Magna subsidiaries move to lean support ERP in 23 days

Decoma (Merplas) UK and Intier Automotive, both subsidiaries of US automotive supplier Magna International, have successfully migrated data and implemented QAD GXE (Global Enterprise Edition) ERP in just 23 days. Intier Automotive migrated from a five year old version of QAD Mfg/Pro ERP and a legacy of its previous status as a Johnson Controls company to QAD GXE hosted at Decoma’s site, which has the in-house resources, implementation experience and IT infrastructure. At the same time, Decoma streamlined its own systems, clearing a path to the intended migration from QAD Mfg/Pro to QAD GXE. Magna now expects to profit from synergies between its two subsidiaries. Garry Bowers, IT manager at Decoma, says: “QAD has allowed us to actively bring the two companies’ updated IT systems together on to one site and one platform. At Decoma, we plan to migrate our own system to QAD GXE. With the array of new functionality, we will implement new software modules on a business priority basis. “Although a total move to lean manufacturing is some way off, we plan to pave the way this year by putting the foundations in place as part of this upgrade. The understanding of our market which QAD’s consultants possess and offerings such as the QAD e-Learning Portal, will be just as essential for us during this process as the technical features and benefits of QAD applications.” The Intier team extracted its data from a system based in Germany, and used spreadsheets in the process of cleansing and moving its static data to the Decoma site. An EDI Gateway was also established for Intier to upload orders from OEM customers such as Jaguar, with a server and mailbox operating separately from Decoma’s system.