Manufacturing concerns in South Africa deal with numerous supply, resource and demand challenges. Robor Tube, a company in the Barlows group, has adopted a multi-facetted strategy to overcome these risks. Key to maximising resource usage and fulfilling customer orders is the implementation of the latest Baan Scheduler. The Baan Scheduler is one of the Baan Supply Chain Solutions (SCS) suite of products offered by CS Integrated Solutions, a division of JSE-listed CS Holdings.
Johan Grobler, industrial engineer in charge of this project says: "Through Baan Scheduler`s application of the theory of constraints, we are eliminating the effects of variability of supply, and ensuring the fulfilment of our order obligations with its application of due date performance criteria."
Robor Tube is a manufacturer of electrically welded steel hollow sections. It supplies wholesalers in the agricultural, mining and construction industries. With an annual turnover of R450 million, it dominates this sector of the structural market. "This is a highly competitive market," says Grobler, "and it became increasingly obvious that our legacy systems could not support our strategic objectives. We had islands of technology.
Scheduling and costing was very difficult. We had to combine information from different systems and people resorted to developing their individual spreadsheets. Tracking customer orders was unreliable and we maintained high stock levels to counter unpredictable supplies of raw materials."
In 1997, the first Baan modules were implemented for sales, finance and distribution. These were linked to an in-house control system for complete automation. Grobler says, "The release of the new Baan Scheduler created great interest as it incorporated analytical scheduling techniques that are far removed from the old presumptions of infinite capacity and fixed lead times."
Stefan Coetzer, a director of CS Integrated Solutions, says, "Robor Tube can now create feasible schedules to co-ordinate plant activities with market demand."
The Scheduler incorporates numerous resource variables in its calculations, resulting in schedules that deal with real time situations. Capacity, availability, qualifications, and interdependencies of all resources are included. In September 1999, the Scheduler was installed to interface with the Baan ERP modules, ensuring seamless integration of information and process. It is housed on a HP9000 Unix server using an Oracle database.
Grobler says that a critical success factor is partnership with a supplier that has a real understanding of manufacturing and experience in ERP implementation. "The CS Integrated Solutions consultants combined knowledge of manufacturing principles as well as Baan, scheduling and the technical platform."
Robor Tube has already experienced the benefits of this implementation. "We are managing supply reliability which is a cornerstone of operations in a commodity type of business. We can also see the status of orders graphically, which means our customers get better information, and we know where to take corrective action. High inventory levels (in the past sometimes reaching the R80 million level) have been extensively reduced and there is improved due date performance."
Grobler says that there is still further functionality that has not yet been exploited. "We will be introducing further automation. This includes barcode scanning to be integrated into Baan. Optimal resource usage and the improvement in customer service is making a positive difference in our performance."
Share