In the manufacturing world, manufacturing resource planning systems (MRPs) have long been imperative for smooth business operations. But, as is the case with any off-the-shelf software package, there's no such thing as a perfect fit. MRPs and other packaged software such as enterprise resource planning (ERP), software configuration management (SCM), and customer relationship management (CRM) solutions feature powerful capabilities and manage a litany of complex tasks. All of these must be tailored to fit the needs of the individual businesses that use them in order to truly harness their powers.

Prettl Electric, a division of The Prettl Group, is a leader in the production of wire harnesses used largely in the automotive industry in ABS braking systems and emission control systems. Prettl relied on its MRP for years but recently took a significant step forward with the development of a Web application that reduces employee workload, shares live data, and improves production planning while offering a secure, portable, automated, and fully scalable solution.

The Challenge

Prettl realized it needed a change in 2003 when one of its customers, a major automotive supplier, realized additional demand for more harnesses from other sites. Prettl Electric agreed to manage the logistics for the customer as a service but the project would prove to be more complex than Prettl anticipated.

The Prettl Group, Prettl Electric's parent company, is a global powerhouse with offices and plants all over the world, so expanding this business partnership meant working with sister plants in Mexico, Germany, and the Ukraine as well as the United States. To accommodate the necessary information sharing, the company decided to create a production and shipment schedule in Microsoft Excel. The schedule includes many of the necessary complex algorithms and calculations that go into global logistics, all of which developers had to build manually. The spreadsheet also needed to be accessible to all of the plants involved as well as the customer, and to show the shipping schedule, estimated arrival dates, and customer requirements.

The spreadsheet provided an at-a-glance view of logistics across the board. All parties could update it as changes occurred and each version was marked with a number so that everyone knew which version to reference. The plan was to simply e-mail the spreadsheet to each location.

Only it wasn't so simple.

One Recipe, Too Many Cooks

Any proven method can become a liability if information systems don't keep up with changes. When your customer is ordering "just enough" from your business based on what their customers require from them, your reputation as a supplier can suffer if you're using incorrect or out of date information with your tried-and-true application.

For example, let's say you need to provide 30,000 units to your customer two weeks from now but a last minute update adds an additional 10,000 but your plant in the Ukraine doesn't have the new information. Your customer is expecting the correct shipment, and their customer depends on it.

Like falling dominoes, an inaccuracy in data sharing could cause your customer delivery problems, resulting in delivery hassles for their customer, probably very soon. Would a mistake like that trigger a business loss for you? Can you afford to find out? More importantly, what measures can you take to prevent that from happening?

The Business Needs

Although Prettl's Excel spreadsheet worked for a while, the process eventually required a more sophisticated method. When Marcus Barkey, Prettl's IT manager, stepped back to look at the situation, he realized the system needed to be automated - and fast. "We have tools in place, we have quality people, yet we're asking them to copy data from one system into another, and then duplicate data and complicated formulas. It's a ridiculous waste of time."

The first problem to tackle was the manual construction of the production and shipping schedule in Excel. Users had to enter specifications and requirements into Prettl's MRP and then had to remove the same data from the MRP and enter it into the spreadsheet. As information on the spreadsheet changed, or information in the MRP changed, the schedule was updated, and the information put back into the MRP. That meant the system required manual maintenance as well as manual data entry of the data, leaving more opportunity for human error.

The second challenge was that Prettl's MRP system didn't function in realtime. Because Prettl was dealing with plants around the world, multiple time zones were involved and people were not all at work at the same time when a version revision was sent out. For Prettl, this created a situation in which it was possible to have two people working concurrently with different numbers.

For instance, let's say there were two plants that needed to make a change to version two of the spreadsheet. One plant changed its column and sent out a version three. The other plant changed their column at the same time and created a separate version three. Which version is correct? Neither. And when someone updates one of those to version four, what then? The situation was showing a potential for disaster.

The final problem was that, while the spreadsheet worked fine for the fifty-odd products that the companies had originally agreed to handle, it wasn't scalable. The numbers of products were going to grow to a couple hundred with potential for more growth in the near future so it was becoming clear that Prettl's business was outgrowing the spreadsheet method.

While an expansion of volume was excellent for the business, it was a problem for IT. As Barkey explains, "We could see that what was already becoming cumbersome was going to become downright unmanageable." The IT manager and his team decided to first focus on the definite needs: a solution that operated in realtime, and was automated, globally accessible, and totally secure.

The Solution

As he began looking at his needs, the versatility of the mrc-Productivity Series began to stand out. "We bought the mrc-Productivity Series three years ago, initially to use as a reporting tool to work with our MRP. We had this MRP that we had invested all of this money in, and it worked very well, except in the area of some of its reports."

"I also knew that the mrc-Productivity Series was powerful and could create applications quickly. I'm a one-man shop, and using my RPG skills, I would be spending a week on one report. As a reporting tool, it enabled me to write one in minutes."

When Barkey realized that he could use the mrc-Productivity Series to create live Web applications, he made his decision. With this development tool, he was able to access the data directly from the MRP, automate the complicated shipping calculations within the application, and display a live, graphical production schedule globally on a secure extranet.

In the fall of 2003, Barkey hired an mrc consultant for five days and he and the consultant built the application within a week. Over several weeks following, Barkey input logistical data and variables into the MRP.

The Web application Prettl created with the mrc-Productivity Series fulfilled Prettl's MRP requirements with a flourish:

• The data and calculations are now fully automated, so there's no further need for double data entry or manual calculations.
• The Web version is fully scalable: the application can handle as many products as needed by the customer, from fifty to ten thousand.
• The application is built in Java servlets, so it's fully portable.
• The application automatically creates a color-coded at-a-glance view of the shipping schedule. Red shows for problems with quantities, yellow for products that don't have a lot of safety stock, and green for shipments with no foreseeable issues.
• And perhaps most importantly, because the application is displaying live data directly from Prettl's MRP, every user is sure to be looking at the same information regardless of their location or the time of day.

"Now our process is so much more reasonable," notes Barkey. "Our customer sends us requirements, then we filter where material is, tell our sister plants what to make next, and at the same time allow them secure access to the live data they require to keep current and do what they need to do."

The Future

The success of Prettl's initial extranet solution turned out to lay the foundation for many other new successes. "The best part is, after just a few weeks of using this Web application, we began to streamline the process," recalls Barkey. "Not having to create these manual processes began to free up our time and let us take a fresh perspective. We looked further into the process and realized it was overly detailed, and overcomplicated. So, we streamlined it . . . and we were able to do so because our mrc application automated everything for us."

The benefits of this one solution are beginning to spur the imagination of Prettl executives all over the company. For example, one department recently requested a way to automatically post requirements to its extensive list of vendors as a means of improving efficiency for that business function. Additionally, a number of different executives have requested an executive dashboard similar to the one that mrc demonstrates on crazybikes.com, which gives decisionmakers up-to-the minute access to current sales, product schedules, and internal reports.

"I'm looking forward to exploring these different solutions," Barkey notes. "I believe we're just beginning to think outside of this application to other areas where our business could be more efficient. Executives have already come to me from many different departments and the majority of their requests can be quickly fulfilled with the mrc-Productivity Series. I'm looking forward to taking on the challenge."

Heather Gately is marketing director for Michaels, ross & cole, ltd.