Logistics ops · Production

Sappi deploys 132 UiPath automations saving 13,000 hours annually across European operations

The problem

Sappi's departments across finance, HR, logistics, and manufacturing faced a high volume of recurring manual tasks. Reliance on IT for custom solutions and on skilled individuals created bottlenecks, and traditional continuous improvement approaches had limitations that prevented scalable progress.

Workflow diagram · grounded in source
1
Weekly finance report trigger
trigger
“a robot named Hermes, after the Greek god of messengers. It was made to automatically make a weekly report for the finance director”
2
Finance report generated
output
“With Hermes, it could be generated in under three minutes”
3
Daily booking confirmations received
trigger
“processing booking confirmations from freight carriers. Every day, the logistics team receives booking confirmations in PDF format”
4
Email gathering and sorting
routing
“The bot now gathers and sorts emails before extracting the required data”
5
Document Understanding extraction
ai_action
“With numerous freight carriers in its supply chain, each with its own unique document formats and layouts, the process became an ideal proof of concept for UiPath's Document Understanding”
6
Human review of exceptions
human_review
“there's always a human-in-the-loop to handle any exceptions”
7
Data stored in labeled folders
output
“extract key information, and store it in the correct folders with appropriate naming formats”
Reported outcome

Sappi deployed 132 automations saving approximately 13,000 hours in Europe in the last year, building on an earlier milestone of about 80 automations that saved around 5,000 hours.
The Gutenberg robot processes around 12,000 booking confirmation documents annually with 80% requiring no human intervention and has saved approximately 600 hours since implementation.

Reported metrics
Finance report generation time after automationunder three minutes
Finance report preparation time before automationabout an hour
Annual hours on manual booking confirmation process before automationclose to 2,000 hours per year
Automations deployed after first yearabout 80 automations
Show all 10 reported metrics
finance report generation time after automationunder three minutes
finance report preparation time before automationabout an hour
annual hours on manual booking confirmation process before automationclose to 2,000 hours per year
automations deployed after first yearabout 80 automations
hours saved in European region after first yeararound 5,000 hours
annual documents processed by Gutenbergaround 12,000 documents annually
document automation rate without human intervention80%
hours saved by Gutenberg since implementationaround 600 hours
total automations deployed132
hours saved in Europe in last yearabout 13,000 hours
Reported stack
UiPathDocument UnderstandingCommunications Miningenterprise resource planning (ERP) system
Source
https://www.uipath.com/resources/automation-case-studies/sappi-streamlines-operations-with-intelligent-automation
Read source ↗

Frequently asked questions

What did this team achieve with this AI workflow?

Sappi deployed 132 automations saving approximately 13,000 hours in Europe in the last year, building on an earlier milestone of about 80 automations that saved around 5,000 hours.

What tools did this team use?

UiPath, Document Understanding, Communications Mining, enterprise resource planning (ERP) system.

What results were reported?

Finance report generation time after automation: under three minutes; Finance report preparation time before automation: about an hour; Annual hours on manual booking confirmation process before automation: close to 2,000 hours per year; Automations deployed after first year: about 80 automations (source-reported, not independently verified).

How is this logistics ops AI workflow structured?

Weekly finance report trigger → Finance report generated → Daily booking confirmations received → Email gathering and sorting → Document Understanding extraction → Human review of exceptions → Data stored in labeled folders.

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