ERP Change Management Across Four Manufacturing Plants
How a single OCM practitioner designed and delivered a three-year change program — eight workstreams, four plants, and three on-schedule go-lives.
A North American tire manufacturer set out to replace legacy systems with a modern ERP platform across four plants — with eight core business-process workstreams running in parallel. The stated goal was a technical deployment. The real challenge was carrying four plants with distinct cultures, operating rhythms, and relationships to change through a multi-year program without losing the organizational momentum each go-live depended on.
Taligens joined as the sole OCM practitioner for the engagement — picking up the program mid-stream and carrying it through build, deployment, hypercare, and three staggered plant go-lives over three years. Working directly with the steering committee, plant leadership, and eight workstream teams, the OCM program was designed to carry genuine weight at every phase — not serve as a communications add-on to a technical project.
The Situation
Four plants. Eight concurrent business-process workstreams — from Order to Cash and Procure to Pay to Workforce Management and Record to Report. One OCM practitioner, joining mid-program after the discovery phase.
Multi-plant ERP programs fail in predictable places: messages that land at headquarters don't reach the plant floor, super-users burn out, steering-committee decisions never make it to the people doing the work, and by the time resistance surfaces, go-live is already on top of the team. At each plant, distinct cultures, legacy systems, and workforce populations with different levels of digital fluency compounded these risks. The workstreams ran at their own pace with separate process owners, each with its own change impacts and its own go-live exposure.
OCM couldn't be a check-the-box function. It needed to carry weight across stakeholder management, impact planning, training, communications, and hypercare — through three staggered go-lives and back-to-back cutovers with no recovery time between them.
The Approach
The program was structured around a 'design once, deploy many' model: build the OCM infrastructure once — stakeholder analysis, change impact planning, the change network, the communications cadence — so that each successive plant benefited from what the previous go-live had sharpened, rather than rebuilding from scratch.
Six building blocks formed the core infrastructure. Each was designed to operate at the enterprise level and be tailored to each plant's operational reality at the local level. This allowed a single practitioner to hold the program together across three years without sacrificing specificity at the moments that mattered most: cutover, hypercare, and the leadership conversations that preceded them.
The Six Building Blocks
Enterprise-Wide, Plant-Specific
A stakeholder registry with role, influence, and readiness scoring — maintained at the enterprise level and reassessed at each plant's gate. Advocates and blockers identified early; targeted engagement plans built before resistance surfaced.
Structured Interviews, Structured Reporting
Periodic readiness assessments combining structured interviews and synthesis, with report-outs to the steering committee at key gates. Readiness scores drove prioritization — which workstreams needed more time, which populations needed additional touchpoints.
Owned, Tracked, Resolved
Workstream- and plant-level change impact registers, prioritized by severity, owned by named change agents, and tracked through resolution. Impact planning was a live management tool, not a one-time deliverable.
Champions at Every Plant and Workstream
Named champions at every plant and workstream, with a rhythm of coaching, escalation pathways, and two-way feedback loops. The network ran from program launch through hypercare and remained active after each go-live.
A Cadence the Program Could Rely On
A monthly program newsletter, executive sponsor communications, a clear project narrative, and workstream-specific materials for front-line workers — refreshed at every major phase gate and tailored to each plant's context.
Weekly, Monthly, Steering-Level
Weekly OCM status reporting, monthly OCM PMO reviews, and standing inputs to the steering committee — keeping change management visible in the governance structure and positioned as a delivery function, not a support lane.
If OCM is only doing comms and training decks, the program has already failed. The real work is upstream — how leaders talk about what's coming, and how the people who hear them decide whether to believe it.
How It Played Out
The program ran over three years across four plants, with each go-live building on what the previous one had proven and refining the playbook for the next.
- Program Rebuild & OCM Foundation
Picked up OCM leadership mid-program. Rebuilt the OCM plan, refreshed stakeholder analysis across all four plants, and re-anchored the communications strategy around a clearer program narrative. Established the six-building-block infrastructure that would carry all three go-lives.
- Plant One — First Go-Live
Delivered change impact planning across all eight workstreams, stood up the Change Network, and ran the full communications cadence through cutover and hypercare. Captured lessons to harden the playbook for the plants that followed.
- Plant Two — Second Go-Live & Curriculum Launch
Reapplied the standardized OCM infrastructure with plant-specific tailoring. Launched the eight-session Change Readiness curriculum — structured skills development for leaders, champions, and extended team members on how to communicate change, not just announce it.
- Plant Three — Third Go-Live & Deepest Adoption Work
Most complex adoption effort of the three: plant-specific workstream communications for each business process, with custom materials developed for front-line workers covering role-specific system changes. Change Readiness curriculum delivered to its broadest cohort yet.
- Program Transition
Transitioned off the engagement with the fourth plant's deployment in flight. Left behind a complete OCM asset base — stakeholder-assessment framework, change impact templates, a named Change Network, a running communications program, and the Change Readiness curriculum — designed to carry the remaining deployment forward independently.
What the Engagement Delivered
Three of four plants went live on schedule across a three-year staggered program. Beyond the go-lives, the engagement produced a durable OCM infrastructure the organization can reuse for its remaining deployment and future transformations.
Three on-schedule go-lives across a three-year rollout
Each successive go-live benefited from a sharpened playbook and a Change Network already running — rather than rebuilding OCM from scratch at every plant.
An eight-session Change Readiness curriculum
Skills development — not just talking points — for the people leading the change. A progression from self-awareness to interpersonal fluency to leadership in motion, with competencies leaders carried back to their teams.
A reusable OCM asset base
Stakeholder-assessment framework, change impact templates, a named Change Network, a communications strategy with a running newsletter, and the full Change Readiness curriculum — all transferred to the organization to carry forward.
Workforce adoption built from the floor up
Custom materials for front-line workers, workstream-specific communications for each business process, and a change network embedded at every plant — adoption engineered into the program structure, not bolted on at go-live.
Is this kind of engagement right for your organization?
This work is built for organizations facing the following conditions:
- Your ERP program spans multiple sites with distinct cultures, operating rhythms, and relationships to technology.
- OCM needs to carry weight at every phase — stakeholder management, impact planning, training, and communications — not just produce a change plan.
- You need a single senior practitioner who can own both OCM strategy and delivery, working directly with steering committees and plant floors.
- Workforce adoption matters: the people doing the work need to be ready before go-live, not surprised by the system they find.
- You want OCM artifacts — assessments, playbooks, a change network — that outlast the engagement and serve the next transformation.
Ready to carry your ERP program all the way to adoption?
Let's talk about how structured OCM can protect your timeline and build lasting capability across every site.