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Banta
Global Turnkey
5 . The Project
5.1 eBusiness Solution
5.1.1 Business Dimension
BGT’s
main objective for the e-business project was to make
the information from its ERP and other internal systems
available to all parties in the supply chain (customers
and suppliers). “We wanted to provide customers
and suppliers with the ability to get information when
they needed it”, commented Simon McGrath, “rather
than asking and waiting for it to be compiled”.
Other business requirements were as follows:
- Provide
Secure ERP reports in real-time offering users:
-
Give users visibility on business processes.
- Facilitate
informed decision making.
- Accessibility
across the Supply Chain:
-
Allow all parties in the supply chain from BGT to
customers to suppliers to access data relevant to
them.
-
Move from serviced reporting to self service reporting:
-
Customers would no longer have to wait for reports
to be sent to them. A new PULL system would allow
them to retrieve information as and when required.
- Reduce
Costs / Cycle Times:
- Costs
reduced within BGT as less staff required to undertake
reporting.
-
Real-time availability of data meant cycle times
were reduced and informed decisions made more quickly.
In
order to fulfil these requirements, the system comprised
two distinct parts:
- Development
and deployment of a series of reports and;
- A
document sharing repository
Reports
Rather than waiting for reports and relevant data to be sent to
them, customers and suppliers would be able to see all the data
relevant to the part they played in the production of any given
item. In the case of the software example earlier, the CD Rom manufacturer
would be able to log onto the system and pull down information on
current inventory and production schedules allowing them to better
plan when the next delivery would have to be sent to BGT.
Likewise, customers would be able to see the status of their jobs
at any given point in time.
The finished system offered users access to around 50 reports. An
administrator on each site would decide which sub-set of those reports
would be made available to users within that organisation. The selection
of reports available to users included:
- Bills
of Materials & Part Master
- Inventory
Status, History and Ageing Reports
-
Consumption / Replenishment
-
Purchase Order Status and History
- Build
Plan and Works Order Status
- Track
and Trace - By Serial Number
-
Quality System Reports
- Shop
Floor System Reports
-
Sales Order Status and History
All data for the new system was held at a very detailed level allowing
users to produce summary reports and, if necessary, drill down into
specific sets of data to reveal very detailed job/process reporting.
The
results of a report would be presented on screen; the
user then had the option to export the data for further
analyses or importing into their own systems –
this flexibility made the system compatible with the
large majority of customer back-end systems. Format
options included:
- CSV
(comma delimited for Excel)
- TXT
(fixed width)
- HTML
(HTML for off line viewing)
- XML
(for data import)
Like many of the other organisations that took advantage of the
eBusiness Acceleration Fund, BGT spent a lot of time developing
the back-end infrastructure of its system. This ensured an element
of future proofing and meant that the development and deployment
of new forms and reports would be a reasonably straightforward task
requiring little incremental investment.
Document Sharing
A document sharing area was developed on the site to
allow all parties within any particular supply chain
to see documentation pertinent to that job. Central
file sharing offered better version control ensuring
that the version available to parties on the system
was always the most up-to-date. The area was designed
to allow users to store documents in any relevant format
– users were not tied into a particular look and
feel. Formats supported included Excel, MS Word, Power
Point, MS Project and Visio. Specific documents included:
- General
Information
- Process
Documents, Scope of Work.
- Project
Plans, Tasks Lists and Schedules
- BGT
Operational Reports
- Weekly
Account Manager Minutes
-
Quarterly Scorecard Results
- Quality
Reports and Supplier Evaluations
-
New Product Implementations
-
Specifications and Drawing
- Product
Configuration
- Implementation
Plans
Security
One of the key issues when developing the system was that of security.
It was imperative that the system was totally secure, both from
outsiders and between suppliers/customers.
For example, imagine the problems that would be caused
if all suppliers were able to see the orders being placed
with other suppliers on behalf of a common customer?
BGT wanted to ensure that reports generated showed only
what was relevant to each supplier – effectively,
they could only see the stocking or production information
relating to the products they supplied.
In order to combat user intrusions into areas they shouldn’t
access and to eliminate the chance of hacking, BGT introduced a
10 character password for access to the system. The password had
to be changed on a monthly basis and no password would be used twice
by the same user.
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