About the company
As a global chemical manufacturer, the company develops innovative materials and specialty solutions that support customers across industries, including mobility, construction, and industrial manufacturing.
A global supply chain and a data automation opportunity
As part of the company's broader digital transformation initiative, the company sought to strengthen insight and execution across its global supply chain. The company recognized that establishing robust master data governance would be essential to creating a strong foundation for all subsequent initiatives. Implementation of this master data governance framework is currently underway, with initial milestones showing promising results.
By ensuring that planning systems operate on complete, governed, and synchronized master data, the company will facilitate more effective supply chain execution.
Challenges
Responding quickly in a complex global environment
The business is known for responding quickly to complex or urgent customer requirements. To achieve this, skilled teams across the business, from raw material sourcing to delivery at customers' factories, have traditionally worked in close coordination.
However, as customer requests moved through multiple specialist planning teams and approval layers, from raw materials to finished products, the process demanded considerable manual effort. Given the scale of its global supply chain, teams frequently relied on reactive problem-solving, creating a substantial operational burden on expert resources.
Inconsistent data across multiple teams
Production versions and material planning were managed by specialist teams operating separately from the main planning groups. As a result, aligning production readiness data with material planning data required additional coordination. Improving this alignment would streamline several steps in the procurement process while increasing accuracy and efficiency.
At the same time, finished products followed different production paths from raw materials to final output. These variations spanned dozens of manufacturing sites and locations worldwide. Governing visibility into how materials were sourced, produced, processed, and delivered therefore emerged as a critical requirement.
Master data gaps limited end-to-end planning
Enterprise resource planning (ERP) and material requirements planning (MRP) are core systems used to plan, execute, and coordinate supply chain and manufacturing activities. ERP manages transactional processes such as orders, inventory, and procurement, while MRP determines what materials are needed, where and when, based on demand and production plans.
Within the organization, SAP serves as the ERP and MRP backbone. These planning processes rely on complete and accurate master data to translate customer demand into production and material requirements across planning levels. When key master data objects are missing or inconsistent, demand cannot be consistently propagated through the supply chain.
As a result, around 10% of demand information could not be fully carried through the planning stages and required manual intervention by its planning specialists. Sourcing and production paths, and the way orders moved through them, were difficult to trace. With dozens of sites in operation, achieving detailed and reliable product traceability presented an additional challenge.
"Good data is the baseline for revolutionizing our supply chain and every other digital transformation initiative that follows. We needed to build a solid data foundation for the next stage in our company's development."
Project Lead, Global Chemical Manufacturer
In summary, the manufacturer faced the following challenges:
- Siloed production, procurement, and supply chain operations
- Fragmented ownership of critical planning data
- Limited transparency into sourcing, production, and distribution paths
The Solution
Automating master data governance with Stibo Systems
The business selected the STEP – Trusted Intelligence Platform to serve as a centralized governance layer for master data relevant to the supply chain, while continuing to use SAP as the execution backbone for its planning and transactional processes.
The organization decided on a phased implementation approach of the Stibo Systems Product Experience Data Cloud to validate, enrich, and govern the critical product and material master data that underpin supply chain planning and execution. Relevant relationships, such as production sites and sourcing structures, are modeled within the governed product data framework.
Delivering more reliable planning through better data
The initial deployment was completed across Europe, with rollouts to Asia and the Americas to follow. Insights drawn from operational process data, including goods receipt and goods issue events, are analyzed within STEP to enrich and govern critical master data relationships such as sourcing and distribution paths. This is especially valuable where those relationships were previously incomplete or undocumented.
With complete and consistently governed reference data flowing into SAP, planning teams can accurately route demand across plants, determine appropriate production lot sizes and safety stock levels, and assign realistic delivery timeframes based on trusted data rather than manual assumptions.
By using operational data systematically, the manufacturer can more reliably determine and maintain delivery times, reducing planning uncertainty.
Planning specialists spend less time correcting data and more time on analysis and optimization. They have also reduced manual data maintenance, improved the accuracy of lead-time calculations and gained clearer visibility into which production sites supply specific customer orders.
Building the master data foundation from demand to execution
By centrally governing master data relationships across products, raw materials, plants, production segments, and sourcing locations, the manufacturer is creating a trusted foundation that connects planning and execution processes across the global supply chain.
Structured bill-of-materials relationships ensure that finished products, intermediates, and raw materials remain consistently linked across all production levels. These governed relationships establish a single, reliable source of truth that can be shared across enterprise systems and business functions.
As additional regions come online, the organization will be able to maintain critical product and supply chain relationships through standardized processes rather than local data structures and manual maintenance. This creates greater transparency across the manufacturing network and enables consistent collaboration between procurement, production, and logistics teams.
The result is a scalable master data foundation that supports global operations, reduces dependency on manual data reconciliation, and enables future planning and execution capabilities to build on trusted, governed information.
Faster data synchronization
Speed is a critical enabler for reliable planning and execution in complex supply chain environments. Governed master data changes are synchronized between STEP and SAP in near real time, with inbound updates occurring in as little as eight seconds. This ensures that planning and execution always operate on the most current and trusted data.
"This is just the beginning for us. We are already seeing significant benefits from using the STEP platform. After rolling out to Asia and the Americas, our next step is to involve additional functions, including marketing, sales, operations, and technology. The infrastructure is in place, and we are ready to scale across further master data domains and processes."
Head of Global Supply Chain Digitalization, Global Chemical Manufacturer
In summary, the first phase of the rollout is already delivering measurable improvements:
- More reliable supply chain planning: Accurate demand routing, lead times, and delivery commitments through trusted master data
- Reduced manual effort: Automated governance replaces data correction and firefighting, freeing teams for higher-value work
- Greater supply chain visibility: Clear insight into sourcing, distribution paths, and plant-level fulfillment
- Faster decision making: Near real-time SAP synchronization in as little as eight seconds
- Better cross-functional alignment: Connected data enables coordinated planning across procurement, production, and logistics
- A scalable foundation for global operations: Proven in Europe and designed for rapid expansion across regions and plants
Summary
The manufacturer has already begun strengthening supply chain performance and reducing operational friction across its global network. Governed master data now supports accurate routing, reliable delivery timing, and fewer manual interventions in its European operations.
With future rollouts planned for the Americas and Asia, it is on its way toward establishing a scalable data foundation capable of supporting advanced planning, AI-driven initiatives, and future business innovation.
FAQ’s
Why is product master data management (MDM) important for supply chain execution?
Product master data management (MDM) gives manufacturers a single source of governed, accurate data that planning and execution systems can rely on. By ensuring product and material data are complete and consistent, MDM helps demand flow reliably from finished goods through intermediates to raw materials, reducing manual intervention and planning errors.
How can manufacturers improve planning reliability across global operations?
Manufacturers can improve planning reliability by consolidating supply chain-relevant master data onto a governed platform that feeds trusted information into ERP and MRP systems. In this case, the manufacturer used a phased rollout to synchronize governed master data with its SAP environment, improving demand routing, lead-time accuracy, and production planning across multiple sites.
What business benefits has the company achieved with governed master data?
Governed master data has helped the company reduce manual data correction, improve demand propagation through planning stages, and gain clearer visibility into sourcing and distribution paths. Near real-time synchronization between STEP and SAP, in as little as eight seconds, supports faster and more consistent decision-making across its global supply chain.
Why is trusted master data essential for future AI initiatives?
AI and advanced planning tools deliver the best results when built on accurate, well-governed data. By establishing a trusted foundation for product and material data, the business is preparing to extend automation, analytics, and AI-driven initiatives across additional functions as its rollout continues.
