Vinmar + Celonis

Vinmar International uses Celonis as a single source of truth: integrating data from several systems to enhance efficiency, enable Enterprise AI, and drive real-time risk management across logistics operations.

The disruptions dragging global logistics

“Delivery on time, service on time, communication on time.” That’s how Sajan Dhanuka sums up his customers’ and suppliers’ expectations. He’s the VP of Operations and Risk Management at Vinmar International, a leading global distributor of plastics, chemicals, and raw materials. With decades of experience, he knows all about the struggle trying to meet those expectations while dealing with a complex supply chain.

“When a disruption happens, [customers] are actually depending on us to find solutions, navigate through those challenges, and do the things they cannot do.” No matter the years of experience, little could prepare leaders like Dhanuka for the pressures placed on post-pandemic supply chains.

Almost constant, sometimes simultaneous, supply chain disruptions have become the norm. Room for error has disappeared and tight margins and low inventory levels are now table stakes. “Where there used to be a gap – space for things to occur – a lot of that's been taken away,” explains Vinmar Polymers America Director of Operations Peter Nutley.

It falls to CEO Vishal Goradia to be matter of fact about what must happen: Vinmar needs to be the most innovative plastics distributor in the world, he outlines. “In order to meet the needs of moments like this… We have to make sure that we are able to execute in any environment. That means investing in ourselves, in our capabilities, and in our ability to execute.”

Helping Vinmar achieve that goal? Celonis.

Getting operational visibility for a $3B business unit transformation

With suppliers and customers in over 110 countries, Vinmar needs its supply chain to be dynamic and efficient. Before Celonis, the Vinmar team lacked operational visibility across core supply chain processes, meaning neither outcome was fully possible.

“When you have sales orders that need to be managed by multiple departments, sometimes we are missing transparency across all those departments, and sometimes the prioritization isn't the same… We didn't have a well-defined workload,” explains Nutley.

Using Celonis, Vinmar is working on transforming a $3B business unit’s end-to-end Order-to-Invoice process into a fully automated, intelligent operation, with seamless integration across ERP, logistics, banking, and documentation systems.

“Celonis is able to present us all the sales orders that need to be addressed, and the things that need to be done for those sales orders to successfully be executed,” says Nutley.

From a central cockpit in Celonis, Vinmar today monitors the end-to-end Order-to-Invoice process and orchestrates the process across systems and teams - from the time a sales order is entered until it is fulfilled, and the subsequent invoice is sent to the customer.

Take sales orders with short lead times as an example. If a sales order is being expedited unnecessarily (an insight also provided by Celonis), Celonis routes the order to the appropriate approver, where a form makes it easy for the team to approve or reject the order.

Logistics costs come down when expediting is not needed, and productivity goes up thanks to the low-touch effort required.

Increased operational visibility plus smart automation have led to a 20% productivity increase. Teams are simply able to manage a higher volume of orders faster. What once required manual coordination and rework across multiple teams now runs with minimal human intervention. Plus risks are proactively identified, resolved, and escalated when necessary. “Something which may have taken us six months to do, is [now] done in two days,” says Dhanuka.

From insight to execution: approvals, automation, and AI

The supply chain is always business-critical so it’s natural that leaders like Vinmar want to make AI work for it. The Celonis Process Intelligence Platform has helped Vinmar consider what’s possible with the ground-breaking technology. Goradia says: “Having data in one place, having it be clean, and having it be coherent is the absolute requirement for any [AI] project.”

AI technology is already being put to good use for fixing sticky logistics problems at Vinmar. When a new sales order is created, the Celonis Orchestration Engine retrieves all potential carriers and the respective vessels from Vinmar’s Transport Management System.

An AI agent that uses Process Intelligence from Celonis then prioritizes the top three options, based on business guidelines like cost and throughput time. A human is then in the loop to approve the sales order going to the next process step. From there, Celonis triggers automations and sends confirmations first to the carrier, and then to the customer and internal stakeholders to ensure seamless warehouse pickup and delivery.

“The way we have implemented the Process Intelligence Platform allows us to consider the adoption of AI in a way that we otherwise would've struggled with,” says Goradia. “Celonis has absolutely given us a headstart in our AI journey.”

“We can’t live without it”

Vinmar has scaled Celonis use rapidly. Six months after Celonis’ implementation, users at Vinmar were telling Dhanuka they couldn’t live without it. Today, more than 200 Vinmar associates dedicate one of their screens to Celonis to monitor the Order-to-Cash process at any given time.

With Celonis on their screens, Vinmar’s teams can make real-time decisions without switching systems. This isn’t just automation. It’s a strategic shift in how Vinmar delivers value to customers, reduces operational cost, and scales with agility.

Nutley sums up the impact: “Historically, we've been a very reactive business… Celonis has allowed us to become a proactive business and perhaps even anticipatory, looking at things before they’re issues. It gets everybody rowing the boat in the same direction.”