The company recognized that for its size, its SAP system was complex. For example, Charles Machine Works (CMW) was using a table called RFDT which has complex cluster fields that contain 84 internal tables when unpacked. The table stored extra functionality used with financial variants and is not often used in other SAP systems.

Company codes existed for each Charles Machine Works business: Charles Machine Works, Anvil Land & Properties, Subsite LLC, and Earth Tool Company LLC. The company was advised that it could realize greater organizational flexibility, streamline processes, facilitate reporting and analysis, and reduce technical debt by consolidating to a single company code. Profit centers also had to be converted and renamed.

Because this effort was not in their budget, the project had to be delivered cost-effectively. In addition, due to high demand for their products, the project had to be short and minimally disruptive to operations and employees’ daily work.

Despite the technical complexity of the project, SNP went live three weeks ahead of schedule with zero issues. CMW’s RFDT table stored extra functionality used with financial variants. All of the internal tables within RFDT needed to be unpacked programmatically, changed (plants changed according to specified rules), and then placed back into the cluster fields.