Scenario 05: PrecisionParts Global Manufacturing

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Domain Weight Guide:

Domain	Weight	Focus Areas
D1 System Architecture	HEAVY	Multi-region org strategy, licensing, mobile, reporting
D2 Security	MEDIUM	Dealer portal access, regional data residency, role hierarchy
D3 Data	HEAVY	150K SKUs, IoT sensor data, order history, product hierarchies
D4 Solution Architecture	LIGHT	Declarative vs code, portal technology
D5 Integration	MEDIUM	SAP S/4HANA, IoT platform, legacy portal coexistence
D6 Dev Lifecycle	LIGHT	Multi-region deployment, environment strategy

Project Overview

PrecisionParts Global (“PPG”) is an industrial parts manufacturer headquartered in Chicago, designing and distributing precision-engineered components for automotive, aerospace, and heavy machinery. PPG operates plants in Rockford, IL (US); Stuttgart, Germany (EMEA); and Suzhou, China (APAC).

PPG employs 2,800 people (1,400 US, 820 Germany, 580 China). Each plant has its own engineering, production, QA, and logistics; corporate functions are centralized in Chicago.

PPG sells exclusively through 8,000 active dealers across 45 countries. Annual revenue is $1.2 billion (52% Americas, 31% EMEA, 17% APAC), with a 5-year target of $1.8 billion driven by APAC expansion. The active catalog contains 150,000 SKUs organized into a 4-level hierarchy (family > line > group > part number), with parent-child assembly relationships. Approximately 30% of the catalog turns over every 18 months due to engineering revisions and end-of-life cycles.

The CEO has mandated a “One PPG” initiative to unify the customer experience and consolidate regional technology silos. Budget: $4.5M for Phase 1 (18 months), $2.8M for Phase 2.

Current Systems

Regional CRMs (3 disconnected systems):

US: On-premise Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2016 with 12 years of data, 340+ custom fields, 85 workflows, 22 plugins. 650 internal users + 3,200 dealer portal users. Significant performance degradation.
Germany: SAP CRM 7.0 tightly integrated with SAP S/4HANA. 380 internal users, 6 years of history. No dealer self-service portal — orders handled by phone/email.
China: Custom CRM on a local cloud platform, built 4 years ago for data localization compliance. 210 internal users. Limited reporting, no corporate integration.

SAP S/4HANA (Global ERP): Single instance in Frankfurt. Finance (14 currencies), manufacturing, inventory (42M parts, 3 plants + 6 warehouses), order management (5,800/day average, 9,200 peak). OData and RFC/BAPI via SAP PI/PO middleware (approaching end of life), connecting 14 systems.

Dealer Portal (Legacy US only): 10-year-old Java/J2EE portal for 3,200 US dealers (ordering, tracking, invoicing, docs, warranty). SAP connection via proprietary SOAP layer with incomplete documentation. 2.3 hours unplanned downtime/month; only 2 developers know the codebase. EMEA/APAC have no portal — phone/email/fax orders with 4-6 hour delay and 3.8% error rate.

IoT Sensor Platform: 2,000 sensors across 3 plants transmitting readings every 5 minutes (576,000 readings/day, ~210M/year). Runs on AWS IoT Core with Amazon Timestream storage. 90-day raw retention, 2-year hourly aggregates. No connection to CRM or ERP. Plant managers want predictive maintenance combining sensor data with maintenance history and warranty information.

Other Systems: SharePoint Online (2.4 TB documents), Microsoft 365, Workday (HR), Power BI (US only), SAP Analytics Cloud (Germany only), EDI logistics connections.

Business Process Requirements

Sales and Dealer Management

Consolidate all dealer/distributor accounts into a single system accessible to regional sales teams, corporate account managers, and channel leadership.
Each dealer must have a unified relationship history — orders, interactions, warranty claims, credit status, performance metrics — regardless of originating region.
Field sales reps must manage dealer relationships and pipeline on mobile devices, including areas with intermittent or no cellular connectivity.
Channel management assigns dealer tiers (Platinum, Gold, Silver, Bronze) based on purchase volume, product breadth, payment history, and satisfaction scores. Tiers drive pricing and rebate eligibility.
Corporate account managers need a consolidated view of global dealer groups (e.g., a distributor with subsidiaries in the US, Germany, and Brazil).
The system must support the annual “territory carve” process realigning dealer-to-rep assignments (last realignment: 2,400 assignments, 6 weeks manual effort).
The dealer onboarding process (currently 22 days average) must be streamlined: credit checks, tier assignment, contract execution, portal provisioning, catalog configuration.

Dealer Self-Service

All 8,000 dealers must access a self-service portal for ordering, order tracking, invoicing, technical documentation, and warranty claims.
Dealers must search the full 150,000-SKU catalog with availability by warehouse, lead times, tier-based pricing, and technical specifications.
Portal must support 7+ languages (English, German, French, Spanish, Mandarin, Japanese, Portuguese).
High-volume dealers (~200 accounts, 50+ orders/week) need bulk order upload via spreadsheet.
Dealers must configure complex assemblies with system-enforced compatibility rules.

Order Management

Portal orders must be validated (pricing, credit, inventory) and transmitted to SAP S/4HANA within 60 seconds.
SAP status updates (confirmed, in production, shipped, delivered) must reflect in the portal within 5 minutes.
The system must support “blanket orders” — committed quantities over 6-12 months with individual release orders drawn against the blanket.

Data Model and Migration

Product catalog must represent the full 4-level hierarchy with 45-80 technical attributes per SKU, plus “supersession chains” (old part numbers pointing to replacements, up to 4-5 revisions deep).
Migrate 3 years of order history from all 3 regional systems: ~4.2M orders, 25.2M line items.
Deduplicate dealer accounts across 3 CRMs (initial analysis: 1,200 dealers exist in 2+ systems with different naming, addresses, and contacts). Preserve all historical order-to-dealer relationships for audit/rebate reconciliation.
IoT sensor data (210M readings/year) must be accessible for reporting alongside CRM data but cannot reside in the primary CRM datastore.
Product documentation (~320,000 files, avg 2.5 MB each) and warranty claims (87,000 over 3 years) must be migrated with full linkage to orders, dealers, and parts.
Legacy CRMs to be retired within 6 months of go-live. Archived data must remain accessible for 7 years. Chinese records must preserve simplified Chinese characters while supporting transliterated versions for global search.

Accessibility and Visibility Requirements

Dealers see only their own orders, invoices, claims, and pricing — never another dealer’s data.
Regional sales teams see only their assigned dealers; corporate account managers see all regions. US team (650 users): VP > 4 Regional Directors > 28 Area Managers > 180 Territory Reps, each with scoped drill-down.
GDPR compliance for EU dealer contacts (right to access, rectification, erasure). China PIPL compliance with data localization for personal information collected in mainland China.
Tier-specific and region-specific pricing: a German Gold-tier dealer sees different prices than a US Silver-tier dealer for the same part.
Warranty claim approval tiers: plant-level adjusters up to $5,000, regional managers up to $25,000, VP of Quality unlimited.
IoT sensor data: plant managers see only their own plant data unless granted cross-plant access. Channel leadership (5 users) has a global view across all regions, dealers, tiers, and product lines.

Reporting Requirements

CEO monthly dashboard: global revenue by region, top 50 dealers by volume, tier distribution, pipeline, YoY growth.
Supply chain report correlating dealer order patterns with production schedules and inventory (cross-system CRM + SAP data).
Daily “dealer health scores” combining order frequency, volume trends, claim rates, payment timeliness, and portal engagement.
Plant manager dashboards: equipment status (IoT), production output, quality metrics, maintenance history correlated with orders being fulfilled.
Quarterly rebate calculation reports (currently 3 people x 4 days in Excel). Compliance audit reports showing cross-border data access for EU and Chinese data.
All reports must be exportable and schedulable for automated delivery.

Development Lifecycle Requirements

Two distributed teams (8 devs in Chicago, 4 contractors in Hyderabad) must develop and test simultaneously without interference. Quarterly release cadence aligned with SAP maintenance windows.
Separate environments required: dev, SIT, UAT (with representative dealer/product data), and production. Zero-downtime deployments for the dealer portal.
CAB approval required for all production deployments (meets every other Wednesday). Automated testing for all CRM-to-SAP integration touchpoints with regression tests triggered by API contract changes.

Implicit Requirements

Before designing, consider: What do 576,000 daily IoT readings mean for your data architecture? What does a 150K-SKU catalog with 45-80 attributes mean for your object model? What does 60-second order validation require of integration? How does 5-minute SAP sync affect pattern selection? What do 3 regions with different data residency laws mean for org strategy? What does 30% annual catalog turnover mean for data maintenance? What does offline mobile access require? What are the licensing implications of 8,000 external + 2,800 internal users?

Architect’s Checklist