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System
Label
5 The Project
5.1 eBusiness Solution
5.1.1 Business Dimension
By 2000, identical systems were running in both Ireland
and Germany though transfer of data between the two
systems was still being done by a combination of faxing
and re-keying.
The real value-add would come when the two systems
were linked together electronically, thus negating
the need for any manual intervention in the transfer
of data. Additionally, there was a limited raw materials
management system which meant that no member of staff
in Ireland could see what raw materials were available
in Germany (or vice versa). This stock system wasn’t
tied into the order system and thus raw materials
couldn’t be reserved for a particular job.
The focus for System Label, for the purposes of the
Enterprise Ireland eBusiness Accelerator Fund project,
was to develop these two modules:
- Data
Integration
- Raw materials
management (amount in stock, amount reserved and amount available)
Data Integration
The Data Integration module gave the company semi-real-time interchange
of data between the two plants. Prior to the new system being implemented,
the data transfer was done once a week by fax. Data was then rekeyed from
paper, back into the systems in each of the plants. Now the Data Integration
module is complete, rekeying is no longer necessary as all data transferred
between the two systems is automatically uploaded.
During the specification stage, a true online link was considered. This
would have given the two plants real time access to the data in each others
systems at any one point in time. In addition to being more technically
demanding and costly to implement, this solution would have involved the
purchase of a leased line which would have been prohibitively expensive.
Given that the current data transfer rate was once a week, the team felt
that to bring it up to once a day (thus increasing the frequency seven-fold)
would in itself deliver great benefits.
The most the data would ever be ‘out’ would be 24 hours –
the only real area this would affect would be raw materials.
If someone selected raw materials from another plant, they were using
‘yesterday’s data and that stock may have been reserved by another
order in the meantime. It was felt that this was unlikely to happen on
a frequent basis and thus it wouldn’t present a problem. “It’s
a trade off between cost/complexity of the system and the actual value
it adds”, said Buckley.
The main benefit of the Data Integration module is that it will give staff
in the plants immediate access to more upto- date information. In the
case of raw materials, it will also allow one plant to identify what materials
the other has and, if quicker fulfilment could be realised, that order
could be electronically transferred and produced in the plant that has
the raw materials. The order could then be shipped direct to the client.
Raw Materials
Since the implementation of the new module, all raw materials are now
checked into stock using a series of six descriptive characteristics.
When an order is checked into the system, one of three things can happen:
- The relevant
raw material is reserved for that order.
- There
is no stock of the material requested and an alternative is suggested
by the system (based on those six characteristics).
- A check
is done on the stocks in the other plant to see if they have the actual
stock or a suitable alternative this can then be reserved.
Only after
these three avenues have been exhausted will the employee raise a purchase
order to buy-in the material required for that order.
In addition to new raw materials being checked in, rolls of part used
material can also be checked into the system to be used by either of the
two sites. Whereas before, with no way to check materials into the system,
this material would have been used off line, now, it can be tracked decreasing
wastage and therefore costs. The system allows the company to use materials
that are in-house before immediately purchasing new stock. This has a
number of advantages for System Label:
- Use of
stock that is already in-house means a quicker order turnaround for
the client.
- Materials
in the warehouse are used and thus the cost of stock holding is reduced.
- Better
tracking of part-used rolls of raw material.
- Stock
taking can be reduced – prior to the module being implemented,
stock checks were done weekly.
Following
implementation of the module, this was reduced to every two months and
is likely to become less frequent.
5.1.2 Technical Dimension
In order to run the systems put in place in 2000, each site had a server
and local area network with a number of PCs running MS Access.
MS Access is a true relational database with the front and back ends split
for security. The main MS Access database resides at the back-end of the
system. It is here that all data for the various modules is stored. Users
then access the data through the front end on their PCs. This front end
will provide them will access to forms, reports and data entry screens
to access the data in ways that can add value to their jobs.
Like all relational database programs, the data was structured in tables
making it easy to maintain and to add and remove data.
Groups of users had different security access levels allowing them to
view data most pertinent to their needs. For example, the sales group
may have access to data on sales orders and raw goods inventory whereas
the shipping department may only have access to information on goods in/out.
This wasn’t due to an issue with confidentiality but more from a
security point of view, in case a staff member should ever accidentally
delete a data source.
In order to avoid catastrophic disaster in the event of data loss, the
back-end server was backed up each night.
The core of the integration module was two programs, based on the servers
in each of the countries. The first program would extract relevant data
and send it from the source site (i.e. Ireland) to an FTP (File Transfer
Protocol) server. The second program would retrieve and update the data
on the destination site (i.e. Germany). These processes ran on a scheduled
basis each night, one happening two hours after the first has completed.
Interestingly,
and in direct contrast to many of the organisations taking advantage of
the eBusiness Accelerator Fund, System Label chose to build a bespoke system
to meet the company’s needs. The choice to use a bespoke system over
an off-the-shelf package was down to availability of packages that would
suit the company’s requirements - at the time of development there
were no such packages and the company would have been left with a solution
that only partly met its needs.
Unlike most bespoke systems, where development is outsourced to a software
consultancy, a lot of the development work on the System Label system was
undertaken in-house, led by the MD, Maurice Buckley who commented, “the
ideal situation is for a company to have some level of expertise in-house”.
Unlike most bespoke systems developed externally, organisations like System
Label aren’t tied into supplier relationships as they themselves have
a very good idea of what the system does, how it works and how it was built.
Although this section of the project was almost complete at time of writing,
it is anticipated that the MS Access database will have to be upgraded in
the near future. This is to allow for both increased security and back-up
in addition to adding vital expandability as the data being stored and processed
increases.
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