Intelligent Enterprise

Better Insight for Business Decisions

RSS
Webcasts
Whitepapers
Subscribe
Home

June 13, 2002

Process Driven

Corning's Doug Anderson is juicing up existing assets by rewiring the processes that employ them

By Jeanette Burriesci

Continued from Page 1

IE: Can you further describe the integration between the ERP and MES?

Anderson: One of the Virtual Factory modules we're implementing is called LiveConnect. It's going to help us send transactions back and forth between our ERP system and our multifactory MES environment.

For example, take cost accounting. We've got a really complicated manufacturing business; it has a lot of processing steps and product can flow in a bunch of different directions. The manufacturing routings are quite complex and entail a lot of detailed data collections.

We have the MES and the PeopleSoft shop-floor module, but they're not designed to do a lot of detailed data collection and complex routings. Consequently, we're going to use our LiveConnect bridge (which is based on Microsoft BizTalk technology) to send data back and forth: The PeopleSoft module will do our cost accounting, our manufacturing accounting, our manufacturing cost variance reporting, and our inventory accounting and inventory valuation for us; LiveConnect is going to provide the transactions that the PeopleSoft shop-floor module needs in order to do those financials.

Basically, by "symbolically" linking the two systems, we get to take advantage of the strengths of what each package has to offer — and without having to modify the ERP. The trick is doing all that without having redundant data entry.

IE: In addition to daily operational benefits you're deriving from this system, you're also exploiting the data for analytic purposes.

Anderson: Yes; it's just incredibly exciting. We've been working so hard to put the basic transactional systems in place and support the day-to-day business processes. And now, by adding the Virtual Factory LiveView tool, which is based on Business Objects technology, the value of the information is just going to explode.

IE: Who in the business is going to be using LiveView?

Anderson: Everybody. The engineers want to be able to look at things from their perspective, the finance people need to look at their cut, and the commercial people want to see it from their view.

In the past, it was an incredible amount of manual work to go to the different sources of data to get the piece that you need and then pull it all together to answer your question. And it can take a long, long time. In these business markets, going through these rollercoaster-like up and down cycles, the need to serve up the information to answer these questions is intense.

Every level of this business needs information. And they need it now and they need to be able to ask some pretty complex questions. To me, it's not going to be just the ability to get the information, but to be able to get it while it's current and fresh and real time without having to spend days tying up a lot of resources. Right now, we've got some highly paid people who spend a lot more time than any of us would like to get the answers we need.

With LiveView, they can spend more time thinking about solving real business problems and not just crunching data. And that applies to everybody: financial folks, commercial folks, manufacturing, you name it.

IE: Can you offer an example?

Anderson: Yes, a big one: capacity. As we go up and down the roller coaster of sales forecasts, we need the ability to ramp up in time to meet the unexpected demand — because, again, we've got these very high-tech, customized products.

Inventory is another example. What's our inventory level going to be? At Corning, we're in a mode of closely managing our cash flow this year to weather the downturn. There's just a continual need to be looking and adjusting all the different levers that drive the financials.

It's that whole business response time to changing market conditions where I think this is really going. That's the real business driver in making these investments: Making our business organization more nimble.

Rate This Article

Comments:

Optional e-mail address:

IE: To what sort of management philosophy do you attribute the decision to create this integrated set of systems?

Anderson: My personal bias is that having highly integrated information flows and business processes is the common thread that ties all these diverse kinds of businesses together. Whether you're in a high volume, commodity product business where your challenges can include supply chain management and vendor managed inventory, or a high-tech, complex, specification-driven business like some of mine are, having your fundamental business functions knit together with solid, well-understood business processes is, to me, the thing that transcends the range of businesses.

Jeanette Burriesci [jburriesci@cmp.com] is a senior editor of Intelligent Enterprise.