Stellar & Oji Fibre Solutions

The challenge

OJI Fibre Solutions (OjiFS) packaging division was looking to improve its corporate reporting solutions by replacing old technology and multiple data sources with a central user-friendly environment. They were also keen to move to a governed solution for their specific business needs and needed a strategy and framework to take them forward.

Stellar was engaged to work closely with OjiFS to design a BI roadmap, identify opportunities and create a programme of work. The following reports were initially selected:

• Reporting tools review of using SAP Analytics Cloud (SAC) and Microsoft Power BI (PBI)
• Manufacturing margin and profitability
• Plant operational reporting
• Plant maintenance costs and scheduling
• Investment management and project reporting

The solution

Tools reviews

In the first project, Stellar undertook a toolset analysis of using SAC and PBI, including features and benefits comparison. Stellar provided a proof of concept design with both tools delivered for business reviews.

Margin and Profitability

The margin analysis for the Australian manufacturing plant projects involved detailed analysis of source systems and business requirements definition. Stellar designed a data extraction process from the Kiwiplan ERP solution and transformed the data, that enabled comparisons between planned and actual production costs to be analysed. This also provided a view of customer profitability, with a drill down to production order level.

Plant Operational Reporting

Packaging manufacturing plants in New Zealand had been using a manual extract and load process that required many days of manual analysis by three individual plants, to prepare the data from sixteen source systems. The summarised data was then sent by the CSV file for consolidation. The data consisted of financial and non-financial information. Stellar replaced the legacy system and delivered a suite of queries to support business analysis. Most of the data could be then automatically extracted from the source systems and consolidated into a single reporting model.

Plant Maintenance

SME and technical support on the extraction and transformation of key SAP data was necessary. So, Stellar released one of the plant maintenances projects and will continue to do so for the next release packages.

Investment Management

Stellar currently provides SME and technical support on the extraction and transformation of key SAP data to the investment management project. This encompasses providing datasets to fulfil the requirements for three different types of reporting for Engineers, Capex Forecasting and Project Managers.

BAU and SME Advice

There was business as usual support for the SAP BW solution. Stellar added best practice advice and documentation standards, as well as design and release processes, and system monitoring and performance reporting.

The benefits

• Improved cost management and visibility of customer profitability by market segment
• Significant reduction in manual processing
• A new consistent method of calculation and user flexibility on reporting structures
• An improved solution to monitor plant maintenance costs, planning and reporting
• Automated project and investment reporting, saving data collection time, improved frequency, and accuracy of data and its presentation
• Enhanced accuracy and improved efficiency with a simple, sound, and scalable governance structure that meets the business needs and support teams’ requirements