Recently, many companies have had a difficult time managing and planning their resources within their master schedule and master production schedule. The main contributor to this increased difficulty is the increased complication in supply chain management. The relationships between suppliers, production and logistics is becoming increasingly complex as production grows and becomes more widespread. This complexity within supply chain management has companies turning to operation in order to effectively plan and manage their resources. Enterprise resource planning systems is the technology that many companies are utilizing. Enterprise resource planning systems are large, integrated information systems that support many enterprise processes and data storage needs. These systems make managing and planning resources much simpler.<\/p>\n
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The Hershey Company has selected Accenture to put SAP\u2019s S\/4Hana enterprise resource sutem into place. Hershey believes they can cut costs and increase sales using this technology, the program will make manufacturing much more efficient. Hershey\u2019s chief product supply and technology officer believes that this system will help them increase their competitive advantage, as well as develop a service that is centered around the wants and needs of the customer. This is increase in competitive advantage is apart of Hershey\u2019s digital transformation initiative, where they plan to have their supply chain more technology centered. The Hershey Company selected Accenture specifically because it has sound knowledge of the industry and a proven track record of making resource management and planning far more efficient. Hershey was a previous user of another SAP enterprise resource planning system, the SAP R\/3, which dates back to 1999. The move to upgrade their enterprise resource planning systems shows a continued interest in the quality management and planning of Hershey\u2019s resources.<\/p>\n
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The S\/4 Hana system is available on cloud, in memory and hybrid deployment models. This new system is considered SAP\u2019s \u201cmost important release in 23 years\u201d. The S\/4Hana is intended to be much easier to use and administer than previous models. It will also be able to solve more complex supply chain problems and handle larger amounts of inventory data than previous models. SAP believes the S\/4 Hana will take over the manufacturing industry with its more responsive, and real-time digital supply chain systems. The S\/4Hana has a predictive master production schedule function that will create MRP simulations in order to create analysis and forecasts so that companies can adequately manage their capacity and their relationships with their suppliers. SAP and Accenture noticed that consumers increasingly expect shorter lead times, quick delivery and high flexibility when ordering products, they believe the new S\/4 system will help companies deliver to those consumer expectations.<\/p>\n
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