Tenneco has replaced legacy SAP environments with QAD Adaptive in a move the automotive supplier says has given it a more standardised and scalable manufacturing backbone across its braking division.
The project, described by QAD in a recent case study, was aimed at more than a straightforward system swap. Tenneco, a global Tier 1 supplier with more than 100 manufacturing sites, had accumulated a patchwork of ERP platforms through acquisitions, regional requirements and indepen...
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dent business units, leaving some plants on older SAP systems and others on earlier QAD software.
According to QAD, that fragmentation had pushed key tasks outside the core ERP environment and into spreadsheets and adjoining tools, making it harder for managers to trust data quickly enough to act on it. Jo-Anne Evans, executive director of IT for Tenneco’s braking division, said the company first had to “disentangle complexity” and that the aim was to simplify and standardise operations rather than merely lift existing processes into a new cloud system.
Jonathon Brown, divisional CIO for performance solutions at Tenneco, said the problem was not a lack of data but the speed at which it could be relied upon. The company’s answer was to adopt QAD Adaptive on Amazon Web Services as a single platform for manufacturing, supply chain, finance and inventory management, while keeping production running during the changeover.
QAD said the rollout was delivered with Arista Consulting and its own professional services team, with standardisation taking precedence over customisation. More than 500 legacy customisations were removed, while warehouse management, traceability, a harmonised chart of accounts, refreshed master data and embedded MRP functions were introduced across the division.
Tenneco also used QAD Digital Learning to provide role-based guidance inside the application, an approach aimed at helping staff adapt more quickly to the new system.
The company says the transition was completed without missing a production day or a customer shipment. QAD said the first measurement period after go-live pointed to a 9% reduction in scrap, a 1.5% gain in direct labour productivity and a $3.36 million inventory synchronisation benefit.
The software provider also said Tenneco raised ERP process utilisation from roughly half of available capability in its legacy set-up to about 93% under the new model. The company argues that the unified data and workflow structure now in place should make it easier to support future automation and AI-led manufacturing tools.
Evans said the new platform gives the business “a single model” for how it wants to operate, adding that consistency should help it expand without recreating processes plant by plant.
Source: Noah Wire Services
