Leandro de Freitas Matheus, Rodrigo Cambiaghi Azevedo and Francisco Pinheiro

The company Samarco is a company engaged in mining and pelletizing of iron ore. Established in 1977, today it ranks second in the global pellet market and it acquired 2.3 billion dollars in revenue during 2008. Its investment capital composition is shared 50% by BHP Billiton (AUS) and 50% by Vale (BRA), the two biggest mining companies in the world. S&OP journey at Samarco In 2004 Samarco made its first attempt to implement the S&OP process supported by the advanced planning system SAP-APO (Advanced Planning and Optimizer). However, after more than a year of project, the use of the tool was interrupted and the process didn't reach the expected results. In 2006, now with the support of Axia Consulting, Samarco began the second attempt for the implementations of the S&OP process and the system. Initially, a diagnosis was accomplished to understand the problems’ root-causes as well as to elaborate an implementation roadmap of the future solution. In this phase it was applied a seven dimensions transformation methodology that proposes extensive analyses around the following dimensions: process, systems, performance indicators, organizational structure, people skills as well as transformation strategy and vision. The main conclusion was that the organizational structure was not mature enough for the S&OP process. Thus, it was decided to initially implement the process and after a period of time, when the process would be in a more mature stage, to then implement the SAP APO system in order to better support the process analyses and execution. The system implementation took place between June 2008 and February 2009. Nowadays, the S&OP process is effectively achieving the expectations of the company. The central difference of the second implementation attempt to the first one lays in the implementation methodology applied. It focused initially on the clear definition of the process (activities, participants, objectives and decisions) as well as on the acceptance and understading of the processes by the organization. In this case, the system implementation took a secondary role.  This case should provide some lessons learned to another companies in this journey: 

• Become familiar with the lessons learned from the failures of an S&OP implementation focused excessively on the technological landscape instead of on business requirements; 
• Gain insights into the methodology applied for S&OP revitalization. This methodology has been widely applied in large multinational organizations; 
• Understand how advanced planning systems can support the performance of an S&OP process.