Client:
A medical device manufacturer.
Challenge:
This medical device manufacturer was undergoing strategic realignment following a partial divestiture and operational streamlining.
The company needed to consolidate its storage and shipping footprint from five facilities down to one. The objective was to capture $300,000 in annual savings while maintaining compliance with strict regulatory requirements and minimizing disruptions to customers and operations.
The initiative was highly complex, requiring not only the physical movement of over 200,000 parts, but also inventory planning, ERP system integration, onboarding of new personnel, and harmonizing unintegrated product lines and legacy systems.
The client engaged Waypost to provide project management and execution leadership for the transition.
Strategic Objectives:
- Consolidate warehouse operations without service disruption.
- Maintain regulatory compliance throughout the transition.
- Integrate legacy and newly acquired product lines into SAP and customer service workflows.
- Prevent stockouts or customer shipment failures during cut-over.
- Absorb increased transactional volume by onboarding and training new staff.
- Deliver the transition before a hard ERP system cut-over deadline.
Approach:
Waypost led a four-week planning phase and segmented the project into cross-functional workstreams. In the first two weeks, we developed a high-level transition roadmap and estimated timeline. In the second two-weeks, we coordinated detailed planning, critical path mapping, stakeholder analysis, and KPI/dashboard design.
Execution included:
- Facilitating kickoff meetings at both leadership and operations levels
- Identifying and coordinating Steering Committee oversight
- Running weekly Steerco and project execution meetings
- Hosting process-mapping sessions to identify gaps and mitigate risks
- Supporting dual-system maintenance during ERP and 3PL transition
- Maintaining and updating the detailed project plan for 12 months
- Providing bandwidth for analysis and problem-solving alongside internal teams
Key Steps:
- Site inventory evaluation and movement sequencing
- Parallel inventory planning for risk mitigation
- Cut-over testing for uninterrupted customer fulfillment
- Legacy product integration into SAP and customer-facing functions
- Design of SOPs, RACI charts, and performance dashboards
Assessment Areas:
- Regulatory and compliance procedures during move
- Inventory continuity and customer fulfillment risk
- System interoperability between SAP/ECC and 3PL platforms
- Change management and team onboarding
- Cross-functional visibility and alignment
Tools and Methodologies:
- Project management and stakeholder analysis frameworks
- Process-mapping and risk mitigation workshops
- KPI dashboard creation
- Timeline and critical path planning tools
- Dual-system transaction monitoring protocols
Deliverables:
- Detailed project plan and execution roadmap
- Consolidated warehouse move strategy
- ERP integration and 3PL cut-over plan
- Weekly reporting and executive dashboards
- Final documentation for regulatory traceability and lessons learned
Conclusion:
The warehouse consolidation was completed ahead of the ERP system cutover deadline, with minimal customer disruption and full realization of the targeted $300,000 cost savings. Waypost not only kept the project on track across multiple interdependent workstreams but also strengthened team alignment, system integration, and performance visibility throughout the 12-month journey.
“We were able to complete this complex transition with only a few known customer impacts and exceeded our cost performance goals.”