Righting the vessel

In 2019, advanced aquatic engine technology provider YANMAR Marine International was all at sea, or in a state of confusion.

The company had outgrown its enterprise resource planning (ERP) system, with its legacy processes outdated and no longer supported.  

The tech structure was largely manual, requiring employees to enter data in multiple places.  As a result, inputs were error-prone, entries inconsistent, and daily production status checks inefficient.  

Its operational efficiency was taking on water, and the company was in peril of becoming derelict, or cast adrift, not unlike the real-life ghost ship Mary Celeste (discovered floating off the Azores in 1872, devoid of captain and crew.)

Back to the present – inventory management was substandard, with YANMAR Marine unable to instantly communicate with clients about product configurations, engine part replacements, and stock and delivery information. 

The siloed system was never going to be fixed.  

Because of this, the company concluded that digitization and modernization were not just choices, but necessities.

Although YANMAR Marine management knew that they needed a unified platform, they also understood what they didn’t want. 

“We do not want to deal with distracting things such as IT and cyber security, software and hardware support, VPNs (virtual private networks), backups or on-premise servers,” said YANMAR Marine’s senior vice president of sales Floris Lettinga.

That decisiveness helped – and focused executives on the course they needed to take.  

Despite the rough waters, the company’s excursion to the cloud would be smoother than many anticipated.

A new navigation bridge

Founded in Osaka, Japan in 1912, YANMAR Marine International manufactures and sells engines used in seagoing vessels and pleasure boats, along with generator sets, aquafarming and climate control systems, and agricultural and construction equipment.

Its support network includes 2,100 locations providing service and parts in 130 countries.

As it began the demanding task of creating a cloud-based platform, management realized that – in boating terms – the company was not just redesigning its hull, or main body, but building a new navigation bridge to move in the proper direction, as well as an engine room to continue pushing the company forward.

After evaluating numerous ERP solutions, YANMAR Marine concluded that the world’s leading ERP software vendor, SAP, was best qualified to meet the challenge.

To ensure a steady implementation, participating partner Quino was brought in as a “change coach.”  The Dutch consulting company had built a reputation for working with SAP’s cloud solutions to handle, among other challenges, finance and supply chain transformations.

To satisfy its ERP needs, the partners agreed to utilize the public edition of the SAP S/4HANA Cloud for the next generation of business applications, as well as SAP’s Business Technology Platform (BTP) to integrate warehouse assets by using a mobile warehouse scanner application – to track inventory as it moved.

When the platform was completed, YANMAR Marine would no longer being overly reliant on IT resources to support its business systems.  In addition, the scattered IT landscape would be abolished, and replaced by a single source of truth.

Smooth sailing ahead

YANMAR Marine’s cloud-based platform – automating all processing pertaining to configuration, purchasing and status updates – was deployed in 2022, without a single moment of downtown.

Just as the company intended, the new dashboard functionalities had real-time visibility over a streamlined system that saw efficiency increase for sales and production.  Inventory management, production planning and order tracking all improved.  And there was finally a document base where employees could go for up-to-date work instructions.

By eliminating obsolete or repetitious manual activities, YANMAR saved 40 percent in business process time, while lowering maintenance costs.

Because the platform provided real-time insights into the availability of stock and inventory, working capital grew by 25 percent. 

Likewise, customers could find all order and product information in one location.

If supply chain challenges arise, both clients and suppliers are warned about them in advance – before a crisis – empowering both to better manage their businesses.

And the standardization of processes has resulted in financial closing being reduced from five days to just half a day.

According to Lettinga, the advancements “allow us to focus on our core business — building engines and ensuring that the customer has a beautiful and carefree day on the water.”

The success of the implementation has generated a buzz among other branches of the corporation, where planners are contemplating how they might adapt the core model to integrate with different cloud systems, develop new apps and realize robotic process automation (RPA) possibilities.

For transforming its business operations and customer service, YANMAR Marine was selected as a winner at the SAP 2023 Innovation Awards, an annual event honoring organizations using SAP technologies to make a difference. You can read YANMAR’s Innovation Awards pitch deck that earned them the recognition here.