pRoFILES
Bringing in
New
Systems
Yang li
Strategic Planning Manager,
Supply Chain Asia Pacific Region
Goodyear
Goodyear recently started using SAP APO (Advanced
Planner Optimizer), a computer-based planning tool
that supports end to end supply chain solutions. Yang
Li discusses how complicated strengthening her supply
chain can be.
You currently help drive Goodyear’s initiative to switch
over to an SAP APO user system. Do you have a background put our ideas in a way that gives us our required results. Even though
in IT? Goodyear is simple in that we only really have one type of product,
I’m actually not IT focused at all. My first job was with Schneider we face a very complex set of manufacturing constraints – It’s not
as a marketing engineer. I jumped at the chance to move into the easy to manage from start to finish.
logistics side of things one year later and basically started at the bot- Goodyear Asia-Pacific has 13 countries in our area alone and we
tom doing order processing. From there, I moved my way up the lad- normally do not do it all in one shot due to its geographical position
der. Right now, I leave the business process to and business models complexity, so the whole
the SAP APO changeover, which means I work project has been broken down into different
very closely with our IT manager. My job is to Companies phases. Writing the first base business plan for
standardize, optimize, define and redefine our
start to
one cluster of our countries is one of the other
business processes and product managements, hardest parts of this program because we need
while making sure that as we use SAP, the prod-
think to
to consider all the requirements of the entire
ucts are still arrive on time and completed. I
themselves -
Asia-Pacific region. We also have to consider
like to think of myself as a business solution
I have done
the business goals and long term integrity of
architect. other sister regions. What we set down can’t be
this a million easily changed later, which means we have to
What is the most complicated part of im-
times before,
think about the micro and macro all at the same
plementing SAP APO? time. The system we design and implement is
A lot of it is hard, especially on such a large
why do I
not only for today’s current needs, but we also
scale. APO planning requires a very strong
have to do it
but we have to be able to predict the situation 5
foundation to support the system. This means
that historical information, transaction data and
again?
or 10 years ahead.
Another challenge with APO is that, because
planning master data all must have a strong IT it is so complicated, it takes a longer time to
infrastructure in order for this program to make any sense to the train and re-train users. We constantly have to be prepared for people
users. From the business processing perspective, APO also requires changing positions and unexpected employee turnover, and we are
that all information is in place. In order to get every single process; constantly working with people who are not familiar with this sys-
we need to input every single activity, and we have to learn how to in- tem.
34 JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2010
www.chainaonline.com
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