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Case study

The challenge

With six divisions and more than 800 plants worldwide, a leading Fortune 500 manufacturer continuously looked for efficiencies and flexibility to remain competitive. The challenge: Each plant had its own siloed manufacturing execution system (MES), making it impossible to gain a unified view of plant operations and difficult to transfer production from one plant to another. The company needed a single, advanced MES design that would work across all manufacturing environments and product lines.

An off-the-shelf solution that would work with the company’s planned SAP upgrade didn’t exist. Cognizant offered a daring alternative: Build a new, custom MES from scratch.

Our approach

Cognizant applied our deep consulting, blueprinting, design, development, deployment and business process knowledge to create the robust “manager-of-managers” architecture the manufacturer needed to harmonize its operations and enhance real-time plant visibility. Our team also created an implementation plan and categorized sites based on complexity, considering parameters such as the number of workflows, interfaces and level of automation. The new system is now being rolled out across plants worldwide, and those where SAP upgrades are most urgent have been prioritized. 

The future-proof solution, developed by Cognizant's manufacturing technology solutions experts is unique in terms of geographical reach and operational scope. And by replacing four outdated legacy systems, it lays a foundation for higher operational visibility and lower costs across all the company’s manufacturing plants worldwide.

Global shop floor visibility in real time

With a uniform MES across multiple sites, the manufacturer can now use any of its updated plants to produce any product line—something that was unthinkable before this project. In addition, enterprise-wide visibility provides management with the contextual intelligence needed to make better, more informed strategic and tactical business decisions.

80% reduction

of support costs

60,000

products able to be rolled globally

Visibility and scalability

across all plants worldwide