Bigger Isn't Always Better
Continued
To overcome these difficulties, Symmons launched a demand-flow strategy that uses actual sales orders, rather than forecasts, to drive manufacturing operations. Symmons relies on the JD Edwards EnterpriseOne Demand Flow Manufacturing module to manage this new approach.
"When we started looking at this area, we found that JD Edwards EnterpriseOne was the only product that specifically addressed demand flow," Romanowicz says. "It supported the execution system we needed. The ultimate goal is to have demand go beyond our stockroom out to our suppliers. When we give suppliers this greater visibility, they aren't shipping us the wrong parts and we have more of the right stuff."
The demand-flow results have been impressive. Almost 50 percent of the orders received are shipped the same day, finished goods inventories have dropped to minimal levels, and the WIP/sales ratio is down by almost 50 percent, Romanowicz says.
In addition, Symmons significantly reduced the paperwork required to move products out the door through a related item-completion strategy. In traditional manufacturing, staff members spend significant time manually opening work orders, posting transactions into the orders, and performing back-end analyses to look for order variances. In all, a single order may require 30 or 40 manual inputs from manufacturing personnel.
Symmons' new approach reduces the process to one step: operators only need to post the quantity of goods created in an operation. "An operator doesn't have to do anything but build it and get it on to the next station," Romanowicz says. "Only two things need to be accurate at that point: the quantity and the bill of materials for that SKU. If the bill of materials is correct, no other manual transactions have to take place to accurately release the inventory that was needed to build that order. That's a significant time savings that improves sales throughput and takes administrative and inventory costs out of the equation."
By the end of the year, Symmons will eliminate about 1.5 million manual shop-floor transactions, or what Romanowicz calls "1.5 million opportunities to make an error. This means our people are paying more attention to building the product versus administrative tasks."
Symmons is now moving beyond its traditional commercial business to cultivate customers who purchase high-fashion plumbing fixtures. It's a plan that puts Symmons squarely in the turf of the 800-pound gorillas, but Romanowicz expects that JD Edwards EnterpriseOne's Web capabilities will provide the competitive edge Symmons needs. "It will allow us to complement our design-to-order process and will also give suppliers worldwide a new window into demand and inventory levels," he says.
Does the information systems manager worry that these new requirements will trigger a lot of new upgrades and management headaches? Not at all. According to Romanowicz, "JD Edwards EnterpriseOne contains the functionality we will need for the immediate future, and Oracle's support policies allow us to wait for a business reason to upgrade."
For More Information
Oracle for Small and Medium Businesses
Oracle Applications
Alan Joch writes extensively about small-business technology.
