Whirlpool Europe – Project Atlantic

Introduction This case study highlights Whirlpool Corporation - Europe plans to evaluate project Atlantic, with emphasis on capital budgeting. Project Atlantic is an investment in an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system that would streamline business processes across all European regions and reorganize the information flow throughout the company. The objective of the case is to determine whether or not Whirlpool Corporation should adopt a planned ERP project in Europe – project Atlantic. Whirlpool & Project Atlantic Whirlpool is worldwide leader in the home appliances industry, with a 13% share of Europe’s market. Whirlpool Europe manufactured products based on sales budgets or forecasts and then held them as finished goods inventory. Whirlpool Europe operations were carried through a discrete/disparate stand alone systems, localized to meet individual plant, distribution centers, or sales offices business process. In essence Whirlpool was not operating on global common business processes, with transparent flow of information across business units which was often inconsistent, irreconcilable and required redundant work to achieve goals. Hence, to respond to rapidly changing consumer needs and be competitive in the market, it was realized that such processes & systems would not support company growth, and the company would need a global integrated system. Therefore Whirlpool Corporation planned and conceptualized ERP implementation globally, named project Atlantic. Project – Atlantic is an ERP project that potentially will bring savings across many functions by providing improved operative effectiveness and efficiency in Whirlpools sales & marketing, operations, supply chain, logistics, finance and human resources. This project is planned out in a phased approach i.e. Wave (North, South, West and Central). Goals & Objectives Whirlpool’s strategic goal/objective is to efficiently support its business processes across its vertical functional