US Sugar SAP Mobile Applications

June 2010

Company History

• Began as Southern Sugar Company in 1926

• Acquired by Charles Stewart Mott, principal shareholder and co-founder of General Motors, and restructured

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Motors, and restructured as U.S. Sugar in 1931

• Rapidly became America’s largest and most productive sugarcane farming and sugar manufacturing business

• Primarily owned by employees and charitable foundations (Flint, MI)

Company Location

• We are headquartered on the South shore of Lake Okeechobee in Clewiston, Fl, “America's Sweetest Town”.

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US Sugar Sugar Statistics

• 40% of Florida’s sugar industry• 1000 jobs.• 180,000 acres harvested annually• 6.5 million tons sugarcane produced• 700,000 tons of sugar produced

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• 195,000 tons bagasse (green fuel) produced• 225,000 tons of molasses produced

Renewable Energy

• The sugar facilities are powered by, renewable green energy from bagasse, the residual

plant fiber from

sugarcane.

• Each ton equates

1 barrel of fuel oil.

• Partnership with Coskata

to explore ethanol production.

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US Sugar Citrus Statistics

• Process 10-15% of Florida crop.

• 750 jobs.• We grow 4 million boxes of

oranges.• We can process 20 million

boxes.• 120 million gals of 100%

pure, premium orange juice.• 200,000 disease-free citrus

trees per year grown in our nursery in northern Florida.

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• We can process 20 million nursery in northern Florida.

Why SAP?

• We are a commodity business, constrained by available land.

• As such we don’t have the same expansion opportunities as other types of business.

• We’ve been around a long time, doing the same thing in the same place.

• We realized several years ago that there was room for significant business process and production process improvement.

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Why SAP?

• We embarked upon a sugar manufacturing process improvement project.

• Spending several $100MM in sugar milling.

• The project was termed “Breakthrough”

• 60% fewer employees.

• Highly automated.

• We are now the lowest cost producer in US and Mexico.

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Why SAP?

• SAP was a key part of our business process improvement plan.

• Wanted a “best of breed” ERP that we could continue to leverage and could use to implement “best business practices”.“best business practices”.

• We have implemented the following modules:– FI/CO

– PM

– PP

– MM

– SD

– HCM

– PS

– BW

– myAgri

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Why Mobile SAP?

• With our 300 square miles of land and two large factory campuses, mobile solutions are key for our business.

• We have several mobile applications running on three different mobile device types.three different mobile device types.

• We have two SAP mobile application areas in production with a third and a fourth planned.

• All US Sugar mobile apps for SAP use Syclo software.

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Syclo Smart Inventory Manager

• We have approx 75,000 sq ft of warehouse space and recently consolidated from 13 warehouses to 4.

• We wanted a system that could:– Wirelessly and tightly interface with SAP– Wirelessly and tightly interface with SAP

– Leverage barcodes for as many items as possible:• Reservations, part locations, parts, people (employee badges)

etc.

– Use a simple interface on minimal real estate.

– Be rugged and reliable.

– Help us further streamline processes and reduce cost.

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Syclo Smart Inventory Manager

• We also wanted a company that would be a partner, not just a vendor.

• We were a little nervous as Syclo did not have a live customer on ECC 6.0 at that time.

• Syclo worked closely with us to develop an EEC 6.0 solution that would work for US Sugar.

• Implementation of the first phase took longer than planned but was very successful.

• Project was on budget.

• We started in our smaller citrus warehouse.6/7/2010 12

Syclo Smart Inventory Manager

• We were able to:– Reduce cycle count time by a factor of 10.

– Gain an accurate picture of our inventory for the first time.

– Perform cycle counts with a frequency tied to stock – Perform cycle counts with a frequency tied to stock item criticality.

• This had other effects on the warehouse team:– They became comfortable with the technology and

excited about other potential opportunities.

– This led to the big sugar warehouses following suit.

– We began to take the parts kitting process mobile.

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Syclo Smart Inventory Manager

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Syclo Smart Rounds & Work Manager

• We wanted a handheld, wireless solution to be able to:

– Perform maintenance inspections based upon:• Inspection routes (“entry lists”).

• Functional locations.• Functional locations.

• Equipment.

• Measurement points.

– Create automatic notifications based on readings.

– Allow trending of measurement values such that predictive maintenance could be performed.

– Be easy to use with very little scope for error.

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Syclo Smart Rounds & Work Manager

• The existing paper process for route based inspections was:

– Inaccurate.

– Slow.

– Prone to error.– Prone to error.

– Prone to abuse.

– Purely reactive.

– Fundamentally broken.

• We chose Syclo again because of our existing relationship and server infrastructure.

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Syclo Smart Rounds & Work Manager

• Smart Rounds & Work Manager was implemented:

– In 2 months, ahead of schedule and under budget.

– With minimal IT involvement.

– With custom screen layouts, defaults and config.– With custom screen layouts, defaults and config.

• The project achieved all the desired objectives.

• Each mill area supervisor has an SAP variant -“What happened yesterday”.

• If the notification is approved, a WO is created and sent to a planner for scheduling.

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Next Steps

• Inventory Manager for W/H inventory receipts.

• Our agriculture department is looking to leverage Smart Rounds and Work Manager.

– Pilot project, loaning a handheld from the sugar mill using mill planner expertise for set-up.using mill planner expertise for set-up.

• Citrus processing want to use Smart Rounds and Work Manager later this year.

• We have a project in the pipeline to barcode and scan premium pulp in drums for citrus processing.

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Next Steps

• We are considering a barcoding and handheld project for our nursery:

– Barcode each tree for exception management and tracking through the life of the plant (even for our tree customers).customers).

– Barcode trays of trees during the growing and budding process in the nursery.

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Lessons Learned

• Start small.– Start in one area to gain confidence in the device and

the software.

• Like SAP, it’s best when user driven and owned.– That does take time to achieve, but is extremely – That does take time to achieve, but is extremely

powerful when it does work.

• Maximize the real estate and usability.– It’s a small device, take the time to make it as easy as

possible to use.

– Don’t be afraid to ask “can you make it do this?”

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Lessons Learned

• Take advantage of supporting technology– myMobiler – freeware to run Syclo on a PC (projector)

for training and config.

– For Smart Rounds & Work Manager, use Excel to create measurement points, drop down list groups and create measurement points, drop down list groups and inspection routes and then upload to SAP (LSMW).

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