Toray goes live with Tropos implementation

Japanese weaving and dyeing firm Toray Textiles Europe, based in Nottinghamshire, says that its Tropos ERP system, from enterprise software vendor SSI, Phase One of which went live in August, is living up to its expectations. Toray, which produces polyester and nylon fabrics for garments, home furnishings and surgical use, as well as higher value performance fabrics for sportswear, implemented Tropos in favour of bespoke Unix systems and manual processes. Toray financial director Phil Davis says: “We selected SSI and Tropos from a shortlist including vendors such as Epicor and JD Edwards.” Main reasons, he says, were the people and SSI’s specific functionality. “In our new markets, such as sportswear, surgical fabrics and home furnishings, testing is far more intensive than in apparel,” he says. “Quality standards are often attached to an order, so it was vital that our new system had strong quality functionality. “We were impressed with Tropos’ lot traceability: for example, though most of our yarn comes from the Far East, we do have customers that insist on EU origin goods – so we need to be able to prove the source of the yarn in a product.” SSI’s partnership with APS (advanced planning and scheduling) vendor Greycon was also a factor. Davis says that the company, as an integrated dyer and weaver, faces two contrasting scheduling environments, so needed the additional power of the scheduling tools. The weaving element of the business involves a complex long-term plan – one beam of yarn takes up to five weeks to weave – whereas Toray dyes to order, with a lead time for dyed products of two to three weeks. Phase One of the project, now live, covers products, processes, costing, planning, production, purchasing and goods receiving for the weaving part of the business – more than 500 looms in total. Phase Two, which incorporates the dyeing business and implementation of Coda financials, is due to go live by the end of the year. Davis says that Toray is in a period of major culture change, and that Tropos is an important part. “It’s very easy to live in a vacuum and assume you’re doing the right things,” he says. “But we can’t expect to survive if we just carry on as before, because our competition is mainly from countries with labour costs a fraction of ours. “That’s why we’ve changed our business to target new markets, and why we need to implement better technology to control those changes. Far too much of our managers’ time is spent chasing information. With Tropos, we shall be able to get our managers focused on key issues.”