Production Scheduling and Control: The Effects of Hansen's ERP Technology

The aluminum company is “a global leader in lightweight metals technology, manufacturing and engineering” and “pioneered the aluminum industry over 125 years ago, and today, 59,000 people in 30 countries deliver value-add products made of titanium, nickel and aluminum and produce best-in-class bauxite, alumina and primary aluminum products.” (Alcoa) Since 2001, Alcoa has been able to maintain a successful ERP system with modules including human resources management, OTC, financial management, business process management, and RTP. Alcoa understood that a company this large, would have a complex ERP implementation, thus why they chose to take on different regions in stages. “Their first 50 branches in Europe of the implementation of financial and demand-payment process module, the module currently including Europe, North America, Australia, Asia and South America, the branches of the widely used. HR module has been completed in Australia branch, and Europe and Latin America, is expected to end at the end of the year. OTC module in the aluminum company is all the global offices ta least 60% complete.” (Modern Enterprise Management) For such an implementation to succeed, the company must have flexibility, adaptation, correct scheduling, and streamlining, which Alcoa managed successfully with the correct planning before installation to the ERP system.

NIBCO is a pipe and valve manufacturing company headquartered in Indiana with ten plants and three distribution centers. NIBCO wanted their business processes to be strategically improved in order for their manufacturing facilities and distribution centers to meet their customer’s requirements (Brown, DeHayes, Hoffer, Martin, & Perkins, 2012). There were multiple systems being utilized within NIBCO and none of the systems had the ability to communicate with each other which created duplicative and wasteful resource efforts. NIBCO’s decision to implement an ERP system was to improve their information systems. Beutler (as cited in Brown et al., 2012) stated that the consulting group reported to NIBCO “to look at integration as a major

The company owns an ERP package specifically designed for the plastics manufacturing process. Evaluation of this software product is essential to ensure the ability to handle the operations in Georgia, Michigan, and China to meet Riordan’s needs for scalability. A new ERP package research will be accessible should the current product prove incapable of meeting Riordan’s needs.

The company had been using a shared-services vision, where purchasing, finance, and information resources were provided via shared services that left the divisions with the customer-facing work. Therefore, Mead used the entire suite of SAP modules except human resources and installed a recent module, Advanced Optimization Planning (AOP), which handles all planning and scheduling. However, SAP was not the perfect solution as it unified the company, but it was a large and complex system and it required strict adherence to its rules. ERP was experimental in 1995; reverse auctions and Web applications were experimental in 2002. Implementing ERP has leveraged resources and central design and thus solved many of the problems and issues the company used to struggle with. ERP helped in easy decision-making as if a business unit wanted to make a change, they needed to have conversations with the others, in terms of what was good for the whole. "The answer might not be reached as quickly, but it is a more effective answer," states McGrane. Standardization and globalization has forced real business discussions to occur as well as

The reason behind NIBCO's decision to implement an ERP system is that the company realized that the architecture of the current information system was not sufficient in supporting the matrix and the cross functional organization structure that had been implementing by the company in 1996 (Brown, DeHayes, Hoffer, Martin & Perkins, 2012). NIBCO's expectations to benefit from the ERP system was directly associated with the reason why the company decided to implement the system. The organization realized the importance of upgrading its architecture in order to resolve the issue of the year 2000. It must ensure that the new information technology system is coordinated with the organization's structure. Further, the management expected that the new system would be able to integrate the organization's systems and provide support to the growth ambitions of the company (Daryl, 2002).

In general, ERP systems are designed to standardize information entry and create data storage for information sharing across the organization. There are numerous advantages of ERP but skeptics argued on the fact that these advantages can be also achieved by simplification and lean production methods. IT systems could be effective and reliable in the long run but at the same time there is an uncertainty about whether it will align with the concerned business process. For instance, the ERP system implemented at the Korey plant to replace MRP system failed. Though it met the requirements of individual unit and enabled employees with wide range of

At the start of the case, describe what conditions made an ERP implementation desirable for Bombardier Aerospace.

Scholars from around the world have written for years on several common theses for why ERPs are growing in representation. Commonly, authors incorporate ERP platforms and

The problem presented by Joseph-Armand Bombardier is the upcoming third round of ERP implementation in his organization. Even though a big improvement over the efficiency and success of execution between the first ERP round (Mirabel plant) and second round (Saint-Laurent plant), there is still room for improvement.

With the help of the new ERP system, cost of storage inventory would be decreased by 10%, about $4570 based on the most recent year’s balance sheet. Cost of penalties from retailers will be reduced by 10%, about $1500. Also 10% saving in employee administration salaries may occur, about $67347 in the most recent year. The cost of the interest and bank charges cost would be reduced by 15% ($2386.5). The total cost may be saved in the first year is $75,804, which is less than the cost of the new ERP system. But starts from the second year, the firm only need to pay $2,000 more than the current system, and the benefits are similar to the first year. So the benefits outweigh the cost in the second year, and as the year goes, the benefit will increase more and more.

Company realised the need for IT and business integration. In 2005Thorntons began implementing Oracle E-business Suite application across its business, including Oracle Workflow to manage its end-to-end manufacturing and purchasing processes. They did projects in 2007 including payroll data collection , roll-out of retail monitoring systems and Introducing chip and pin system.

Another benefit companies receive from using an ERP is standardized processes and consistent data. This is important in the energy sector and the oil and gas industry because it allows the business to move rapidly to new markets as well as adjust workloads among offices. (Anderson et al., 119) an ERP system will provide managers with pertinent and timely information on when assets need to be replaced among others which will improve the quality of their decisions. (Anderson et al. 119)

The emergence of ERP systems has marked a commencement of a new era of efficient and productive decision making. These systems not only enabled the companies to integrate their key processes but also responsive to real time information (Al-Mashari, 2001). Thus, the implementation of information systems led to various perceived benefits such as augmented flexibility in information generation; improved quality of financial reports; increased application integration; and ease of database maintenance. Thus, the effect is felt on organization planning and decision making at all levels in an organization. (Spathis and Constantinides, 2003). Hence, organisations are forced to stay up to date with new technologies for its survival.

Enterprise resource planning (ERP), when implemented successfully ,can be linked to all departments of the organization to access, share and collect information. It has many functions such as, order administration, manufacturing, human resources, financial systems, and customers into a tightly integrating system with sharing data and visibility and distribution with external suppliers. (Injazz, 2001).

Dell has realized, however, that maintaining its manufacturing efficiency (and corresponding customer satisfaction) will become more complicated as the company continues to grow its global business. The reason? Dell’s streamlined manufacturing processes and its enviably low inventory levels are increasingly dependent on the company’s ability to accurately forecast customer demand and schedule its manufacturing processes accordingly. In other words, as Dell grows, so does the complexity of its manufacturing process and the need to have the right components on-hand at any given moment to satisfy immediate customer requirements. Until now, the company 's supplier-management processes have relied primarily on manual mechanisms, including shared spreadsheets, voicemail and faxed messages. It was clear to Dell’s leadership that, under continued global expansion, such mechanisms would eventually reach their breaking point. To avoid this eventuality, they needed to partner with an innovative leader with deep, global experience in business process and system design – a partner that could help create and implement the necessary technical architecture and integration and also provide deep project management skills. That partner was Accenture. Accenture 's RoleIn today’s fast-paced world of business, the winners are those who can best predict their customers’ buying behaviors and immediately adjust to