01The engagement in brief
German Mirror Lubricants & Greases (brand: Mirr Oils) · engine, industrial and marine oils and greases · Hamriyah Free Zone, Sharjah
A manufacturer selling in many countries, and the 12 weeks that put every batch and every export order on one map
The company was incorporated in Nuremberg in 1995 and has run from the UAE since 2000. Its own blending plant, grease plant, filling lines and can-making serve distributors in many countries under the Mirr Oils name and under private labels.
Client issue: growth had added products, pack sizes and destinations faster than the processes around them. Nobody could say, with evidence, where an export order lost its days between the distributor’s request and the truck at the port.
Solution: AIx2 ran a 12-week due diligence of the path from distributor order to dispatch, across seven sources, with the group CEO’s sign-off on access before kick-off. It found 24 findings, five of them critical, and designed a control for each critical one.
Impact: within six months of the 90-day plan, export orders shipped in a median of 8 days instead of 14, batches needing a re-test or re-blend fell from 6.5% to 2%, and export-document errors from 11% to 2%.
02Where the company stood
Mirr Oils blends and fills engine oils, hydraulic and gear oils, marine lubricants and greases, and packs them from small bottles to drums, totes and bulk. Its quality system is certified to ISO 9001, and its laboratory to ISO/IEC 17025.
The product range kept widening: private labels, toll blending, new pack sizes, new destinations. Each addition touched the same chain: a distributor order, a formulation, a blend, a lab release, packaging, a filling slot, export documents and shipping.
The group CEO asked one question: where does an order lose time between the distributor’s request and the port, and who owns each step?
03What AIx2 did
Weeks 0–2 · Connect: read-only connections to seven sources: the ERP, the batch and blend records, the laboratory system, the warehouse, the packaging-materials plan, the export-document files and the distributor order mailbox.
Weeks 2–6 · Map: the order-to-dispatch path as it really ran, order by order. 16 processes, four data flows, and the routes around the ERP: orders agreed by e-mail, packaging booked on a shared sheet, certificates typed by hand.
Weeks 6–10 · Find the gap: every order checked against Mirr Oils’ own procedures, its ISO 9001 and ISO/IEC 17025 requirements and each destination’s document rules. 24 findings, each with a count, the evidence and a named owner.
Weeks 10–12 · Design: target processes, a control for each critical finding and a 90-day plan, approved by the group CEO. The company’s own teams built the controls; AIx2 ran live checks on every new order.
04What we found
Export orders waited a median of 14 days from distributor request to dispatch, and the longest waits were not in the plant. They sat in document preparation and in the wait for packaging.
11% of export shipments had a document error: a certificate of analysis that did not match the batch, or a packing list that did not match the pallets. Each one cost days at the port.
6.5% of batches needed a re-test or a re-blend, mostly because the formulation sheet in use was not the latest approved one.
The filling line stopped nine times a month for missing packaging: caps, labels or cartons booked on a sheet that was not tied to the order book.
Of 16 processes, six had a named owner. Several people did the same work in different ways.
05What changed
Distributor orders move into the ERP with one approval step, and the packaging plan reads from the order book. Filling-line stoppages fell from nine a month to two.
The formulation sheet is pulled from the approved record at the moment of the blend, and a live check blocks a batch that uses an older version. Batches needing a re-test or re-blend fell from 6.5% to 2%.
The certificate of analysis and the packing list are generated from the batch and the pallets, not typed. Export-document errors fell from 11% to 2%.
Export orders now ship in a median of 8 days, and 91% of distributor orders arrive complete and on time, up from 72%.
All 16 processes have an owner, and exceptions go to that person the same day.
06How the results were verified
Mirr Oils’ finance lead and quality manager measured dispatch time, on-time and complete delivery, re-blends and stoppages from the ERP, the batch records and the filling-line log. AIx2 measured document errors from its live checks.
Window: the 6 months after the 90-day plan (Feb–Jul 2026) against the 12 months to Sep 2025. Sample: 1,840 export orders in the baseline window and 1,020 in the measured window.
The group CEO signed off every finding and every control before it went live.
07Commercial outcome
Modelled from the measured results, with the finance lead’s attribution rule: only the share of each change that the finance lead agreed came from the new controls.
About USD 0.9 million a year from fewer re-blends, fewer filling-line stoppages and fewer port-side claims, plus a one-off release of about USD 2.4 million of working capital as days of finished stock fell from 74 to 52. Payback on the engagement: under one year.
The fee is not shown.
08What the client said it changed
For the first time the leadership team reads one set of facts every Monday: which orders are late, why, and who owns the fix.
The company can take on more private-label and toll-blending work without adding the paperwork that used to come with each new product, because the documents now come from the batch.