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System
Label
3 Problem Definition and Objectives
By 2000, the plants in both Ireland and Germany were
running identical systems, as developed by the Roscommon
team, using the same data structures, forms, reports
and interfaces. The systems were designed to be bi-lingual
and, with a few changes, could be switched from English
to German and back again. The biggest problem then
faced by the team was that of Data Integration and
this became the main objective for the company’s
eBusiness project. “We wanted to secure the future
of the Roscommon plant by integrating the two facilities
using technology” commented Maurice Buckley,
Managing Director at System Label in Roscommon.
There were advantages to having two plants but, by
linking the two systems the company could start to
address some of the disadvantages. Until the project
was initiated, the transfer between systems had been
done manually via fax. Each week, the two sites would
exchange a number of faxes:
- Planned
deliveries and shipments information going one
way and;
- Orders
to be produced, stock levels and raw materials transfers going the other
way
There were
a number of issues with this process:
- Timeliness
– the transfers of data were happening on a weekly basis meaning
that the two plants were only able to receive new information on orders
(going one way) or product to be shipped (going the other way) every
seven days. This meant potential delays in processing customer orders.
- Time
consuming – The printing, faxing and re-keying of data was
a monotonous and time consuming task – the paper chain was enormous.
- Error
prone – Regardless of quality of staff, manual systems were
always prone to errors – a mistyped digit or misread piece of information
could have greatly impacted a customer order. Each plant had to work
to a very high ISO quality standard and thus it was imperative that
there were no mistakes made.
Because the labels were treated by System Label customers as standard
off-the-shelf components, quick production and turnaround of orders was
vital. Orders were often low-runs and are therefore of a low value. Given
the issues outlined above, no matter how efficiently System Label in Ireland
could ‘work’ the system, it made no sense to accept orders under
€2,000 in value – given the cost of the manual system, there
was just no margin below this threshold. Commented Buckley, “we wanted
to take more orders from the German plant but this cost threshold meant
we were unable to do so”
4
Decision
The System Label computer system had been in development for a number of
years prior to the announcement of the Enterprise Ireland eBusiness Accelerator
Fund and, since 1994, had been developed in Access - Microsoft’s application
for building relational databases. Although powerful, Access is targeted
at SMEs and has limited capability in terms of data-security and expansion
(the
amount of data it can hold is small compared to other ‘corporate’
databases). Eventually, the inadequacies of the Access system will require
a move to a more powerful corporate product.
The decision to progress with Access and, in particular to link the two
systems together was taken as part of a strategic view of where the management
team wanted the company to be in the next 10 years. The grant award from
Enterprise Ireland was vital in focusing the minds of the management team,
not only in Ireland, but also in Germany. As 80% of the value of this project
was going to be realised by the Irish plant, it was important to show that
they had the support of Enterprise Ireland and, through the grant assistance,
were able to pay for most of the development themselves. Additionally, the
timelines put in place by the grant meant that decisions had to be made.
“The grant gave us an incentive to do it now and not later” said
Buckley.
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