Case Study · Manufacturing
Production confirmations across six plants ran as an overnight batch. The ERP was consistently eight to twelve hours behind the line. Operators completed paper forms at shift end; a data entry team posted them the following morning. Three to four errors per hundred confirmations were standard - compounding across 14 shifts per week and six plants, the reconciliation queue was permanent. OEE was calculated from the reconciliation, not the event, making the number consistently optimistic.
Root-cause analysis happened at the monthly review, not the shift. By the time a recurring stoppage pattern was visible in the data, it had run for four weeks.
Interwork deployed a custom MES at the line: tablet interfaces for operators, BAPI-based CO11N confirmation within the shift, MB1A goods issue matched to confirmed quantity, and OEE calculated from the MES event log. The integration used an event queue with retry logic, so ERP maintenance windows did not interrupt MES capture.
A two-week parallel run allowed supervisors to validate MES numbers against paper forms before cutover. Stoppage classification trees were configured per plant and line - 47 code categories across the six plants. Maintenance routing was automated on unplanned stoppage: the maintenance team received an alert with the machine ID, the stoppage code, and the expected downtime impact before the supervisor had picked up the phone.
The CFO close - for the first time - ran on production numbers that matched the line. The finance team stopped adjusting the provision buffer for MES-ERP discrepancy.
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