Blowing the roof off your factory

We’re working far more closely with our customers now. They can more closely control and view our operations. You could imagine it to be like taking the roof off our factory and our operations so our customers can see in,” says Bob Summers, IT services manager for Sims Portex. The company designs and manufactures single-use sterile medical devices for use in dentistry, anaesthetic departments and operating theatres throughout the world. There are more than 1,000 employees across four UK sites, with the firm’s headquarters based in Hythe, Kent. And for its 5,000 product lines, it also has a large network of distributors across the globe. Two years ago, Sims Portex decided it needed an Internet presence and on-line product catalogue for its customers and distributors. And this is the second stage of a three-phase e-business strategy developed by the company. The first phase was creating a straightforward Sims Portex website – the easy part. The second phase is using the website as a sales and marketing tool, opening new channels to market and providing better customer service. This is where the company is now, after implementing a web storefront for its distributors. The final phase will involve the supply chain – the firm wants to ‘hook up’ to other Sims Portex (Smiths Group) businesses with one rationalised, co-ordinated web portal service for its customers. Summers recalls: “We’d been looking for ways of engaging in e-business, and considered upgrading from our existing green-screen AS/400 WorldSoftware [JD Edwards] enterprise system to JD Edwards’ OneWorld software, which has Internet capabilities. But in the end we decided to stick with what we had, as it’s served us very well for many years.” So instead, the solution Sims Portex implemented was a combination of IBM’s Net.Commerce storefront fully integrated with JD Edwards’ WorldSoftware running on the existing hardware. And the application can talk to both internal and external systems depending on how the company’s e-business strategy develops over the next few years. Summers: “The software has been implemented to provide our distributors with an on-line storefront giving trading access to all our products. This will enable them to select the item they require, when they wish to receive it and in what quantity. “This information is then automatically fed into WorldSoftware, which provides distributors with details of how the order can be fulfilled. This lets us gather orders direct from distributors, therefore improving customer relationships management and stock control.” Content is key Before rolling out the software to a wider audience, the company ran a beta version with one of its major distributors in Holland. Summers explains: “Our major distributor in Holland visited our site here to do a dry review of our plans for the on-line storefront and integrated back-office. We discussed processes, controls and product catalogue content before switching it all on … It took about 12 months from initial discussions to going live with our first distributor, and the results were very encouraging.” So what business benefits has the company seen? Summers says the pilot went live last year, but to date a further 19 distributors have signed up to the storefront. And he adds: “Our distributors can now log on to the storefront and access a variety of services and information. They can order items; we can deliver electronic documents to them over the web; updating of documents is now easier to manage; and you can view and download photographs and technical data related to products in the on-line catalogue.” And having a web storefront has led to some real innovation at the company. Sims Portex can now offer its clients a new ‘custom kits’ service for medical devices. This enables practitioners to order customised products over the web. Summers: “We now use a product configurator behind the storefront to compile custom kits for customers on-line – it’s working very well for us.” And the cost of these benefits? “We started off with an understanding that the project was not optional – we just had to do it. Our profits were ok, but we had to make sure we stayed ahead of the competition. The costing process was a very formal justification though,” says Summers. Although he does not reveal the actual project costs, he does point out that, “The project came in on-time and within budget.” But he does concede that it wasn’t all plain sailing: “Everything went well except for one area. We lost a month integrating the storefront to our back-office software. We used a US consultant, the CD Group, to do all the systems integration work for us. They ran into some problems mapping data fields from the web storefront through IBM’s MQ Series to the JD Edwards AS/400 application. “There was also very little customisation before implementation,” he continues. “We’ve made small changes since launching the storefront, like adding new fields for new distributors. This isn’t a problem though. If the ninth distributor makes a request, the first eight will all get the same amendment. We can do all these changes quickly in-house.” There’s more. “We can accept new orders within 24 hours now,” exclaims Summers. “We used to have delays with manual keying of orders, but now we’ve got a faster process with less errors and less follow-up work too. Our European distributors are finding that orders are being delivered earlier. And the storefront e-catalogue ensures that customers [distributors] orders are pre-validated. “And when clients request a delivery date, this data is carried through to WorldSoftware, which then matches availability from our stock system … The real benefit though is using the on-line order status checking facility. The customer no longer has to go through a long chain of communication at the factory, like customer services, then telephoning the factory manager. It’s all up there on the website for them to see.” But there’s another important side of the project for Portex. It needed business intelligence (business reporting and analysis) software to extract the required supply information from its own back-office systems. The firm had expected to use the IBM storefront to do this, but Summers says, “The software simply wasn’t good enough. We use Cognos instead.” Steep learning curve The result is that Cognos provides order status information to distributors through the storefront, and it’s also used internally to collect packing, inventory and manufacturing data related to works orders. “We had a steep learning curve. We needed to go back into our own supply chain to pull out more valuable data, and we had to create allocation rules within Cognos [the same rules that exist within the JD Edwards software]. In other words, if there are 10 customers waiting for 1,000 widgets, which one gets the order first,” explains Summers. As for persuading staff of the value of the web storefront project, Summers says that manufacturing were quite slow to buy into the idea: “The whole thing was initiated by the IT guys, but once the pilot work began we got interest from sales and export marketing. But manufacturing didn’t come until later really, once we all saw how important the integration work was and how the customer service could be improved. “Customers are getting improved, genuine information from us now. With any works order they can find out expected shipping dates, or whether the order has reached final assembly yet,” he adds. “And that means production have new challenges to meet. The client is pressing them for delivery now. We haven’t had any real cultural issues to deal with, but production now realises the importance of the customer and WorldSoftware’s part in the chain.”