Why raw material volatility is now a strategic problem
In today’s economy, raw material prices can move by dozens of percent in a matter of days. A single geopolitical decision or supply chain disruption can completely reshape the cost structure of your products.
For manufacturers, this creates a critical challenge: how to react fast enough to protect margins, keep commitments to customers, and stay competitive — without flooding the organisation with urgent Excel files and emergency IT requests.
This is exactly where VISE DMW-RUN comes in: as a controlled engine that turns raw material price changes into a repeatable, auditable process instead of a crisis.
Imagine this scenario
The price of cocoa increases by 28% in three weeks. Your ERP is still calculating production costs based on rates from last quarter. Every chocolate bar you sell is suddenly generating a loss — but the numbers in SAP look perfectly fine.
Someone in Controlling opens Excel, someone else sends an urgent email to IT, and a few people start building one-off macros — again.
Typical symptoms
- Pricing decisions based on outdated material costs
- Dozens of BOMs recalculated manually in Excel
- Multiple versions of “the truth” circulating across departments
- IT overloaded with urgent requests for quick fixes
- No end-to-end audit trail of how prices were recalculated
What is VISE DMW-RUN in this context?
In dynamic pricing scenarios, DMW-RUN acts as an orchestration layer on top of your ERP (for example SAP ECC or SAP S/4HANA). It takes a raw material price change and automatically propagates it through all impacted data structures:
- Bills of materials (BOMs) and recipes
- Standard costs and target margins
- Finished goods prices and price lists
- Planning and what-if simulations for future scenarios
Instead of ad-hoc scripts and spreadsheets, you get a repeatable process with clear steps, validation points and approvals.
How it works — step by step
Step 1
Price change captured
New raw material prices are imported from procurement systems, market feeds or manually entered by the purchasing team.
Step 2
Scope identified
DMW-RUN calculates which BOMs, semi-finished and finished products are impacted by the new material price.
Step 3
Recalculation & simulation
Updated costs and prices are simulated. Planners and controllers can review the effect on margins and profitability before any change hits SAP.
Step 4
Validation & approval
Business users validate the proposal: which product lines to update, where to absorb the cost, and which markets to prioritise.
Step 5
One controlled RUN
After a final approval, DMW-RUN pushes the updates into SAP in a single, auditable process — with full logs and roll-back options.
Clear separation of roles, less friction
DMW-RUN allows you to separate responsibilities between IT and business in a very practical way:
- IT & SAP teams define technical integration and load rules.
- Procurement and controlling manage price inputs and business logic.
- Business owners approve scenarios and trigger production RUNs.
Everyone works in the same interface, with full visibility of status, errors and change history.
Typical integration setup
- SAP ECC / SAP S/4HANA as system of record
- Market or supplier price feeds (APIs, files, SAP tables)
- DMW-RUN handling validations, simulations and mass updates
- Optional link to planning / BI tools for scenario modelling
What benefits do companies actually see?
Faster reaction to market changes
Pricing update lead time reduced from weeks to days, sometimes even hours, without sacrificing control.
Protected margins
BOM and finished goods prices reflect real material costs, so sales decisions are based on actual profitability.
Less firefighting, more process
One standardised workflow instead of dozens of custom macros and one-off scripts scattered across the organisation.
Full traceability
Every scenario, simulation and final RUN is logged — who approved, what changed, and when it was applied to SAP.
Example use cases from real projects
Food manufacturer
Reduced price update lead time from 3 weeks to 3 days for key raw materials such as cocoa and sugar, while keeping full audit trail for internal and external audits.
Automotive supplier
Connected steel market pricing with SAP cost calculations, gaining full control over component costing and response strategies to market spikes.
Chemical group
Automated updates for over 12,000 BOMs in a single DMW-RUN session, with built-in validations and controlled release windows.
Curious how this could work in your SAP landscape?
We can connect to your existing structures and run a focused prototype: one raw material, one product family, one end-to-end pricing scenario.
When does DMW-RUN for dynamic pricing make the most sense?
We typically recommend this approach when at least one of the following is true:
- Raw material prices are highly volatile or linked to global indices.
- You maintain complex BOMs or multi-level recipes across many plants.
- Pricing changes require coordination between multiple regions or business units.
- Your teams currently rely on Excel-driven mass changes in SAP.
- You need a clear, auditable process for cost and price changes.
Turn raw material volatility into a controlled, repeatable process
Dynamic pricing doesn’t have to mean chaos. With DMW-RUN, you can keep using your existing SAP landscape while adding a smart, flexible layer for orchestrating mass changes. Your teams stay in control, data remains auditable, and decisions are based on current, accurate numbers.
If you’d like to explore a concrete scenario — for one material, one product group or one market — we’re happy to prepare a focused proof of concept.
Ready to see DMW-RUN on your own data?
Share a sample scenario and we’ll design a tailored demo — including BOM updates, simulations and SAP integration.
Get a 30-day SAP Data PoC concept
