The Customer:
Founded in 1923, this company is a US subsidiary of a large Japanese chemical manufacturer. It is a worldwide leader in chemical process and product innovation employing approximately 5,000 people worldwide.

The Problem:
The parent organization made a top-down decision to standardize business and manufacturing processes to SAP R/3 and BW in its consolidated subsidiaries located in Europe, the United States and the Pacific Rim. The implementation of SAP R/3 would include replacement of a 20 year old legacy system in the U.S. and standardization of an existing and highly customized SAP 3.1 environment. The company required an aggressive six-month timeframe for the implementation.

The Vision:
To provide standardized, worldwide business and manufacturing processes that would allow all portions of the company to access unified master data.

Solution:
NEC provided a total solutions package – Implementation of SAP R/3 with a global, business-oriented approach.

• Blueprinting business process throughout the enterprise
• European implementation included Materials Management, Finance, Sales and Distribution and Controlling
• U.S. implementation included the modules installed in Europe plus Allocation, Production Planning and Quality Management modules
• Asian implementation included a Fit/Gap analysis and implementation of new requirements based on the client copy from the U.S.
• NEC provided a unified BASIS group for installation and maintenance of R/3 and BW
• NEC provided hosting for all servers in one location
• NEC provided a dedicated Help Desk

Benefit:

• Standardized master data
• Automated fixed assets and product costing and inter-company transactions and consolidations
• Integrated inventory management
• Standardized budgetary process
• Automated time stamps on business transactions
• Accurate measurement of production yield
• Improved QM by enabling tie-back to business process
• All servers housed at NEC central location
• Three-tier, 24/7 help desks for each global entity