Berry Elite Modeling: Cloud Management Empowers Agile Strategy, Embracing New Challenges in Small Batch, Fast Iteration Manufacturing
In 1988, Elite Model was established in Hong Kong. With a production speed twice that of its peers, the first generation of entrepreneurs jumped into the river below Lion Rock and opened up a space between land and sea. That was the golden age of Hong Kong manufacturing, with towering skyscrapers and thriving factories. The race against time in the factory buildings and the rush on the roads have jointly created Hong Kong's economic miracle.
Berry International Group Elite Mold Industry (Shenzhen) Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Berry Elite") is a subsidiary of Berry International Group, a Fortune Global 500 packaging enterprise. Since the 1990s, elite molding has gradually moved northward into mainland China and now has 11 factories across the country. Adhering to the elite principle of "I excel when there are people, and I prioritize when there are people who excel", Berry Elite is committed to mold development and injection molding production. It has pioneered in the field of high difficulty engineering plastic parts molds and processing such as PEEK, PEI, PPS, PPO, etc. It is a world leader in all hard molds and ultra precision micro (± 0.005mm) plastic electronic connectors. Especially renowned in the field of manufacturing high-precision, multi cavity injection molding, and highly interchangeable molds, we provide customers in industries such as automotive, packaging, and medical with high-precision injection mold design, mold processing, injection molding products, assembly, and other supporting services.
Arriving at today's Berry Elite office, we can still see 12 circular clocks on the wall. Berry Elite's customers are distributed in dozens of countries and regions around the world, and these 12 different clocks correspond to 15 cities including London, Paris, Los Angeles, Tokyo, Mumbai, etc. They are using retro snapshots to stage the sound of the times made in Hong Kong for Encore.
Speed has always been the biggest advantage of Berry Elite, saving time is equivalent to creating value for customers. In order to maintain its speed advantage, Berry Elite deployed SAP ECC system as early as ten years ago, creating end-to-end business processes and further shortening production cycles. In the past 35 years, Berry Elite has undergone three transformations, from skilled mold makers to mechanized and automated production, and then to end-to-end information systems integrating ERP, PLM, and MES. With a transformation strategy that is one step ahead of others, Berry Elite has maintained a fast production speed.
In recent years, the mainstream demand in the mold industry has been changing more and more frequently, and with the further segmentation of the market, the proportion of dispersed small batch orders is gradually increasing. Berry Elite is attempting to further tighten its response cycle, while seizing industry trends to create a leading advantage in segmented markets, and using integrated customized solutions such as "mold+injection molding+automatic production+device debugging" to create new value for customers. These goals pose greater challenges to the agility of enterprise management.
At the same time, due to the accumulation of data over the past decade, the running speed of Berry Elite's local system has significantly decreased, coupled with outdated user interfaces, operating ERP has become an increasingly complex task. Many companies under the Berry Group have deployed SAP ECC systems and are now at the stage of system replacement. In order to enhance its global operational capabilities and maintain its speed advantage, Berry Group has launched a new digital strategy.
The most urgent ones on the runway are often the leaders. In order to maintain a leading speed in the future globalization development, Berry Elite has seized the logical changes in software service maintenance and updates. It is a common sense in the past that when a system becomes outdated, one must either patch it up or start over from scratch. However, today, Berry Elite has a better option: going to the cloud.
In order to strengthen the business support of digital systems and avoid the problem of the system being unable to quickly meet business development and changes in the future, Berry Elite invited SAP and its gold partner Jing Tong SNP， The migration of enterprise data to SAP S/4HANA Cloud Private Edition has achieved a comprehensive upgrade of digital systems.
In order to unload the burden of historical data without affecting the business, the project adopts the Bluefield method developed by SNP to selectively migrate the past 5 years and all outstanding data. With a technical downtime of 23 hours and a total business downtime of 72 hours, all factories covered by the original SAP ECC system of Berry Elite can be upgraded at once. Based on the SAP ERP private cloud environment, seamless switching migration from the migration server to the final production server is achieved.
Small batch orders have a large quantity and are difficult to predict, which requires higher response speed for orders. Compared to the old ERP system, SAP ERP Private Cloud adopts a brand new in memory database, optimizes data models, reduces data complexity, and provides Berry Elite with more agile data writing and real-time processing. With the support of real-time settlement capabilities, our decision-making cycle can be almost erased, and the speed of small batch and customized production has been greatly improved, providing a more accurate grasp of market trends.
In addition to the trend towards real-time decision-making, the obstacles to decision implementation have also been overcome. The new system has freed itself from the burden of historical data, significantly improved system operation speed, and achieved unified acceleration of all landing processes. In addition, SAP ERP's private cloud has a built-in Fiori user interface that supports mobile office, which not only optimizes interaction logic but also extends collaboration scenarios from the office to mobile phones, further improving collaboration agility.
While shortening the reaction cycle and finely controlling production quality, Berry Elite also utilizes SAP ERP private cloud to pre position reaction nodes, achieving proactive response to the market. Based on years of global operations, SAP continuously updates global market information and cross regional regulations, which can help Berry Elite dynamically adapt to audit standards such as the US SOX Act and European GDPR regulations, eliminating some process nodes for requirement investigation and risk prevention, ensuring operational agility.
This factory upgrade not only comprehensively improves the production and market response speed of Berry Elite, but also becomes a sample for the next global entity to go cloud. From the port mold workshop that is "faster than others" to the global mold solution provider that is "continuously leading", countless correct choices have maintained the speed advantage of Berry Elite. A simple speed advantage has accumulated into an irreplaceable core competitiveness in 35 years of hard work day and night.
Entering the Berry Elite office, the twelve clocks keep spinning, orders keep coming and going, new plans are constantly being developed, and amidst the four regional currents and four hour clouds, we can still see the hurried back of the first generation entrepreneurs rushing towards customer value. Walking alone is fast, walking together is far. With the assistance of SAP, Jing Tong, and SNP, Berry Elite is ready to lead the next decade.
Jingtong Technology, a wholly-owned subsidiary of SIE, is a high-end IT overall solution provider with the goal of promoting enterprise innovation and efficient implementation. As a golden partner of SAP, it provides customers with professional IT services ranging from early management consulting to system integration to later operation management and continuous improvement end-to-end. Jingtong Company's operational headquarters is located in Shanghai, with branch offices and local service teams in Shenzhen, Beijing, Xiamen, Lianyungang, Qingdao, Hefei, Wuhan, Chengdu and other places. So far, the Jingtong team has participated in the implementation of information technology implementation projects for over 500 large and medium-sized enterprises. The extremely high project success rate and customer satisfaction have earned Jingtong Technology customer respect and market reputation.
SNP is a global data transformation software company and a SAP Global Gold Partner. Provide data transformation services for SAP system users. Customized services including S/4HANA upgrade, data migration, data merging, data splitting, cloud migration, data archiving, and data management for any type of SAP business transformation scenario. More than 14500 projects have been successfully implemented globally.
Utilizing the SNP data conversion platform CrystalBridge ® And its selective data migration method (SNPBLUEFEED) ™， By flexibly combining the Greenfield and Brownfield methods, enterprises can selectively complete SAP business and technology transformation projects with the lowest cost, minimum risk, and shortest business interruption time through automated tools within a few weeks.
