Electrothermal chooses Infor XA for manufacturing automation

The firm – which went with OBS because it's parent company Bibby Scientific's standard, along with IBM iSeries client-server – has deployed the system for everything from purchasing to sales, stock management, materials management, costing, engineering, planning and financials. "Our existing systems needed replacing and, with the acquisition by Bibby Scientific, Infor XA was the natural choice," confirms Ian Waldie, materials manager at Electrothermal. "As well as the MRP functionality it provides, Infor XA also includes a fully integrated accounting solution that eliminates the need for time-consuming reconciliation between our old systems," he adds. Waldie now expects to gain tighter control of materials, with the Infor XA ERP system providing visibility of stocks and enabling the company to order what it needs only when it needs it. This will help to manage manufacturing costs better and improve customer service, because Electrothermal will have a clearer view of order lead times, he explains. "By using Infor XA, we also gain the advantage of working with OBS, an arrangement Bibby has benefited from for more than a decade," continues Waldie. "By adopting the Bibby group ERP solution, Electrothermal will also be able to benefit from [other] Infor solutions such as EDI trading, Business to Business e-commerce and CRMi, which are already in the Bibby application portfolio," he says.