Jean-Marc Girard, Digital Manager at the Blédina plant in Brive-la-Gaillarde, explains how automating SAP processes with Process Runner made the daily analysis of energy consumption on the production lines reliable.

Before we talk about Process Runner, could you introduce Blédina?

Jean-Marc Girard: Blédina belongs to the Danone group and specialises in baby food. The business is split between the head office near Lyon and three production sites: Villefranche-sur-Saône for cereals, Steenvoorde where the Gallia infant milk is produced, and Brive-la-Gaillarde, where I work, which makes fruit, vegetable, meat and fish based products. The Brive site employs around 400 people, with three shift teams and production lines running continuously.

What is your role?

I am Digital Manager for the Brive-la-Gaillarde site. I make sure the digital tools recommended by the Danone IT division, or found through my own research, are properly deployed. Process Runner is one of them.

So you run SAP?

We do. Production relies both on SAP and on another SAP certified system for stock management and follow-up, while Maintenance works exclusively with SAP, for stock, replenishment orders, monitoring and budgets.

What did you need to automate?

At Brive we monitor all our energy use, water, steam and electricity, in order to reduce it. We work with Metron, a start-up specialised in industrial decarbonisation, which collects consumption data for each workshop. We know how much steam, electricity or water went into a given product, and we can act on it.

But to match energy consumption with the products made during the same period, I had to send our provider the production schedule of each line every day. That meant extracting data from SAP every day and sending it over FTP every day. In practice it was tedious, so I often did it once a week, and sometimes I simply forgot. That is why I started looking for a way to automate data extraction from SAP.

How did you find Process Runner?

I searched online for ways to automate SAP queries, and came across Process Runner, distributed by Mycène. The first conversations were easy because they are based in France, so we could talk in French.

How did the project go?

Mycène came to present the solution and we ran several trials. At the start, the tool had to be adapted to some changes we had made in SAP, and the technical support in the United States was quick and effective: we had a video call and they solved the problem by taking control of my computer remotely.

Mycène supported me at the beginning of the project, then I quickly became autonomous. I can now unblock my own installation, though I still keep them informed.

What benefits have you seen?

Time saved, and above all regularity in running the SAP queries. I used to extract the data manually every day, when I did not forget. I reckon I save about thirty minutes a day. And Metron now receives the right data at the right time, which lets them refine their analyses and suggest improvements on our energy consumption.

Have you identified other use cases?

Since September an apprentice has joined the team for three years, and one of his tasks is to find other things worth automating. We have started collecting requests from the workshops, and other daily production extractions are already appearing.

I would also like to automate recurring tasks for the Maintenance teams. When a technician needs parts to repair a machine, he has to produce a work order with his diagnosis and the repair carried out. With a form in Excel, he will simply fill in a few fields: the workshop, the machine, the problem, the solution chosen. Process Runner will then create the work order in SAP automatically. A second form will pull that order back and release the parts, without the technician having to log into SAP at all.

What did you most appreciate in working with Mycène?

Having a French speaking partner matters. I also valued their support during the setup and the first trials, where we talked a great deal. I know I can count on them at any time to build a script, without systematically going through the publisher’s support in the United States.

The software itself is genuinely simple to use. Mycène helped me design the scripts so that Process Runner fitted our SAP environment. That is where expert advice counts: I know exactly how SAP runs here, and Mycène brings its knowledge of Process Runner, so that the two work together.

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