Building an efficient digital factory to boost productivity
Each year, Jowat SE produces 100,000 tons of industrial adhesives. Demand for the company’s premium products is surging, and so is the cost of raw materials. To scale its operations quickly and efficiently, Jowat built seamless production and inventory management workflows with SAP Digital Manufacturing – saving the company time and money.
| Industry | Region | Company Size |
| Chemicals | Detmold, Germany | 1,280 employees |
Accurate inventory
A week saved by automating raw material consumption updates
Seamless manufacturing operations
Detmold Plant Manager, Jowat SE
Staying ahead of spiraling costs
Manufacturing industrial adhesives is a complex process that requires high volumes of specialized chemicals and a tremendous amount of power. With raw materials and energy costs skyrocketing, premium adhesive manufacturer Jowat looked to get an even tighter grip on its inventory management and production processes.
To ensure maximum efficiency, Jowat factories receive raw materials when they are ready to use them and no earlier. Working in this way enables Jowat to ensure that it always has enough raw materials to fulfil orders, while also minimizing waste and inventory storage costs. However, this operating model demands smooth workflows, and any delays in order placement, production, or the delivery of raw materials can have huge cost implications for Jowat.
As a result, the company works hard to ensure that its 24/7 manufacturing processes always run like clockwork. With demand for industrial adhesives surging, the company was eager to ensure that its production processes could scale to meet ballooning order numbers and still deliver optimum efficiency.
Originally established in 1919, Jowat is no stranger to innovation. Leaders at Jowat identified that the next stage of the company’s evolution would require a radical transformation of its production and inventory management processes.
“Our factory workers still relied heavily on paper-based processes,” explains Dirk-Alexander Segger, Detmold Plant Manager at Jowat. “For instance, when employees had finished mixing and decanting adhesives, they handwrote notes to track the volume and type of raw materials that they used during the process. Shortly after decanting, workers would then input the information from their notes into our inventory management and manufacturing execution systems – adding to their workload and increasing the risk of errors.”
Tracking materials usage manually inevitably created a time-delay and discrepancies between the stock amounts recorded in Jowat’s inventory system and the actual volume of raw materials available on the factory floor. What’s more, with information stored across multiple systems and in different formats, plant managers had no clear way to identify process bottlenecks or potential enhancements.
Annette Podleschny-Borchardt, Project Manager at Jowat, comments: “To enhance efficiency, improve transparency, and prepare for growth, we decided it was time to go entirely paperless. Building digital processes would give us a more detailed, up-to-date picture of our stock position, which would, in turn, help to drive smarter raw materials purchasing decisions as well as production improvements.”
CIO, Jowat SE
Embracing digital transformation
To find the best solution to support its digital transformation initiative, Jowat invited multiple technology vendors to outline the strengths of their solutions. To minimize the need for lengthy customization, Jowat targeted a solution that it could easily adapt to meet the highly specialized nature of chemicals manufacturing.
After reviewing 15 different solutions, Jowat selected SAP Digital Manufacturing. As well as providing a solid foundation for digitalization, SAP Digital Manufacturing also integrates seamlessly with Jowat’s existing SAP solutions, including SAP S/4HANA, SAP Extended Warehouse Management, and SAP Business Technology Platform.
“We were immediately interested in SAP Digital Manufacturing because it is a cloud-native solution,” comments Segger. “Previously, we used on-premises solutions that required us to carry out extensive and disruptive updates. With SAP Digital Manufacturing, we get instant access to the latest features thanks to the quarterly release schedule.”
Jowat also valued SAP’s proactive engagement with the chemicals manufacturing industry. “We really appreciate that SAP is eager to co-innovate with industry leaders like Jowat to develop next-generation manufacturing solutions,” says Podleschny-Borchardt. “Through the SAP Customer Engagement Initiative, we can help expert developers at SAP build smart factory solutions that meet the needs of our sector.”
To ensure a smooth implementation of SAP Digital Manufacturing, Jowat used the help of SAP Services and Support, which provided the adhesive manufacturer with consulting, development, and project management support.
“The SAP Services and Support team were great to work with,” says Segger. “Whenever we hit a stumbling block, they helped us work through the problems. The SAP team and system architect were very open to discussing conceptual issues in the standard SAP Digital Manufacturing behavior and helped to accelerate resolution. The SAP team was also very supportive when we wanted to develop a dedicated production operation dashboard to give plant managers fast access to key production metrics. As this was uncharted territory, it naturally took a lot of time and energy to work through and SAP was behind us every step of the way.”
Currently, Jowat is completing the first phase of the SAP Digital Manufacturing implementation at its Detmold factory before expanding the solution across all plants. Christine Künne, CIO at Jowat, explains: “With a phased implementation we can ensure that the processes we build at our Detmold plant are tried-and-tested to deliver maximum efficiency. This will give us the best chance of success when we roll out these processes across all our facilities.”
Project Manager, Jowat SE
Driving efficient manufacturing with high-quality data
With SAP Digital Manufacturing, Jowat can say goodbye to error-prone, manual processes and hello to seamless digital workflows with end-to-end transparency.
Segger says: “Workers can now directly input consumption information at the point of production. Previously, it would take one full-time employee three days a week to track raw materials consumption. With SAP Digital Manufacturing, we have a real-time, accurate picture of our raw materials usage and needs. This will help us to optimize usage and reduce costs.”
Podleschny-Borchardt adds: “Production processes are so much faster now that we have built streamlined digital processes. Before, it took up to up to five days to enter data. Now there is no delay, as data is entered directly as tasks are completed.”
Planning ahead for an AI-driven future
With reliable, up-to-date information in SAP Digital Manufacturing, plant managers and leaders at Jowat have full visibility across the entire manufacturing cycle.
Künne says: “SAP Digital Manufacturing has helped to improve the traceability of our products and given us a much more detailed understanding of our manufacturing operations. Ultimately, this helps to enhance planning and offers new insights into potential process improvements.”
Jowat’s plans for SAP Digital Manufacturing go far beyond a global rollout. The company is already exploring the potential to scale and streamline manufacturing processes further with artificial intelligence (AI) and Internet of Things (IoT) technologies.
“AI holds tremendous potential for us,” reflects Podleschny-Borchardt. “We’re excited to explore how it can help us to ensure consistently excellent quality across heavily customized product lines, and how we can enhance production uptime with IoT-driven predictive maintenance. Having an AI-ready solution like SAP Digital Manufacturing at the heart of our operations makes taking these next steps in our innovation journey so much easier.”