Eastman Chemical Company has used SAP as its ERP software since the mid-90’s at which time Eastman’s SAP system (then designated R/2) was the largest single SAP system world-wide.   

Today what distinguishes the Eastman SAP system is not its size – other companies have larger SAP systems – but the fact that all of Eastman  runs on a single SAP system in Kingsport, TN. 

While many companies use ERP software for accounting and payroll purposes only, almost every module of the SAP system is in use by Eastman and most all of its manufacturing operations are tied into SAP as well. 

Eastman is a global company with a broad presence across the globe.  In addition to its many international sales offices, it has 17 manufacturing sites in 10 countries.   The SAP system is used in all locations and is critical to daily business operations.  To meet these demands, the system is in use 24 hours a day, 7 days a week (Total downtime in 2008 was only 13.5 hrs.)  In 2007, the decision was made to upgrade from SAP 5.0 to SAP 6.0/Unicode.   This was a strategic decision  since 6.0 is the platform that SAP would be using to roll out enhancements over the next decade, and since Unicode was to needed support their expanding global business with multiple (double byte) languages.  The project required much coordination and communication.  Some project stats:

• Work began in January of 2008 and the upgrade was completed in August, 2009. 
• Cutover was completed 6 hours ahead of schedule (and 25 hours earlier than SAP had estimated) with  very few problems.   
• The upgrade went so smoothly that many users were unaware the upgrade had taken place – day 1 was truly a “business as usual” day, which was a key project objective. 
• The project will be reviewed including significant hurdles that had to be overcome to achieve this success and lessons learned during the project.

About  our Speaker:

Timothy D. Pool, Project Manager, Eastman Chemical Company

Tim has been with the Information Technology department at Eastman Chemical for 41 years.  He began his career at Eastman after graduating from Georgia Tech with a B.S. in Industrial Engineering.  Tim has served in various roles during his career from analyst to supervisor.  Tim later obtained his MBA in Industrial Management from the University of Tennessee.  Tim has spent 9 years as Project Manager on SAP projects.  Eastman uses SAP as their ERP application throughout the corporation.  Consequently, Tim’s projects have been very large and touched almost every area of the company.  His projects have included the installation of SAP R/2, both acquisitions and divestitures of portions of Eastman, upgrading from SAP R/2 to SAP R/3, and most recently SAP 5.0 to SAP 6.0/Unicode.  Tim has been married to his wife Susan for 41 years.  They have two children, 1 grandchild and a second grandchild soon to be born.  When Tim is not managing projects, he spends time with his family and is very involved with his church.