MBA expects to cut time to market and costs by 30%

Ejector seat and escape system technology manufacturer, Martin-Baker Aircraft (MBA), last month chose enterprise and supply chain software supplier, SAP’s aerospace and defence ERP software to replace several of its legacy, home-grown business applications. MBA, a privately-owned company with a £92m turnover last year and 780 employees in the UK, is essentially (60%) a make-to-order manufacturer. It has decided on a phased implementation of SAP’s mySAP All in One for Aerospace & Defence (ERP-plus) software, to be implemented by SAP’s certified mid-market partner, Ascent Technology. MBA’s operations director, Peter Lewis commented: “The implementation is divided into two phases really. First, we want to replace our existing MRPII, financials, order management, shop floor data collection and procurement systems. The IT systems we’ve been using to date have been modified numerous times and are not appropriate to support our growth plans.” According to Lewis, the firm looked at 21 software suppliers for the first phase of the project. “We eventually got down to four: SAP, Oracle, Baan and IFS… SAP beat the competition on depth and breadth of functionality, plus its understanding of our industry. Also, we didn’t want to have to develop new modules along the way [certain vendors claimed they had the required functionality but failed to demonstrate it to MBA] or upgrade software during the first phase. “Phase two,” said Lewis, “would focus on silos of information around the company, and integrating these [including manufacturing] back into SAP. Our target is to cut both time to market and product lifecycle costs by 30%.” But there was internal effort required up front before any software decision was made. Lewis explained: “Last year, we had around 40 staff working full-time for nine months on re-engineering our business processes. Only at the end of this did we start shortlisting software suppliers.” Consultancy firm, Cap Gemini Ernst & Young were also employed during this period to assist MBA with the process mapping. Lewis: “The software selection and evaluation phase needed 15 staff full-time. We completed the selection in March this year, and in April, we created a 20-strong team to manage the first implementation phase of SAP.” As for expected go-live dates Lewis said the firm, “expects to finish phase one in nine months’ time, around March 2003… As for the integration phase, that’s never going to end really. It’s a mammoth task.” When asked what extra ERP bolt-on software modules were important for MBA, Lewis responded: “Business intelligence software is certainly high on our agenda, and we want to integrate our manufacturing systems more closely with our design software [EDS’ Unigraphics CAD/CAM and iMAN product data management software]. “We’re also looking at APS [advanced planning and scheduling] software. We have around 3,000 batches per day going through the manufacturing plant and we would like to cut stock levels and lead times by 30%.”