Cargill Streamlines SAP Maintenance Scheduling with Sockeye
After transitioning to SAP, Sockeye helped Cargill replace spreadsheet-based planning with centralized scheduling — boosting preventive maintenance capacity, improving uptime, and increasing workforce utilization.
BOOK A DEMOAbout Cargill
Cargill is a global leader in food, agriculture, financial, and industrial products and services. Headquartered in Wichita, Kansas, its Protein Group operates across North America, producing beef, turkey, eggs, and more. With over 32,000 employees in the U.S. and Canada, Cargill is committed to safety, innovation, and supporting the communities where it operates.
KEY CHALLENGE
After migrating to SAP, Cargill lost a critical piece of its maintenance scheduling process. Their spreadsheet-based tool was fragile, time-consuming, and couldn’t scale across 35+ facilities — creating inefficiencies in planning, backlog management, and labor utilization.
HOW SOCKEYE HELPED
They used Sockeye to ditch spreadsheets for a centralized, SAP-integrated platform. Our intuitive interface mirrored their existing workflows, allowing teams to speed up scheduling, balance team workloads efficiently, and adopt the system with minimal disruption or retraining.
BENEFITS & RESULTS
Cargill streamlined preventive maintenance scheduling, eliminating up to 90% of manual data entry and improving workforce utilization. This lead to higher uptime, greater scheduling visibility, and a scalable model now expanding globally across Cargill operations.
“Sockeye is simple, efficient, and effective at getting the right work scheduled at the right time and with the right employees. I’m just astounded at its ease of use, its simplicity.”
Mike Williams, Maintenance Information and Process Lead AT cargill
Challenges CARGILL FACED
Migrating to SAP left a gap in maintenance scheduling
When Cargill deployed SAP in 2015, it left a critical functionality gap: their in-house maintenance scheduling solution — built in spreadsheets — was fragile, time-consuming to maintain, and impossible to scale across 35+ facilities.
For their business, optimizing uptime, safety, and labor productivity is non-negotiable. Cade Schoonover, Assistant VP of Maintenance & Reliability, needed a solution that could support Cargill’s diverse workflows — from production to sanitation — without burdening teams with unnecessary complexity.
“In my role, leading the maintenance and reliability space, work management is one of the most fundamental things we do. One of the biggest hang-ups is backlog management and scheduling. Sockeye is an enabling tool that makes that process successful.”
Cade Schoonover, Assistant VP of Maintenance & Reliability
The challenges were clear:
- Customizing enterprise software would have required major investments in time, cost, and change management.
- Their spreadsheet-based tool no longer worked with SAP.
- Maintaining the tool was manual, fragile, and resource-intensive.
- Scheduling priorities varied across facilities and shifts.
- Off-the-shelf software solutions were either too rigid or overly generic.
Sockeye stood out for its ability to mirror how Cargill already operated. It was simple, intuitive, and supported their approach to scheduling high-priority work first.
“Sockeye aligns excellently with the work our people were already accustomed to doing. It lets them assign rank to each work order and then sort the list to schedule the most important jobs first — based on labor availability.”
Mike Williams, Maintenance Information and Process Lead
The challenge wasn’t simply finding a tool. It was finding one that could slot into Cargill’s process, scale across dozens of facilities, and drive better outcomes without disruption.
SAP scheduling bolt-on as a Solution
Sockeye fit perfectly into Cargill’s scheduling process
Sockeye was rolled out across 35 Cargill facilities with minimal friction and no custom development. Its intuitive interface aligned with existing workflows, making it easy for teams to adopt without retraining or process changes.
Unlike generic tools that require heavy customization, Sockeye supported Cargill’s scheduling priorities out of the box, from backlog visibility to labor alignment and weekly work order scheduling.
“It shows the available work. It shows the available labor. It’s just a matter of clicking and dropping. It’s fantastic.”
Cade Schoonover, Assistant VP of Maintenance & Reliability
Real-time integration with SAP ensures that data between SAP and Sockeye is automatically synchronized, enabling maintenance schedulers to manage their CMMS backlog more effectively. Sockeye typically eliminates up to 90% of the data input work upfront, and Cargill was no exception.
“Spreadsheets required a lot more time. Now with the data connector between SAP and Sockeye, it is very, very quick and easy. We are saving time, no doubt about it.”
Rick Baldridge, Corporate Reliability Excellence Process Leader
Sockeye delivered immediate value:
- Required no customization or workflow changes.
- Integrated seamlessly with SAP for real-time data sync.
- Replaced spreadsheet-based planning with centralized scheduling.
- Eliminated up to 90% of manual data entry for planners.
- Provided consistent KPIs and dashboards across all sites.
- Supported priority-based (re)scheduling with drag-and-drop ease.
Maintenance teams quickly embraced the platform, and leadership gained complete visibility into performance and planning across the organization. With scheduling centrally managed, automatic updates, and consistent information pushed to every facility, planning became more streamlined and scalable.
“As compared to any other tool that I know or any other method for maintenance scheduling, I give Sockeye a 10 out of 10.”
Mike Williams, Maintenance Information and Process Lead
Cargill now uses Sockeye to manage thousands of work orders weekly, with clarity, efficiency, and complete alignment between planning and execution.
RESULTS they achieved
Cargill’s SAP scheduling success with Sockeye
Shortly after integrating Sockeye with their SAP, Cargill was able to:
Eliminate fragile spreadsheet tools: Replaced manual scheduling processes with an automated, centralized platform.
Extend SAP functionality: Integrated seamlessly with their SAP to support daily and weekly scheduling at scale.
Improve workforce utilization: Enabled planners to schedule 100% of technician time, increasing preventive work done and equipment uptime.
Gain real-time visibility and control: Centralized dashboards and KPIs made it easy to track the effectiveness of their maintenance schedules.
Support a safer, more reliable operation: Reduced reactive maintenance, improved scheduling adherence, and decreased safety risks.
See a quick ROI: Quotes received for the customization of other scheduling solutions were in the millions of dollars to implement — versus Sockeye which was just four figures for all of their 35 facilities.
“We already have Cargill Meats Europe evaluating Sockeye. It is pretty exciting. As compared to any other tool that I know or any other method for maintenance scheduling, I give Sockeye a 10 out of 10. We are looking at Sockeye as an enterprise solution for maintenance scheduling globally.”
Mike Williams, Maintenance Information and Process Lead