Infor, the industry cloud company, has announced that Georgia-Pacific’s Packaging & Cellulose business has rolled out Infor’s CloudSuite solution, powered by its core M3 ERP (enterprise resource planning) system, to transform business processes and provide a greatly enhanced customer experience.
In the first completed phase of the rollout, Infor’s multi-tenant cloud solution — which also includes Supply Chain Planning, Enterprise Performance Management (EPM), Factory Track, and Yard Management — serves as the core technology platform for the mill-based businesses. The deployment in the Cellulose business, including four large pulp mills operating 24/7, was achieved without disruption to scheduled production. Also included were international offices in Switzerland, Uruguay and China, as well as the headquarters office in Atlanta, Ga., which combined serves customers in more than 90 countries and partners with 24 international and 33 domestic external warehouses.
Georgia-Pacific’s Packaging business is a leading provider of paperboard material that is converted into items such as boxes, paper plates and cups worldwide. Its Cellulose business is a top producer of fluff pulp used in products such as diapers and incontinence items, and market pulp used for paper making.
Pat Boushka, executive vice president of Georgia-Pacific’s Packaging & Cellulose business, said, “In Infor, we are working with a partner that shares our Principle-Based Management™ philosophy and is committed to creating value for us over the long term. The Infor solution will enable us to consolidate disparate systems and leverage a single, core platform to provide superior customer service worldwide.”
According to Renee Valgoi, senior vice president of finance for the Georgia-Pacific Packaging & Cellulose business, the segment has been operating on an aging set of applications. Its core businesses, he said, “have leveraged different processes and applications, which have made adopting new technologies and practices more challenging in recent years.”
Moving the business to a common platform and aligned processes enables the consolidation of key functions and retirement of more than 90 percent of the legacy applications previously in use. Infor’s M3 ERP system and associated edge applications will be the new core system covering order management, customer experience, supply chain and accounting.
Georgia-Pacific’s Packaging & Cellulose business anticipates that the Infor solution will help drive business value in several key areas by:
- Improving business processes through the integration and implementation of best practices for order management, customer service, supply chain and accounting as well as supporting centers of excellence.
- Enabling a “single source of truth” for the business to rely on for advanced analytics and improved decision making.
- Delivering an enhanced customer experience with a new, web-enabled partner portal, state-of-the-art sales, services and marketing automation, along with e-commerce capabilities. This provides end-to-end order visibility to customers and improved predictability in order fulfillment.
- Providing a multi-tenant cloud environment, which reduces hardware upgrade and maintenance costs and enables greater flexibility and scalability in operations, while reducing system complexity and accelerating adoption of new innovations.
Soma Somasundaram, Infor president & CTO, said, “This rollout is an important milestone in our journey with the Georgia-Pacific Packaging & Cellulose team. We believe our experience in large-scale deployments and deep expertise in the process manufacturing industry will be key to delivering continuous value to the business, as it takes advantage of our cloud-based products, services and support.”
Valgoi noted that phase two of the project, which will focus on Georgia-Pacific’s Containerboard business, will be similar in size and scope to the initial phase of the rollout – covering another five large, 24/7 operating mills and 70 warehouses.
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