Sunseeker getting shipshape with enterprise system rethink

Luxury motorboat manufacturer Sunseeker says it’s seeing improved productivity from its implementation of an integrated enterprise (ERP) system – but it’s been far from easy getting there. This is a classic story of an upgrade that didn’t go quite right first time. The firm is the largest privately-owned motor yacht builder in the world, with revenues of some £80m, and makes motorboats from 34 feet long upwards – it’s latest and largest, a 100 footer, was launched last month. It has seven production sites in Poole, Dorset and another in New Milton Hants. Each boat is built to order, with larger projects taking more than six months to plan and involving procurement of components from all over the world. Back in 1998 Sunseeker needed to move on from its then obsolete non-Y2k compliant Tetra business system, and wanted to use the opportunity to equip itself with a modern integrated manufacturing enterprise solution. Don Tibbs, head of supply chain at Sunseeker, says the old system involved considerable data checking, duplication and errors. And he adds: “We needed more advanced technology that would help us streamline and enhance our production processes.” The company chose Damgaard’s Concorde XAL from reseller Columbus IT because, according to Tibbs, “Concorde looked like the best fit,” he says. And he adds: “We signed on the dotted line in April 1998 with 1st July 1998 for go-live.” Hopeful? “Yes, with hindsight that was far too quick: we should have spent longer, a lot longer.” And that’s where it all seems to have started. Tibbs says, “We made a lot of mistakes. We allowed users a huge amount of input into the system.” Which sounds good, except that to get it installed in time without changing business processes, there followed a lot of rush and investment in customisation. In fact, Tibbs estimates that in the end 50—60% of the system was customised and, he says, the result has been that two years on “we’re having to spend more money, time and effort changing back to the standard package.” He believes now that the company should have changed its processes. “A sensible split [of standard to custom] is 80:20%,” he says. And he adds: “The system isn’t meant for high levels of bespoking.” Actually, few of them are, but he believes that Columbus should have warned Sunseeker at the time that by changing the system so much they could not be confident of good on-going support. Which is what happened. “[Columbus] have struggled,” he says. Typically, when there were specialist problems, Columbus has had to refer to its programmers who, by then, might have moved on to other projects – or to Damgaard, who’s people might then have returned to Denmark. “It was an awful implementation,” says Tibbs. On go-live day, the firm felt it had no choice but to go for the ‘big bang’ switch-over. It did so, but while on the physical side everything ran well, on financials there were “huge problems”. Sunseeker was reduced to doing everything manually until the 17th of that month. “That was huge amounts of manual effort.” But there was more. “Downloading data from the Tetra system went badly,” says Tibbs. Although the download was only of text and Exel files, there were problems which Tibbs now puts down to inadequate time for testing. “The problems were pretty obvious within two weeks,” he says. “It didn’t’ work,” and he alludes to programming errors. “There are probably still errors in there that we’ll never find.” Eventually, says Tibbs, “they did sort us out.” The system runs on an Oracle 7 database, and includes XAL’s financials, project and stock modules – the latter performing stock management and control for boat components and internal business purchases – and most of the production planning and MRP functionality of the ‘picking’ module. It’s licensed for 44 concurrent users at the Poole HQ – and 31 more elsewhere – each accessing the application from Windows workstations. At Sunseeker’s other sites the workstations act as thin clients to a central Citrix WinFrame server: Sunseeker says this has enabled it to deploy the system with minimal hardware upgrades. “It runs everything,” says Tibbs: it’s integrated and it automates all financial control as well as resource planning and materials management, also managing every stage of construction, with hooks into the factory floor, production and stores and links into purchasing and the rest. Now when Sunseeker takes an order it enters the motorboat data direct into Concorde’s project module. The kit of materials is determined automatically, and copied to the Damgaard project module, enabling users to manage the entire boat build sequence. This information also feeds into the stock and purchase modules which generate stock orders automatically. Thus the application ensures that the right level of stock is ordered in time to complete each stage of the boat build in time for the promised delivery date. At any stage users can access details and check progress. Tibbs says: “We have been able to improve productivity and efficiency by automating order processing and fulfilment all the way through purchasing materials to production and delivery. We can also gain accurate job costings, taking into account stock on hand levels. Regardless of what module you enter information into, the software automatically updates the relevant data and keeps it consistent.” He continues: “we are moving towards being better able to analyse our stock holding and gain greater control over quantities and costs.” And he believes the system will be capable of supporting just-in-time material deliveries and supply chain enhancements that will reduce overheads and improve profitability. But not without some help: three or four months ago, says Tibbs, the firm decided, “we were working more for Concorde than it was working for us.” So the firm brought in Cap Gemini Ernst & Young for a full review, “looking at wish lists, costs, what’s good, what’s bad, and establishing priorities”. As a result Sunseeker set up project teams and an executive steering group. “We should have done it two years ago,” says Tibbs. Now the firm has embarked on “a £100,000 project,” covering “the most critical aspects of purchasing, planning and costing”. Tibbs says he’s also looking to improve the factory connections, with shop floor data collection and a new investment in bar coding systems. “We do need that,” he says, although this will be six months further down the track, once new automated stores have been completed. Could things have been done better from the outset? With growth in recent years at around 30% per annum, Tibbs says, “there would have been a strain on any system.” But it wasn’t just that. And Tibbs believes it would have been a very different picture if the company had invested in “a project manager familiar with the processes needed in pulling together an enterprise system”. But, he concedes, “some of the decisions we made we would have made anyway: it’s untrodden ground.” Nevertheless, he says the relationship with Columbus is now excellent, and he’s confident that “if everything goes as it should we’ll have a very good system.”