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Solution · Operations & qualityForty tasks in nine departments run as one case, so no launch slips because nobody knew
Product launch readiness: forty tasks, one process
Every product launch runs as one orchestrated case: tasks reach the right department in Teams, robots do the SAP and content work, gates and escalations protect the date.
Executive summary
Stop learning that a launch has slipped from the carton supplier's delivery note.
One launch is one orchestrated case.
Launch dates hold: a late predecessor is visible three days before it hurts, so the remedy is a small correction instead of a rush print run.
SAP S/4HANA (material, bill of materials, pricing, listings); PIM and web shop; SharePoint artwork library
Business problem
New product introduction
A new SKU is a chain of about forty tasks in nine departments, from the recipe freeze in R&D and the label check in regulatory, through the material, GTIN and bill of materials in SAP, pricing conditions, artwork, carton orders with weeks of lead time and pallet data, to the retailers' listing forms filled in by sales. Every task has predecessors owned by another department, and the order exists mostly in the launch manager's memory.
The tracker holding all this is a spreadsheet. Status is self-reported weekly and dependencies are invisible, so a late GTIN quietly delays the artwork, the carton order, the first production run and finally the retailer's listing window. Once the slip is visible, the remaining choices are expensive: a rush print run, express freight, overtime on the line, a key account manager renegotiating with a buyer who has already printed the leaflet. At 24 launches a year, every holiday or resignation in the launch office resets what the company knows about how a launch is done.
How it works today
The flow below is what we find at most producers launching more than a dozen SKUs a year.
- PersonThe brand manager copies the template tab in the Excel tracker on SharePoint, enters the target date and emails nine department heads
- WaitingRequests for the GTIN, the SAP material and the price conditions sit in mailboxes and Teams chats until someone with access has time
- SystemMaster data types material, bill of materials and pricing conditions into SAP (MM01, CS01, VK11) from the tracker and the specification PDF
- PersonArtwork circulates as PDF attachments between regulatory, marketing, quality and the agency; the approved version is whichever file is called FINAL
- Risk of errorDependencies stay invisible: cartons are ordered before regulatory sign-off, or the listing form carries a GTIN that later changes
- WaitingThe slip becomes real when the carton supplier confirms delivery two weeks after the planned first production run
Why the current process costs more than it appears
Behind every exception is an hour nobody logged.
- Chasing is a job in itself: between Tuesday meetings the launch manager writes reminders, forwards specifications and answers "where are we on the oat drink" in three Teams chats, and none of it appears in a budget line.
- A slip costs the season, not two weeks: for a seasonal or promotional SKU the listing window is fixed, and a product that misses it sells into the next cycle or not at all.
- Rework hides in the master data: a material created before the specification is frozen is corrected two or three times, and a wrong GTIN runs through the retailer's listing process twice.
- Expedite costs are approved one at a time, as rush print runs, express freight and packing-line overtime, so nobody sees the launch tax paid on every SKU.
Cost of inaction
If nothing changes, the tracker gains a fifteenth version and the pipeline keeps paying the same launch tax. SKUs multiply faster than the launch office, because private-label variants and seasonal editions are where retailers push, and the packaging regulation adds rows of its own from this year on. The risk that compounds is commercial: a retailer that printed a leaflet for a product that did not arrive remembers it at the next listing negotiation, and the second missed window costs more than the first.
A plausible organisation with realistic proportions. The figures are there to be recalculated on your data; they are not a client result.
A European food and beverage producer: three plants, 1,800 employees, SAP S/4HANA, a specification system for recipes, Microsoft 365 E3; twelve retail chains, wholesalers and a web shop.
24 launches a year (line extensions, seasonal editions, private-label variants); on average 40 tasks per launch across nine departments and six gates, about 960 task lines a year.
One Excel tracker per season, a Tuesday launch meeting, requests by email and Teams chat; SAP material, GTIN and pricing conditions typed from the tracker; artwork approved by email.
Dependencies are invisible until someone asks; a late GTIN or regulatory check pushes artwork, cartons and the first production run; the average slip against the date first given to the trade is about two weeks.
Each launch becomes a case in UiPath Maestro Case with six stages and templated tasks; department tasks arrive as Action Center tasks in Microsoft Teams and in Planner; robots create SAP material, GTIN, pricing conditions, price lists and web content; gate rules, SLAs and escalations defend the date.
In the modelled case the average slip falls from about two weeks to a few days, coordination time per launch drops from about 30 hours to around 10, and expedite costs become the exception. Illustrative figures, not a client result.
Proposed solution
One launch is one orchestrated case. We build it on the UiPath Platform and the Microsoft 365 tenant you already run. A case opens from the approved product brief and instantiates the task template for its launch type. Six primary stages run from brief approved to listed and live, each task carrying its owner, its predecessors and a due date calculated backwards from the launch date. A secondary stage, "date at risk", activates by rule when a gate SLA is breached and adds the recovery tasks: expedite options, key account information, a re-planned first production run.
Work reaches people where they already are: a label check, an artwork approval or a listing form arrives as an Action Center task in Microsoft Teams with the data and document links it needs, and the same tasks appear in the department's bucket in Microsoft Planner. Robots take the data work in SAP, the PIM and the web shop as soon as the gate before it is passed. Gates are rules, not meetings: "supply ready" opens only when artwork is approved, the carton order confirmed, the material complete in SAP and the first production order scheduled. SLA timers raise an at-risk event three days before a due date; a breach escalates to the department head and flags the case. The launch manager sees every launch by stage in the Case App and on a readiness dashboard, with a weekly summary in Teams. Every rule is deterministic; no LLM takes part in a launch decision.
UiPath Maestro Case (stages, event-driven task rules, SLA at-risk and breach events, escalation actions, Case App); UiPath Action Center tasks with actionable notifications in Microsoft Teams; UiPath Robots and Orchestrator; UiPath Integration Service connectors for Microsoft Teams and Microsoft OneDrive & SharePoint; Microsoft Planner with the Microsoft Graph Planner API
The launch case model (stages, task templates per launch type, predecessors, gate rules, recovery stage), task forms, the SLA and escalation matrix, robots for SAP material master, GTIN, bill of materials check, pricing conditions, price lists and web content, the Planner mirror, the readiness dashboard and the runbook
SAP S/4HANA material, bill of materials, pricing and listing objects through UiPath SAP activities (BAPI/OData); Planner synchronisation through the Microsoft Graph Planner API; product content publication to the PIM and web shop through their APIs
How the automated process works
- AutomationA new item in the launch register on SharePoint (brief, launch type, target date) opens the case, instantiates the task template and calculates due dates backwards from the launch date
- PersonR&D freezes the recipe and specification at the first gate; regulatory receives the label check task in Teams with ingredients, allergens and nutrition declaration prepared from the specification
- SystemRobots create the material shells in SAP, allocate the GTIN, check the bill of materials against the specification and, after the pricing gate, create pricing conditions and listings, price-list files and web content
- PersonArtwork approval, carton order release, listing forms and the price decision arrive as Action Center tasks in Teams and in the department's Planner bucket; simple tasks ticked in Planner are reconciled by a robot
- AutomationGate rules open the next stage only when every condition holds; an at-risk event fires three days before a due date, a breach reassigns the task, notifies the department head and flags the case
- PersonThe launch manager reviews the readiness dashboard weekly and decides on date moves, scope changes or the recovery stage; on first delivery the case closes as the launch record
Human-in-the-loop model
Automation handles
- Task creation, sequencing and due dates from the template, plus the Planner mirror
- SAP material, GTIN, bill of materials check, pricing conditions, price lists, listings and web content
- Reminders, at-risk warnings, escalations, the weekly summary and the launch record
People decide
- Specification freeze, shelf life, label text and artwork sign-off
- Prices, listing conditions and the go or no-go at each gate
- Date moves, scope changes and when to open the recovery stage
Before and after
Systems and integrations
Where a rule suffices we do not use a model. Where judgement is needed, a person decides.
Inputs
- launch register on SharePoint
- specification and recipe
- price sheet
- artwork from the agency
Automation layer
- UiPath Maestro Case
- UiPath Orchestrator
- UiPath Robots
- UiPath Action Center
- UiPath Integration Service
Target systems
- SAP S/4HANA (material, bill of materials, pricing, listings)
- PIM and web shop
- SharePoint artwork library
- Microsoft Planner
Human touchpoints: Action Center tasks in Teams; Case App task inbox; department buckets in Planner; launch channel in Teams
Technologies used
each launch is a case with stages, event-driven task rules, SLAs and escalation actions; the Case App is the task inbox
Adepartment tasks and gate approvals completed from the Teams notification
ASAP master data, pricing, price lists, web content, Planner mirror; Teams and SharePoint connectors for the summary, register and filing
Aone bucket per department with all open launch tasks, mirrored from the case
Amaterial master, GTIN, bill of materials, pricing conditions, listings
Alaunches by stage, tasks at risk, gate pass rates, slip days per department
CIllustrative economic model
Start by questioning the assumptions.
Planned first-year net sales of €1.2m per SKU at a 30% contribution margin give about €1,000 of contribution a day, and a day of delay counts as a day lost: conservative for seasonal SKUs, generous for products without a fixed listing window. Nothing here is measured at a client; the total is an illustrative value pool at stake, not a saving. We assume 14 days of avoidable delay per launch on average, €6,000 of expedite costs per launch and 30 hours of coordination at €35 fully loaded. The automated process is designed to recover a large share of the pool, not all of it.
Business benefits
- Launch dates hold: a late predecessor is visible three days before it hurts, so the remedy is a small correction instead of a rush print run
- SAP material, GTIN, pricing conditions and price lists exist within a day of the gate, created once from the frozen specification
- Coordination time per launch falls from about 30 hours of chasing to a fraction spent on decisions, in the modelled case
- Expedite spend becomes a recorded decision on the case rather than a surprise invoice
The management view
- Readiness is a number, not an opinion: launches by stage, tasks at risk and slip days per department on one dashboard
- Gates are enforced by rules: no launch moves to supply without approved artwork and complete master data, whoever is on holiday
- The launch record is auditable: who approved which document version, when each SAP object was created, which decision moved a date
Board-level KPIs
Security and governance
The automation holds exactly the rights it needs, and not one more.
- Robots use dedicated SAP service users limited to material, bill of materials, pricing and listing objects; nobody shares a personal login, and every robot action is logged in Orchestrator with the case reference
- Artwork, specifications and listing forms live on SharePoint in your Microsoft 365 tenant with versioning; the case data, task history and rules behind them sit in UiPath Automation Cloud, EU region
- Segregation of duties sits in the roles: whoever sets a price does not approve it, the artwork approver does not release the carton order, and each gate decision records user, timestamp and document version
- Launches stay confidential until announced: case roles map to Microsoft Entra ID groups, the Planner mirror carries titles, owners and dates only, and SAP and PIM secrets sit in Orchestrator's credential store or Azure Key Vault
Why now
Regulation (EU) 2025/40 on packaging and packaging waste applies from August 2026 and phases in labelling obligations over the following years; every launch checklist gains rows, and a checklist that already slips will slip more
The modelled pool is €505,200 per launch calendar, about €42,000 a month; a process that recovers a third of it pays for itself within the first calendar
Maestro Case has been generally available since June 2026 with stages, event-driven rules, SLA events and escalation actions, and Action Center tasks are completed inside Teams; a year ago this design meant custom software
Relevant executive roles
Launches become a governed process with gates and a readiness number instead of a tracker held together by one person
Dates promised to the trade hold, and key account managers stop negotiating slips
Launch revenue arrives in the quarter it was planned for, and expedite costs become visible decisions rather than a launch tax
Common questions and objections
Planner shows tasks; it does not create the SAP material, hold a gate closed until artwork is approved or escalate a breached due date. The case is the engine, Planner stays the team's view of it.
Forty tasks is an average, not a rule. Each launch type has its own template, ad-hoc tasks can be added to a running case, and the recovery stage exists for launches that go sideways.
The launch manager changes the target date on the case and due dates recalculate; late tasks are re-prioritised, not lost. The timeline records who moved the date and why.
When this is not the right solution
- Fewer than six or so launches a year with a stable team: a well-kept Planner plan and a monthly meeting are cheaper
- Ownership of the specification, the GTIN range and the material master is unclear; master data governance comes first
- No agreed stages and gates, every launch run differently; a two-day workshop on the gate model comes before any case
A question for the next management meeting
Which of last year's launches shipped on the date first communicated to the trade, and what did each slipped week cost in margin and expedite fees?
Implementation approach
We start with one slice of the process and extend only once it is proven.
We deliver
- Your last twelve launches reconstructed: planned versus actual dates, which tasks were late and why, the real dependency graph
- The launch case model: stages, task templates per launch type, gate rules, recovery stage, SLA and escalation matrix
- Task forms in Teams, the Planner mirror, the readiness dashboard and the weekly summary
- Robots for SAP material master, GTIN, bill of materials check, pricing conditions, price lists and web content
- A pilot on two live launches of different types, then rollout to the full calendar with hypercare and a runbook
We need from you
- The current tracker and the planned and actual dates of the last twelve launches
- A launch process owner with the mandate to fix the gate definitions, and one contact per department
- Technical accounts for SAP, the PIM and the specification system; a tenant admin for Teams, SharePoint and Planner
Stages
Discovery
Twelve launches analysed, dependency graph, task inventory, gate definitions
Design
Case model, task templates, SLA and escalation matrix, robot scope, security model
Build
Case, task forms, robots, SAP and PIM integrations, Planner mirror, dashboard
Validation
Dry run on a past launch, then two live launches in parallel with the tracker
Go-live and tuning
Full calendar on the case, tracker retired, hypercare, SLA calibration
Enterprise. Effort depends on the number of launch types, the SAP objects and interfaces, the number of departments and approval roles, and how standardised the PIM, specification system and retailer formats are.
Version 14 of the launch tracker still shows the new GTIN as in progress.
Send us your launch tracker, anonymised, with planned and actual dates for the last twelve launches. We return a critical-path read-out: where the weeks went and which tasks rules and robots would take over.
Replay your last launch with usThe neighbouring process usually has the same problem
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