Whirlpool Europe

Case one involved Whirlpool Corporation, which is the worldwide leader in the home appliance industry. The company joined the European market in 1989, and grew in market share over the next ten years. In 1999, the vice president of logistics and the chief financial officer thought about investing in an enterprise resource planning system. This system was known as Project Atlantic.

The purpose of this new system was to re-organize the information flow of the entire company. Also, the system could possibly help out in the success of the company’s sales and marketing, operations and logistics, and finance departments. Also, this system could allow Whirlpool to better serve its’ customer market for stand-alone items and contact market for built-in appliances. In addition, Project Atlantic was supposed to increase inventory visibility across their supply chain. Consequently, this would let products be more obtainable to customers, and the company would have a significantly lower inventory level. Lastly, the ability to make specific products exclusively for certain businesses would now be possible. However, the negative aspect to this plan is that it would cost a lot, which includes both the cost of the system and the people who will be needed to get it started. As a result, Whirlpool would have to decide whether the positive aspect of this system outweighed the negative aspects.

Furthermore, Whirlpool Corporation first began executing ERP systems in North America, Brazil, and in certain European countries. Project Atlantic was designed to aid the remaining European countries. However, Whirlpool would soon look to implement an ERP system that would be the same for all of Europe. This in turn would require them to change a lot of their operating processes. Under this project, countries would be grouped in sections known as Waves.

As a result of the proposed investment, groups had to see if the benefits of the project outweighed the costs by looking at the sections provided in the