Live from SAPinsider Studio: BUNN Discusses SAP PLM Implementation

Jeff Doneghue, Director, PLM and Engineering Services, BUNN, joins SAPinsider Studio at the SCM-CRM 2016 event in Las Vegas to discuss his company’s decision to implement SAP Product Lifecycle Management (SAP PLM).

Natalie Miller, SAPinsider:  Hi, this is Natalie Miller with SAPinsider, and we’re here at the SCM, CRM, and IoT event in Las Vegas, and I’m joined today by Jeff Doneghue, who is the Director of PLM and Engineering Services at BUNN. Hi, Jeff, thanks so much for joining me today.

Jeff Doneghue, BUNN:  Thank you.

Natalie: I was hoping you could start by just giving a little bit of background on BUNN and its customers and growth.

Jeff: Yeah. BUNN was founded in 1957, we’re headquartered in Springfield, Illinois, and the Bunn family has been there since the mid-1800s, so the company was founded on five generations of entrepreneurship.

Natalie: So, today we’re talking about SAP PLM. Can you talk a little bit about the business case that brought BUNN to a PLM solution?

Jeff: Sure. What was really happening was the company was growing, and our customers were challenging us to produce products more efficiently and in tighter time frames, and more and more products. So we started searching for a solution to help us become more efficient.

Natalie: What were some of the challenges that BUNN was having without having a PLM solution?

Jeff: We had lots of data in lots of places. So we had disparate data silos strung about our network, and we were really struggling with scaling that up to meet customer demand because we had so many different places to go find data, and so many manual, cumbersome processes.

Natalie: What was the implementation like, and how was the software integrated with your existing SAP software?

Jeff: Yeah, just going back to SAP a little bit, we implemented SAP in 2010. I was the project manager for that project. And I was placed in that position because they wanted the project manager for erp to be the project manager for PLM so we could ensure it was fully integrated and the solutions worked. We implemented, initially, after erp in 2010 we implemented a SAP document management system in 2013, portfolio and project management system in 2014, we’re working on engineering change management right now as we speak, and an expansion of ppm as well, and all of those tools are fully integrated into the SAP suite.

Natalie: Since implementation, can you talk a little bit about some of the processes that have been optimized?

Jeff:  As I said, a lot of the business case was driven by the needs of our customers and their challenges, and we use this tool suite to improve our new product development process and all of our customer request processes as well. And we were able to take a month’s worth of time out of each one of those requests. Every request that comes through engineering services, the group that I run, was reduced by a month.

Natalie: What were some of the other benefits that BUNN has seen so far?

Jeff: We basically laid a framework down, and a groundwork, to provide continuous improvement, and to keep up with a globally challenging situation. With more and more customers doing business in more and more places, we’ve had to get better at that as well.

Natalie: As far as continued product development, how has this move set BUNN up for that?

Jeff: It’s really the same. So, all of our processes now are scalable and repeatable. All of our data is vaulted and revision-controlled. And we feel that as challenges come in from our customers, we will be able to meet the challenge.

Natalie: Great, Jeff. Well thank you so much for being here and sharing your story, I appreciate it.

Jeff: Thank you.