Integrated Product Development - SAP PLM Case Study

Lawn & Garden Care

Business Challenge

As a result of the lawn care company’s rapid growth, product development processes across business units and geographies were inconsistent and not integrated with or supported by existing SAP applications successfully running other business areas. The legacy system, mostly relying on manual handoff of documents to relay product information, could not keep pace with company growth and increasing product complexity and regulatory requirements.

For the company to maintain its leadership position in the market, the process inefficiencies and data accuracy issues needed to be addressed in a global product lifecycle management (PLM) initiative. The business case pointed to two key drivers of value in the PLM program:

Compliance: Ability to analyze, manage, and document a product’s hazardous properties, status, restrictions, and registrations at any stage of the product lifecycle
Process Innovation: Fundamental shift from current legacy environment to one designed around integrated specifications, data, documents, and workflows to improve the company’s overall development

The Solution

Linx-AS, together with Capgemini, implemented a comprehensive SAP PLM solution with a design-for-compliance approach. The solution took full advantage of logistics integration to transform the company’s compliance strategy from reactive to proactive.

The broad set of SAP modules and functionalities to manage documents, data, and associated workflows for product development included:

SAP Recipe Management
Specifications (ingredient, product, and packaging)
Document Management System
Collaboration Folders to enable internal and supplier collaboration
SAP Workflow
SAP EH&S Product Safety and Dangerous Goods
SAP REACH compliance/product registration management
Expanded functionality
- Product, portfolio, project, registration and SKU (stock-keeping unit) tracking dashboards
- Automation of U.S. state applications for product registrations and renewals with governmental agencies
- Automatic creation and set up of SKUs

Lawn and Garden PLM ESHM - integrated product development

Business Impact

Process and information integration
Increased visibility to product development and registration information
Efficient product quality monitoring
Automated regulatory & compliance practices
Gains in efficiency, time to market, and data accuracy
High end-user adoption

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