Celonis Process Mining for Supply Chain Reliability

In the global electronics market, supply chain stability has become a defining competitive advantage. For Molex, a company whose operations include over 70 factories, 70,000 active parts and more than 2,000 purchase order lines processed daily, converting this operational complexity into a source of reliability for its customers is a primary focus. The company’s core challenge was clear: a lack of process standardization and end-to-end visibility created significant risk to meeting customer delivery dates and providing the reliable planning forecasts its customers depend on.

To tackle this challenge, Molex sought a collaborator with deep expertise in process intelligence. Leading process mining and intelligence solution provider, Celonis, was engaged to enable a new level of visibility into the deeply embedded process issues at Molex. “Celonis is a software platform that helps customers unravel the complexity that exists within their processes,” Bo Beslach, Celonis Account Manager, explained.

While the Molex global footprint is a key competitive advantage, it also introduces significant operational complexity. A history of independence at the plant level had resulted in a patchwork of process variations. While effective locally, the Molex leadership team identified an opportunity to establish a unified, global standard of excellence. The primary obstacle was the difficulty of maintaining SAP as a consistent, single source of truth across all global plants, which led teams to develop offline workarounds. The Molex leadership team understood that true standardization required moving beyond static documentation to focus on real system behavior and how work was actually being performed.

The limitations of traditional analysis tools made it difficult to address these variations. A request for a new dashboard would often take three to four months to fulfill, a timeframe that could not keep pace with a dynamic global market. MJ Patil, Director of Process Excellence at Molex, viewed the old way of working as fundamentally broken. “I’ve been part of many workshops where we would map a process, put it in a drawer and come back a year later only to find it was no longer relevant,” Patil said. “The whole idea of tying what’s happening in the system to a live process map, as we can now do with Celonis, was amazing.”

The new collaboration, and use of the Celonis Process Intelligence Platform, immediately delivered a significant improvement in time-to-value. With Celonis, the time Molex required to generate deep, actionable insights into its supply chain processes plummeted from three to four months down to just three to four hours.

This capability was transformative. By integrating Celonis as an intelligence layer on its core SAP system, Molex established a single source of operational truth. For the first time, teams could use tools like Process Explorer to analyze thousands of daily transactions, drilling from an enterprise view down to the atomic level to pinpoint the root causes of process deviations.

The noticeable reduction in time-to-insight provided a complete, real-time visualization of the true operational reality across the enterprise. Tony Gainsford, Senior Director of Supply Chain at Molex, describes the new capability as an MRI for the business. “Imagine you can bring an MRI machine or an X-ray machine on top of your ERP,” he said. “Celonis allows you to scan the whole process end-to-end with one click, which is an incredibly powerful capability.”

For Patil, the experience was like finally being able to see in the dark. “At first, I may not know I’m in a dark room,” Patil commented, “but when I turn the Celonis light on, I really know what’s happening.”

The strategic value of this rapid visibility was the power to implement immediate change. Getting data to stakeholders almost instantly enabled the transformation team to act on insights and begin solving problems. This was the key to sustaining the momentum required for practical, enterprise-wide improvements.

“When there’s energy and focus on something, you’ve got to utilize that energy and focus,” Gainsford noted. “The power of Celonis is at that moment where there’s focus on an item. If you can get the data in front of people, you can generate value and keep the momentum going.”

According to Beslach, this ability to deliver rapid time-to-value is a core design principle of the Celonis platform. The goal is to provide customers with the flexibility to address their unique business challenges at their own pace.

With the Celonis Process Intelligence Platform, Molex began by focusing on its core procure-to-pay (P2P) process. The platform’s intuitive user experience required minimal training, allowing for rapid adoption and enabling the team to concentrate immediately on analysis.

One of the first discoveries was that only 30% of supplier purchase orders were being confirmed promptly. This metric is essential for providing customers with reliable delivery dates. Armed with this data, Molex teams addressed the issue directly and raised the confirmation rate to 90%, substantially improving planning certainty for their customers.

The team also uncovered significant internal inefficiencies. Analysis revealed that some plants were manually approving every single requisition, even those for as little as one dollar. By identifying and eliminating this routine work, supply chain experts could focus on more complex, customer-facing issues. According to Gainsford, this was about redirecting expertise. “By optimizing the requisitioning process, you eliminate waste,” he remarked. “You allow teams to focus on more value-added activities rather than doing more routine, transactional work. You want them to focus on exceptions.”

The insights also helped Molex become a better collaborator. Analysis showed that the company’s real-time system was overwhelming key suppliers with frequent order changes, creating unnecessary churn and rework. Using this data, Molex adjusted its approach to send batched updates instead of constant changes, giving suppliers clearer, more stable signals they could plan against. By reducing schedule volatility and improving confirmation reliability upstream, Molex strengthened supplier relationships and improved the dependability of downstream planning, creating a more resilient supply chain for end customers.

This collaborative spirit is a two-way street. According to Beslach, the Molex team’s willingness to test new ideas helped Celonis co-innovate on its own applications. “We love working with customers who are willing to try something for the first time—to leverage and have something that really focuses on a particular problem relevant to them that they’re trying to solve. We’ve done that with Molex a few times and look forward to doing it more.”

Before implementing any improvements, Molex now runs simulations in a digital twin of its processes. This allows the team to test “what-if” scenarios and accurately predict the outcome of any adjustments. This proactive approach removes the risk of unintended consequences and ultimately protects customers from potential disruptions.

The process intelligence initiative at Molex yielded measurable business results, including a dramatic increase in supplier confirmation rates and the elimination of routine work. The most profound outcome, however, was a cultural one. The initiative equipped employees with data, transforming how Molex delivers value to its customers by reframing the company’s view of its own processes as valuable, dynamic assets.

This cultural shift was guided by a “people-first” philosophy of collaboration over criticism. To build trust and firsthand understanding, members of the Process Excellence team embed themselves directly into the operations, spending entire days working alongside warehouse operators and buyers. From the Celonis perspective, this commitment to on-the-ground execution is what distinguishes the Molex approach.

Standardized, transparent processes are now a core part of the long-term Molex strategy. They create a more resilient supply chain and prepare the company for future enterprise-level system upgrades. Ultimately, this commitment to operational excellence is a commitment to the enduring mutual success of its customers. As Gainsford concluded, “Continuous improvement is in our DNA. We bring Celonis along with us. A continuous focus on process improvement drives outcomes. We live, dream and eat this stuff.”