Biel Crystal: Reconstructing business processes and seizing dual-cycle growth opportunities
Explore Biel Crystal’s journey with SAP
Biel Crystal Manufactory (Huizhou) Limited is a leading provider of glass panels for mobile device screens. Experiencing rapid growth, the company piloted SAP S/4HANA Cloud Private Edition through the RISE with SAP offering at its Huizhou campus, reorganizing business processes. It also established an innovative user certification process using the cloud edition of the SAP Enable Now solution.
| Industry | Region | Company Size |
| Industrial manufacturing | Huizhou, China | ~85,000 employees |
reduction in monthly closing time, from 15 days to 3 days.
physical inventory accuracy rate.
cut from average inventory value.
Senior Director, IT, Biel Crystal Manufactory (Huizhou) Limited
| Industry | Region | Company Size |
| Industrial manufacturing | Huizhou, China | ~85,000 employees |
reduction in monthly closing time, from 15 days to 3 days.
physical inventory accuracy rate.
cut from average inventory value.
Senior Director, IT, Biel Crystal Manufactory (Huizhou) Limited
Scaling up operations for international and domestic dual circulation
Biel Crystal Manufactory (Huizhou) Limited is a leading global provider of mobile phone glass covers, touch modules, and optical components for many of the world’s leading smart product brands. With a bit more fashion sense than other high-tech enterprises, in the 1990s it chose to focus on the segment of mechanical watch glass covers to find a balance point between fashion and technology. Accumulating years of technology manufacturing experience, Biel Crystal successfully entered the supply chain of the world’s leading mobile phone manufacturers. Today, Biel Crystal has seven advanced production bases around the world, with an annual output of 1.85 billion pieces and a global market share of over 17.8%.
With the rapid increase in business volume and expansion of product lines into new categories, such as wearable smart devices and automobile screens, it became increasingly obvious to the company that it needed to separate industry and finance business lines in its legacy ERP system. At the time, each innovative business line needed dedicated financial personnel, and the monthly settlement time at the group level was taking as long as 15 days.
Another driving force for scalability came from the rise of domestic market demand. For a long time, Biel Crystal mainly served international customers; but with domestic mobile phone manufacturers growing rapidly in recent years, they created new demand. However, as an extremely complex track, domestic mobile phone manufacturers have higher update frequency and strict product segmentation requirements, which call for a more detailed production management model.
Therefore, when seeking to upgrade its ERP application and improve management capabilities, Biel Crystal had to consider both extreme performance requirements and strict time limits. The company also had to factor in enabling users to quickly understand and master modern digital management skills.
Senior Director, IT, Biel Crystal Manufactory (Huizhou) Limited
Reshaping business processes and preoperational training
With goals focused on building a modern technology foundation and improving efficiency, Biel Crystal migrated to the cloud by adopting SAP S/4HANA Cloud Private Edition through the RISE with SAP offering. Relying on best practices recommended by SAP, Biel Crystal has thoroughly recalibrated production, supply, and marketing processes and brought them all into system control. Digitalization has dismantled the departmental barriers that have existed for many years, allowing the company to build a strong new management foundation. Utilizing the powerful manufacturing resource planning module of SAP S/4HANA Cloud Private Edition, Biel Crystal has established a clear material connection plan dashboard, allowing each department to perform its duties and collaborate efficiently.
With the help of business and financial data integration capabilities in SAP S/4HANA Cloud Private Edition, Biel Crystal sorted out the data gaps of each node in its production chain for the first time and built a unified standard data template. Li Jiannong, senior director of IT at Biel Crystal, believes that visibility is the prerequisite for controllability. For Biel Crystal, this means rigorous and complete master data standards are the first hurdle that must be overcome to achieve management upgrades.
Since the current business scope of Biel Crystal has been greatly expanded, the raw materials and production processes of mobile phone backplanes, virtual reality glasses, and automobile screens are different. Using SAP S/4HANA Cloud Private Edition, Biel Crystal has visibility across the production process of its entire product line for the first time. In terms of inventory management, the solution enables real-time and standardized management of factory inventory data and distinguishes in-transit order inventory from finished product inventory based on actual business data. This has become a solid foundation for subsequent production scheduling and logistics collaboration.
To quickly improve users’ proficiency using the solution, Biel Crystal chose the cloud edition of SAP Enable Now for training, as it offers a direct and intuitive experience. It can record the operation process of advanced ERP and create step-by-step courseware.
And with the user certification process offered by SAP Enable Now, cloud edition, Biel Crystal can set user certification as a prerequisite for users of SAP S/4HANA Cloud Private Edition. This will help ensure that user quotas are not wasted, and it greatly improves the implementation speed of the upgrade project.
Enabling quality and speed to compete amid constant market fluctuation
The domestic mobile phone supply chain has experienced a period of strong growth and is about to undergo more change. Jiannong indicates that in the past few years, there has been no shortage of dark horses in the market, which have seized market share by quickly responding to customers’ iterative demands. He believes that players who focus on speed often have shortcomings in yield. “In the end, the market will still choose manufacturers with both quality and speed.” With the help of SAP S/4HANA Cloud Private Edition, Biel Crystal – which already enjoys a gold-medal reputation for quality – has greatly improved its response speed.
After moving to the cloud, the solution’s powerful business-financial integration logic shortened the company’s monthly settlement time to three days – five times faster than it had been. “Our initial goal was to complete the monthly settlement process within five days,” says Jiannong. “After the launch, this process was completed within three days.” The reports automatically generated by the solution are timely, accurate, and highly traceable, allowing management to see the performance of each product in different markets more clearly and make quick decisions based on business insights.
After breaking through data silos and restructuring business processes, Biel Crystal has gained visibility into its comprehensive production process, allowing it to establish a central material control perspective to schedule production more efficiently. Based on SAP S/4HANA Cloud Private Edition, Biel Crystal has integrated more than 10 digital management systems, with production material stocking status and factory inventory status reflected in the system in real time. Jiannong says, “With accurate visibility, the entire production process can truly be controlled.” Now, the inventory accuracy rate of its Huizhou Park facility has reached 100%, while the average inventory value has dropped by more than ¥1 million, and the inventory turnover rate has also significantly improved.
Currently, nearly 100 SAP software users at Biel Crystal’s Huizhou campus have completed prejob training through SAP Enable Now, cloud edition. Compared with previous IT training, employees can get started much more quickly, thanks to its intuitive format. Based on the successful experience at the Huizhou campus, Biel Crystal is planning to promote the prejob skills training and the management upgrade model for SAP S/4HANA Cloud Private Edition to more campuses.