If Flowgear is switched off, no sales flow, how Dunlop made integration a production-critical layer.
Dunlop Tyres South Africa, a subsidiary of Sumitomo Rubber Industries, manufactures and supplies premium tyres for passenger cars, SUVs, 4x4s, light trucks, and commercial vehicles. The company combines global tyre innovation with a strong local heritage across South Africa and the African continent, and runs commercial and production operations that demand reliable, governed integration between enterprise systems.
A Salesforce rollout that exposed a missing connector, and a home-grown middleware with a time limit
During a major Salesforce rollout, Dunlop planned to integrate Salesforce with SAP. When the design phase reached the point where the middleware was supposed to exist, it did not, not in the way the team had expected. Salesforce offered its own middleware solution, but at a cost that was exponentially higher than planned.
At the same time, Dunlop was running an in-house middleware tool built by Information Systems Manager Gerald Louis to support its international and domestic sales portals. It was a capable temporary solution, but the business needed something that could serve as an enterprise-grade integration platform for the long term. Gerald went looking for alternatives online, found Flowgear, reviewed material from CEO Daniel Chilcott, and arranged a meeting.
Salesforce and SAP bi-directionally, then the rest of the enterprise
Dunlop first adopted Flowgear to integrate Salesforce and SAP. That initial project grew to cover Salesforce Sales Cloud, Commerce Cloud for both the domestic sales portal and the international dealer portal, all connected bi-directionally to SAP ECC using IDocs, BAPIs, and database queries. Flowgear also manages the way SAP's fast-moving IDocs are delivered, buffering what Salesforce alone cannot handle.
From there, Flowgear became the standard middleware for the wider enterprise. It now connects Slimstock for demand and supply planning, Winfreight for electronic proof of delivery, the payroll system, and the Manufacturing Execution System for lot assurance. The home-grown middleware that Gerald had originally built was retired.
Sales and production both depend on it, the integration layer that cannot be switched off
The impact of Flowgear at Dunlop is clearest when Gerald considers what would happen if it stopped running. Salesforce-driven sales orders would not flow to and from SAP. Customers would stop receiving electronic proofs of delivery. Demand planning and forecasting data into the plant would be disrupted. The Manufacturing Execution System's lot assurance process would lose its feed from SAP.
Flowgear also absorbs complexity that other systems cannot handle alone, particularly around the rate at which SAP pushes data versus what receiving systems can process. For both the commercial and production sides of the business, Flowgear is now a mainstay.
- Salesforce and SAP connected bi-directionally via IDocs, BAPIs, and database queries
- Domestic and international sales portals both integrated through the same layer
- Demand planning, ePOD, payroll, and Manufacturing Execution System all connected
- Home-grown middleware fully replaced
- Flowgear now the standard integration layer for all new projects at Dunlop
“If Flowgear is switched off, no sales could flow through the normal route, customers would not receive their electronic PODs, and our MES integration from SAP to the plant simply doesn't run. Flowgear is currently a mainstay for both our commercial and production processes.”
Dealer POS, TyreLink API, and the move to SAP S/4HANA
Dunlop is extending Flowgear into dealer point-of-sale integrations via its own TyreLink API, a standard integration interface for any e-commerce portal, built to meet Dunlop's cybersecurity requirements.
As Dunlop eventually migrates from SAP ECC to SAP S/4HANA, existing Flowgear S/4HANA connectors mean the integration layer is already positioned to carry that transition. Flowgear is not a once-off project. It is the standard for what comes next.
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