Manufacturing Plant Acquisition with First Oracle OPM Rollout: 35% Faster Close, 30% Higher Yields

A Canadian global leader in Cheese manufacturing acquired a US based Entity with 4 plants with a goal to harmonize operations across our North American businesses. By implementing Oracle OPM, they aimed to modernize infrastructure, eliminate manual inefficiencies, and bring real-time insight into both our financials and production. They knew this transformation was key to scaling efficiently, reducing compliance risks, and empowering our teams with the right tools.

Client: Parent Company- Canadian Dairy Product Manufacturing acquires a Wisconsin based business to expand its territory in US
Industry: Food & Beverage Manufacturing
Size: 15000+ employees

Location: Wisconsin/ Quebec

Challenges:

No ERP at the new subsidiary	New Subsidiary managed production data in spreadsheets + QuickBooks. A single formula change could take 3–4 hours to cascade through BOMs, often introducing hidden errors.
Different Oracle versions	Corporate Canada was on Oracle E-Business Suite 11i, while the U.S. business had nothing—making consolidated reporting a weekly copy-and-paste marathon.
Infrastructure gap	The Subsidiary plant’s servers were 8 years old; batch jobs ran overnight and sometimes failed, delaying the morning shift.
Limited cost visibility	Without a standard-cost model, planners padded labor and overhead by up to 15 % “just to be safe,” masking true margins.
Regulatory pressure	U.S. dairy traceability rules (FDA, FSMA) were tightening; manual logs meant each audit consumed 5 full-time days of prep work.

Action:

Over a 14-month program—the first Oracle OPM R12 implementation in North America—the consulting team tackled the problem in four waves:

Foundation & Infrastructure
- Deployed a new on-prem Oracle stack and high-availability SAN; nightly batch runtimes fell from 6 hrs to 90 min.
Core Finance & SLA Expansion
- Rolled out Subledger Accounting (SLA) to its Canadian entities and the new U.S. subsidiary, unifying chart-of-accounts logic and approvals.
Manufacturing & Costing
- Activated Standard Costing for 1 200 SKUs; finance and plant controllers co-built cost-roll formulas in workshops (no more “black-box” rates).
- Implemented Encumbrance Accounting so purchasing could see budget impact at requisition time, not month-end.
Process Innovation
- Introduced Oracle Advanced Pricing, Quality, and OPM Production dashboards with RFID pallet scanning.
- Trained ~100 users in four locations via “day-in-the-life” simulations; super-users earned laminated quick-reference cards for line support.

Results:

Here is the comparison between Before vs. After Oracle Implementation

KPI	Before	After	Benefit
External/legacy interfaces	7 manual uploads	0	100 % real-time integration—silos gone
Month-end close	7.0 days	4.5 days	↓ 35 % cycle time
Finance transaction throughput	250 / hr	300 / hr	↑ 20 % productivity
Standard-cost accuracy	± 15 % variance	± 3 % variance	↓ 15 pp cost buffer, clearer margins
Production yield	Baseline	↑ 30 %	More precise formulation & QC
Order-to-ship lead time	2–3 weeks	3–5 days	Customers receive product up to 60 % faster
Regulatory audit prep	5 days / audit	< 1 day	↓ 40 % compliance cost

Realized Business Improvements

Benefits	Typical Impact
Increase Resource Utilization	Approx 20% Improvement
Reduce Manufacturing/Management cost	Approx 15% Improvement
Increase Production Yields	Approx 30% Improvement
Reduce Order to Ship Time	From Week to Days
Decrease cost of Regulatory Compliance	Approx 40% Improvement

Client Testimonial

“Subledger accounting engine is not only a powerful tool but also its solution has enabled the organization to streamline workflows, close month end quicker than before, improve budget control and speed up the financial reporting’s. The accuracy of the data also supports informed decision-making and reduces risk and has derived the best practice for our business on a long run.”

— Cost and Accounting Director

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