s operations for the first time alongside the start-up of this new facility. This customer ultimately concluded that the idea of less manual interventions and more system-driven automation, within their operations, was a necessary change to drive continuous improvement. With the main goals being to enhance operational efficiencies, increase daily output, and decrease unwanted manual interventions, an investment in SAP YL seemed like an evident choice.
In any SAP implementation, there are certainly some hurdles that need to be overcome and this project was no different, given the simultaneous building of both the facility and its SAP YL digital twin. One major challenge was trying to fully understand, from start to finish, the on-site logistics operations and various processes that would make the site efficient, with few to no “live” examples. Westernacher had to rise to the occasion without shying away from the inherent uphill battle of a “greenfield” implementation.
For this project to become a success, there was a strong need for a data-driven display, directly correlated to the onsite yard. One achievement that contributed to this success was the creation of the “Dock Status Report”. With the click of a button on a custom Fiori application, this report enabled a user-friendly display of all on-site dock doors, inclusive of all data fields requested. Another profound achievement was a “Yard Task Management” application that provided necessary details to the end user, as well as an added level of flexibility to influence the priority of open and pending tasks. This enhancement to a standard Fiori application improved the level of detail for all operational personnel, both within the warehouse and yard. The result of this enhancement is what happens when you put the right information in the right place at the right time: greatly improved onsite operational efficiencies. This optimized work experience eliminated what would have been otherwise tedious intermediary steps, within the end-to-end flow of products through the yard. As a result, this customer saw a daily increase in truck flow from 20-30 trucks per day to 140-150 trucks per day, efficiently. Inbound live unloading saw the most staggering increase from 20 trucks per day to anywhere from 80-90 trucks per day, highlighting not only production advancements but also systemic capacity capabilities.
