Process Automation Year End Process Cost accounting

We are a Global Medical device company with 7 manufacturing locations world wide. We use JD Edwards application for our manufacturing processes. Every year we have to run a laborious year end cost freeze process at each site which is error prone and takes a lot of effort to coordinate and manage the details of this activities, Since this needs to be done over the Holiday shutdown window it becomes even more challenging as the resources are stretched thin and the process is time sensitive from Financial Reporting standpoint. This was identified as an improvement opportunity and a project was launched to automate the process.