Solar Industries: Improving customer satisfaction with on-time deliveries and shoring up availability of high-revenue items
A planning environment transformation
To better meet customer needs with synchronized demand and supply chain planning, Solar Industries India Limited replaced a homegrown solution with the SAP Integrated Business Planning (SAP IBP) solution. Now, advanced and connected functionality enables a next-generation supply chain planning process that is helping the company stay ahead of changes in demand.
| Industry | Region | Company Size | Partner |
| Industrial manufacturing—industrial and military explosives | Nagpur, India | 5,000 employees | Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu India LLP |
increase in customer satisfaction.
increase in the availability of raw and packaging materials.
improvement in stock allocation visibility.
Global Supply Chain Management Head, Solar Industries India Limited
Closing the gap between demand and supply
Solar Industries India Limited ranks among the world’s leading manufacturers and suppliers of explosives, initiating systems, and ammunitions for customers engaged in mining and quarrying activities, roads and infrastructure projects, and the global defense sector. Founded in 1995, the company has operations that span more than 90 countries, with 40 manufacturing facilities in nine nations producing industrial explosives, detonators, propellants, and other advanced defense technologies.
Pairing technical prowess and deep domain expertise, Solar Industries is recognized for innovations in high-energy explosives and drone-based loitering munitions. Its continuous investment in automation, R&D, and specialized infrastructure allows it to fulfill large-volume, long-cycle contracts for customers across the globe.
Solar Industries was using disparate, homegrown tools for planning, procurement, and production, which had resulted in data silos. With this setup, it could not take advantage of functionality for material requirements planning in SAP S/4HANA, leaving it with a suboptimal view of the availability of raw and packaging materials. This impacted the ability to deliver finished goods to customers on the committed date. What’s more, the company couldn’t correct historical sales data, leading to inaccurate forecasts and difficulties in predicting demand for newly introduced products. Likewise, reliance on spreadsheets and manual datasets for sales and operational planning and manual input for resource planning capacity was inefficient.
Seeking another way, Solar Industries resolved to close the gap between demand and supply.
CIO, Solar Industries India Limited
Adopting an agile approach to better respond to booming demand
To gain agility in responding to demand changes, Solar Industries turned to the extensive functionality for supply chain planning within SAP Integrated Business Planning (SAP IBP). The company liked the fast, flexible, and comprehensive planning functionality offered by the solution as well as the simplified integration with SAP S/4HANA.
Using SAP IBP to synchronize supply chain functions, Solar Industries could count on new levels of accuracy and efficiency and chose to prioritize two aspects of its planning processes. It selected the SAP IBP application for sales and operations to streamline sales forecasting, and a supply optimizer for tactical and operational planning in the SAP IBP application for response and supply was adopted to better match demand with the best supply plan.
Integration of the response and supply application with SAP S/4HANA enables the final demand and supply plans to trigger accurate material requirements planning, helping align raw and packaging materials availability with the production plan and schedule. A direct connection to SAP Ariba solutions automatically prompts the purchase requisition process.
To guide its digital supply chain planning transformation, Solar Industries partnered with Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu India LLP for the implementation. The consulting firm was tasked with managing the work involved in configuring the two SAP IBP applications and integration with the advanced ERP software. The company’s information architecture is shown in the diagram.
Global Supply Chain Management Head, Solar Industries India Limited
Increasing customer satisfaction by balancing supply and demand
Thanks to the adoption of SAP IBP, Solar Industries is more responsive and efficient, helping it satisfy customers’ expectations with high order-fulfillment rates and on-time deliveries. In fact, the company has seen a 10% upswing in customer satisfaction from fulfilling orders on time. Another major benefit for the company is an informed view on inventory holding costs, allowing it to prioritize customer orders in line with business needs and give precedence to higher-margin materials.
With synchronized demand and supply functions connected to SAP S/4HANA, Solar Industries has a single point of unified master data for supply chain planning. Using material requirements planning functionality in SAP S/4HANA allows the company to better manage the availability of raw and packaging materials required for manufacturing the finished product. It also enables the company to be more agile in responding to changes in demand. With this new level of data insight, the company has increased the availability of raw and packaging materials by 15%.
The use of analytics stories gives Solar Industries an accurate and up-to-date understanding of the current momentum and potential challenges in its supply chain. Likewise, use of the daily optimizer feature available in SAP IBP is allowing the company to shore up packaging materials availability based on demand for the next seven days. Since the implementation of SAP IBP, Solar Industries has improved stock allocation visibility by 20%, helping it optimize fulfillment by making data-based decisions on where and how to allocate stock.
Global Supply Chain Management Head, Solar Industries India Limited
Featured partner
Part of the global consulting firm Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Limited, Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu India LLP led the successful implementation of the SAP IBP solution at Solar Industries. The scope of work for the supply chain planning transformation encompassed business blueprinting, change management, training, go-live activities, and intensive support immediately following go-live.