Enterprise SOA

ESA in the chemical industry: e-VMI at Solvay

The chemical giant Solvay has already begun using ESA principles and essential technologies to transform its essential business processes, especially those pertaining to its supply chain. Up to 60 percent of total costs in the chemical industry derive from materials and logistics, which is why manufacturers place such value on the effective handling of material shipments.

Scenarios for inventory management at business partner sites or VMI aren't new, but they still pose a challenge to suppliers such as Solvay, which try to reconcile long-term supply forecasting with real-time usage data arriving from the actual storage tanks. A truly effective VMI solution would mesh these complementary streams of data together and automate the resupply process. An accompanying portal could make the entire process transparent to Solvay, its customers, and the third-party handlers actually tasked with driving the delivery trucks to its customers' plants.

Solvay used SAP NetWeaver as the integration platform, and the SAP NetWeaver Exchange Infrastructure (SAP NetWeaver XI) framework, to do just that, creating a process it has dubbed "e-VMI." This process combines forecasting and real-time data, displays both in an external portal, and automates delivery by eliminating paperwork and assigning loads to specific drivers, who identify themselves and confirm receipt of shipments using biometric data. This is another opportunity for business process improvement, ...