Lean principles guide global suppliers and IT

Arvin Meritor, Butler Manufacturing, IMMI, Karsan Automotive, Thermo King, Ingersoll-Rand and Viking Range are among global manufacturers on the big-picture lean journey with Oracle’s Flow Manufacturing software – with the goal of becoming both agile and truly demand-driven. Oracle, which earlier this year re-launched its extended Flow Manufacturing suite under the lean business banner, has now released Oracle 11i.10, with what it describes as the building blocks for a lean enterprise and support for supply chain risk management and compliance. The company claims that its systems not only cut costs by eliminating waste in terms of operating practices, the various levels of inventory as well as duplication, workarounds and the rest, but can speed end-to-end throughput and cycle times – all improving competitiveness. “With 150 manufacturing plants in 27 different countries, lean manufacturing is a critical strategy to our organisation,” says Brian Cavagnini, director of continuous improvement for Commercial Vehicle Systems at $8 billion Arvin Meritor. “The Oracle system is crucial to our ability to meet many of our international manufacturing requirements, especially production sequencing. We’re just beginning to exploit the solution to control costs, support customer requirements and deliver value to our customers.” Meanwhile for manufacturers like IMMI, which makes commercial vehicle occupant restraint safety systems, Oracle Flow Manufacturing was a means to streamline the entire planning and execution cycle for products made on flow lines. “Prior to Oracle, we were running the shop from spreadsheets,” says Randy Norman, director of Information Services at IMMI. “We were getting the job done, but it was inflexible and labour-intensive. Oracle Flow Manufacturing’s integration with the rest of our Oracle system allowed us to plan and execute with one integrated set of information. “The assemble to order (ATO) functionality integrated with Oracle Flow Manufacturing gives a complete picture to everyone from the sales team to shipping. Now, we’re much more flexible in responding to customer requirements and orders.” In fact, Oracle’s new lean functionality allows firms to accurately plan for customer demand by designing flexible production lines, balancing lines for mixed mode production and efficiently scheduling and sequencing production based on user-defined priorities, executing directly from sales order demand, scheduling mixed model production, synchronizing feeder lines and supporting what-if scenarios. It also covers kanban management by defining pull sequences, calculating kanban size, conducting kanban requirements simulations, generating non-replenishable kanbans and automating transactions. Meanwhile, Oracle Supply Chain Management 11i.10 extends that again with capabilities that help companies create open supply chains for better collaboration and data exchange, also supporting all currencies, languages and time zones. New functionality includes: international drop shipment capabilities for helping companies meet customer demands quickly and cost-effectively, wherever they are; better global forecasting capabilities that coordinate demand planning across supply chain partners; and mobile functionality, bringing wireless to more of the supply chain. Jonathan Colehower, Oracle vice president of supply chain management, says the system takes advantage of EDI and XML to ensure supply chain visibility regardless of technology choice and sophistication in the supplier community, also supporting VMI, outsourced processes and so forth. He also indicates that the new system can extend everything from sales and operations planning to guided selling, with everything integrated into the core Oracle e-business suite. Indeed, Oracle seems to have crammed just about everything it can think of into the two releases: even RFID and the process sector’s CFR 21 part 11 don’t go unmentioned.