Production planning and scheduling is the bloodline of a successful manufacturing facility – it supports agility to adapt to market demands in real-time regardless of market fluctuations while optimizing inventory, distributing the workforce, decreasing waste, and ensuring the projected financial performance.
TAM International is a manufacturer of drilling products and services for the oil and gas industry with headquarters in Houston, Texas, and a presence on six continents. With a lofty goal of growing tenfold over the next 10 years, the company set out to ensure its business operations were adaptable, innovative, and efficient in a world that’s always changing. To achieve this, TAM International decided to adopt a state-of-the-art ERP system that would drive transparent and efficient business operations across finance, scheduling, and manufacturing.
“Our legacy scheduling system did little to empower our ambitions, and at times it felt like we were working for it. To quickly shift gears and remain competitive in a volatile industry, we needed to modernize and adopt solutions that would work for us, not have us work for them. We needed automated workflows and reporting, quality control, and the ability to connect different parts of our business for transparent planning and execution across the entire enterprise,” explained Rebecca DeHoyos, supply chain director, TAM International.
TAM International was aware that SAP was the gold standard for ERP in industrial manufacturing but believed that only the biggest corporations could afford it.
“We did not include SAP in our early conversation, thinking we were too small for them. Then, an executive from the SAP North America digital hub reached out to our CFO and presented not only the benefits of SAP, but also a convincing message backed by customer references that SAP’s cloud portfolio was indeed suitable for companies of all sizes. This changed everything,” DeHoyos said.
Digital hubs, located on six continents, are the engines that execute SAP’s digital customer engagement. The multi-disciplined and digitally skilled talent in the hubs use AI and the latest technologies to help support customers regardless of where they might be located or at which stage of their value journey with SAP they are. Through a powerful combination of automation and expert engagement, customers can realize their digital transformation business outcomes exponentially faster and at greater convenience.
“The first contact with a new customer is critical. Our digital customer engagement teams embed AI to scale SAP’s industry best practices to accelerate and deepen the understanding of customer needs, concerns, and aspirations before the very first meeting,” said Sam Masri, global head, SAP Digital, Customer Success. “We are delighted to have played an important role in facilitating an immediate connection to a dedicated account manager and multiple SAP experts who addressed the challenges that TAM International had, setting a strong starting point for a successful digital transformation road map for the customer.”
To gain a full understanding of the customer’s fundamental business goals and the obstacles caused by the disconnection between finance, scheduling, and production, the Industries and Value and Solution Advisory teams at SAP were engaged right from the start. Following the solution demos and the business case presentation, SAP S/4HANA Cloud and SAP Business Technology Platform (SAP BTP) were identified as the solutions of choice for TAM International.
“There is another major benefit of our partnership with SAP,” DeHoyos added. “Our workforce is incredibly diverse and young, with a majority sitting in the 27 to 41 age group. They are tech natives and will only work with businesses that share their passion for business success driven by technological innovation. Working with SAP’s ERP is a goal for many, and our relationship with SAP has also elevated our profile, making us more relevant to this talent group.”
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