Business View Magazine Apr-2023

15 BUSINESS VIEW MAGAZINE VOLUME 10, ISSUE 4 this was migrating to a single, modern enterprise resource planning (ERP) system across the United States, Canada, and Mexico. As far as information technology goes, ERPs have been around for 25 to 30 years, so you may be asking, “What’s the big deal?” But chemical distribution is a business that has grown up locally and regionally, consisting of companies that have not had the sophisticated software tools you see in larger enterprises. So, moving Univar Solutions onto a common platform was a major breakthrough. By connecting planning, purchasing, inventory, sales, marketing, and finance functions across the Americas, Univar Solutions can better cope with adversity. When a customer requirement changes, the ERP helps us translate that signal all the way back to operations and determine how much material we need to buy and store. During the pandemic, for example, normal sources of supply disappeared, and our customers had to get creative. Some of our largest U.S. customers began to source products from India for the first time. But these products were shipped in bulk tankers in quantities too large for them to use all at once. They didn’t know what to do with the extra inventory and asked us to meet the tankers at the port, repackage the products into smaller drums, and then ship them from coast to coast. Any additional product was then stored for future delivery by Univar Solutions, a benefit not available from most distributors. As we carried out these operations, our ERP system helped us understand the material we had and the potential ways we could support our customers. The company is further building resilience in the supply network by using sensors—leveraging the internet of things—to track and trace inventory. Sensors provide that extra layer of visibility by capturing signals to provide real-time data and insights. All of this data allows us to allocate product and inventory where it’s most needed and effective—a capability especially important during times of supply uncertainty. We also used sensor technology to enable a OPENING L INES