CENIBRA: Increasing the automation rate of key business processes to boost efficiency and productivity
Intelligent automation drives operational excellence
Brazilian pulp producer CENIBRA strives for operational excellence, agility, and outstanding performance across its business. With the SAP Build Process Automation solution, the company has increased the automation rate in supply chain management, controlling, sales, HR, and maintenance. More than 10 bots free employees from repetitive manual tasks. And the integration with OpenAI ChatGPT automates the transfer of unstructured data between disparate systems.
| Industry | Region | Company Size |
| Mill products | Minas Gerais, Brazil | 4,468 employees |
bot automations in six key business processes.
bank payments processed monthly.
monthly manual-activity-hours equivalent now automated.
Chief Information Officer, Celulose Nipo-Brasileira S.A.
Removing manual work to improve productivity and the employee experience
CENIBRA (Celulose Nipo-Brasileira S.A.), part of Oji Holdings, is a leading Brazilian manufacturer of bleached, short-fiber eucalyptus pulp used to make paper and cardboard products. With an annual production capacity of 1.2 million tons, the company exports 98% of its pulp to markets in Asia, Europe, and North America. It also owns and manages 254,000 hectares of land in 54 municipalities in the state of Minas Gerais, mostly dedicated to eucalyptus farms and ecological reserves. The mountainous region makes it difficult to plant and harvest trees, and the company pays particular attention to employee welfare and environmental protection.
The pulp producer was manually conducting critical tasks in various business processes, resulting in delays. CENIBRA’s IT team worked closely with all of the business areas to identify high-volume manual tasks that would lend themselves to automation. Sales, finance, and supply chain management led the way with three automations each, while maintenance, HR, and forestry identified additional scenarios.
In the maintenance process, for example, employees were manually analyzing, summarizing, and inputting maintenance data from the manufacturing execution system (MES) into its back-end system. This required significant time and effort while sometimes causing stress for staff. CENIBRA wanted to improve the quality and speed of the equipment inspections as well as the experience and productivity of its mechanical inspectors.
Chief Information Officer, Celulose Nipo-Brasileira S.A.
Expanding possibilities with process automation and AI
CENIBRA has long relied on the SAP ERP application to support its extensive operations, choosing to migrate its core systems to SAP S/4HANA. The company deployed SAP Build Process Automation to create 11 bots in six critical business processes. CENIBRA was able to smoothly integrate the solution with SAP S/4HANA and third-party applications and deliver simplified, user-friendly interfaces. SAP Build Process Automation is part of SAP Business Technology Platform (SAP BTP).
In finance, robotic process automation (RPA) bots created using SAP Build Process Automation simplify the collection and updating of data. One automation searches banking websites that lack API integration for payment receipts. Other bots interact with partner banks to collect bank statements, payment returns, and payroll information to automatically update records in SAP S/4HANA, freeing accounting specialists from menial, low-productivity tasks. Procurement operations are streamlined by automating the creation of multiple document types in the new ERP system. These include purchase orders for materials, purchase requisitions (generated daily by the business areas), and related supplier quotes that can be sent according to the list of supply options managed in SAP software.
CENIBRA employed an intelligent automation combining RPA and AI capabilities to address the additional challenges in creating maintenance orders. Maintenance notes were kept in the MES, which wasn’t integrated with SAP S/4HANA. Creating maintenance orders in the ERP system was slow and cumbersome, as it required manually transferring these notes between both systems. Now, the automation accesses the MES portal page, searches for production loss indicators for a given range of dates, groups them, and produces maintenance orders in SAP S/4HANA. This process uses ChatGPT to extract and summarize the maintenance notes from the MES to create maintenance orders.
Chief Information Officer, Celulose Nipo-Brasileira S.A.
Enhancing responsiveness in critical business processes
Automating key business processes has directly impacted the overall performance of the paper and pulp mill. SAP Build Process Automation has enabled CENIBRA to enhance operational efficiency and productivity, streamline operations, and redirect employees to more-strategic initiatives. Adding AI to the automation effort means maintenance tasks are now carried out faster and more efficiently, significantly upgrading asset utilization and adding value to the company’s operations. And automating mechanical inspections has elevated the quality of the inspections, greatly reducing the time to create maintenance orders—from seven hours to immediately—and increasing order accuracy.
CENIBRA’s employees lacked sufficient training in process automation and AI technologies, limiting productivity and innovation. To support the implementation, the company selected 22 employees to become data scientists and provided them with extensive career training. These specialists will use data-driven insights to further optimize business operations, aligning with the focus on innovation and efficiency.
Standardizing processes and creating a reliable IT architecture have led to a lower total cost of ownership. The technology provides a foundation for CENIBRA to explore new, future-proof automation scenarios and position itself for long-term success.
Chief Information Officer, Celulose Nipo-Brasileira S.A.
Driving digital innovation in worldwide pulp manufacturing
CENIBRA intends to expand its use of SAP solutions to benefit instrumentation and electrical inspectors as well as mechanical inspectors. The business also hopes that the software and AI will increasingly help support maintenance by predicting failures and shutdowns of equipment and processes.
The potential of SAP Build Process Automation at CENIBRA is enormous. As a capital-intensive company, every improvement in process efficiency has a substantial impact on both productivity and cost management. The success of the AI-driven maintenance process opens up possibilities for scaling the technology across other critical operations. This transformation marks an important step in CENIBRA’s journey toward digital innovation, solidifying its position as a forward-thinking leader in the global pulp production industry.