The Business Challenge
Cadbury SA and Bromor Foods (both part of the global Cadbury Schweppes group) had both been looking to outsource a component of their logistics operation to Tibbett & Britten. Both organisations had manufacturing facilities and distribution depots in centres in Cape Town, Durban, Port Elizabeth and Gauteng, and both had technology systems based on SAP R/3. Tibbett & Britten used the PRIDE system, and without being able to integrate ordering, planning and delivery systems, the companies were not able to realise the cost and time efficiencies of the outsourcing project.
The Solution
UCS Solutions designed an interface system to allow Cadbury and Bromor's technology to talk to Tibbett & Britten's using SAP Business Connector to translate, format, transmit and receive the transaction information, talking to a WebMethods interface at Tibbett & Britten. A significant component was UCS Solutions implementation of a sophisticated monitoring and error management system to ensure that errors or problems were flagged and escalated quickly to the appropriate Tibbett & Britten people. An additional system monitors both systems to highlight issues such as discrepancies which may relate to technical and/or business process related issues, which is analysed and actioned daily.
The Benefit
Cadbury SA and Bromor Foods have reduced inventory in transit, reduced time from manufacturing to retailer, allowing it to reduce lead times, allowing large their retailer customers to manage stocks more effectively. Because a large component of their logistics operation is now successfully outsourced, Cadbury and Bromor can reduce investment in depot and trucking infrastructure, and focus more on their core manufacturing and marketing business. Tibbett & Britten have benefited enormously through simplified and more efficient information exchange, allowing it to proved logistics services to Cadbury and Bromor more cost effectively.
UCS Helps Cadbury/Bromor Streamline Logistics
Cadbury SA and Bromor Foods, independent companies under the global Cadbury Schweppes umbrella, have been a part of every South African's life for decades, producing drinks such as Energade and Oros (Bromor), and chocolates and snacks (Cadbury). The two companies were moving closer together to share resources as part of the global realignment of the group, but were also independently restructuring their own operations to increase efficiencies.
A large component of this was both companies choosing Tibbett & Britten as a logistics and distribution partner. The business case was solid: Tibbett & Britten also handled logistics for other large players in the FMCG space, delivering products to a number of common retailers. Outsourcing to Tibbett & Britten would allow Cadbury and Bromor to reduce their investments in their own logistics operations, improve inventory movement and in theory reduce costs through outsourcing.
The problem for the organisations was that Cadbury and Bromor had logistics and ordering systems running on SAP R/3, while Tibbett & Britten used PRIDE. This meant that Tibbett & Britten was having to do manual data re-entry into its systems, preventing it from achieving optimum efficiency in consolidated shipments to major retailers, as information was not coming in fast enough to allow the knife-edge planning that is needed in modern logistics operations. Cadbury and Bromor were also not getting back information that could allow them to spot problems or exceptions.
UCS Solutions evaluated the existing systems, the management information requirements, and the data exchange parameters. It proposed a solution that would not require either Cadbury/Bromor or Tibbett & Britten to have to change their systems, but still provide the functionality they required. Using SAP Business Connector to connect into a WebMethods interface at Tibbett & Britten, UCS Solutions fulfilled the information sharing component, and added advanced monitoring and exception reporting to ensure that problems were spotted quickly.
Communications into and out of the SAP R/3 systems are managed though standard and non-standard SAP Idocs. Business Connector then converts the outbound Idoc files to XML format and calls the appropriate service directly on the Web Methods server. Web Methods converts the inbound files to SAP into XML format and calls the appropriate service directly on the Business Connector server. PRIDE transmits batched flat files to Web Methods and receives flat files from Web Methods, according to pre-defined Tibbett & Britten file structures and formats.
Bromor Foods and Cadbury SA are in the process of merging their operations in South Africa. Outsourcing their warehousing and distribution to a common third party provider is one of the initial stages of this integration process. In the long term, it is expected that their two SAP R/3 systems will be merged, and the two interfaces will be consolidated to a single interface between PRIDE and the merged Bromor-Cadbury SAP R/3 environment.
UCS Solutions had been working closely with both Bromor and Cadbury since 2002, specifically in the area of Trade Partner integration. It has assisted Bromor and Cadbury in successfully implementing effective customer and vendor based e-business solutions. As a result, UCS had an excellent knowledge of both businesses and their systems, as well as a proven track record for implementing successful solutions.
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