American Video Glass Company is a joint venture between Sony Electronics Inc and Corning Asahi Corporation - which is jointly owned by Corning Inc and Asahi Glass Co. American Video Glass is a high-tech manufacturer with newly constructed operations at the Sony Technology Centre in Mt Pleasant, Pennsylvania.The company was created in March of 1995 to provide Sony`s North American TV picture tube operations with a steady, reliable source of high-quality glass components for the decades to come. The $300 million, 750 000 square foot state-of-the-art operation was built to satisfy continuously increasing demand for Sony televisions, while facing a 40% worldwide shortage of glass. Getting this plant up and running on time, to produce up to 4 million units a year, was critical to satisfying customer demand and meeting ROI projections.The challenge: meeting critical operational deadlinesTo open on time, American Video Glass faced many frightening challenges. Challenges ranging from environmental credit availability, to construction of world-class ancillary operations that satisfy stringent environmental requirements, to melding the best people, technologies and business processes from the joint venture partners; partners with several quite different cultures.So how did they overcome these almost indomitable challenges? American Video Glass pulled together the best and brightest people from Corning, Asahi and Sony to build the world`s most technologically advanced TV glass plant, including a new rail spur, new business systems and ancillary environmental plants, in record time. From ground breaking to production took only 14 months.This highly automated state-of-the-art operation was designed, and is now operated by over 550 of the best people in the business; having some of the finest work ethics in the world. And, American Video Glass expects to expand to over 750 employees for additional production lines within the next three years. The operation has already had a very positive impact on the economy of southwestern Pennsylvania.Because Pennsylvania is a very environmentally sensitive state, competing for a limited number of environmental credits, American Video Glass waited for other companies to move before they could get the credits to start construction. The wait set the project back, so they needed to make sure their next steps put them back on schedule.To accommodate critical project deadlines, American Video Glass needed an ERP system and vendor they could trust. To meet Sony`s standards for quality and innovation, they also needed a proven best-in-class business software system with strong integrated functionality. To empower a diverse workforce, and continue fuelling their passions, the system had to be implemented by end-users, and show results fast. It also had to quickly expand to meet rapid sales growth, change easily to satisfy American Video Glass`s continuous quest for the best processes and be easy to manage.The challenge was finding a system that could do what was previously considered impossible. American Video Glass needed a proven ERP system with strong integrated functionality that would enable it to grow and expand easily at the lowest cost of ownership. The system had to be agile enough to be readily and continuously reconfigured to make the many changes required when initially implementing and fine tuning new and modified business processes. Finally, American Video Glass also wanted a partner with the best integration technology. After a thorough evaluation, American Video Glass selected SSA`s BPCS Client/Server version 6.0 on a Hewlett-Packard platform with an Oracle database. The company chose BPCS Client/Server for its fast implementation, superior functionality, greatest capability for rapid, low cost, ongoing change and easy interoperation with other applications.After a short nine-month implementation, American Video Glass closed the financial books for the first time in April of `97. The BPCS Client/Server products included the integrated suite of Multimode Manufacturing, Supply Chain and Configurable Enterprise Financials. The fast implementation was made possible by BPCS Client/Server`s easy reconfigurability. This helped bring a multi-culture, multi-company, cross-functional team together quickly."From the user`s perspective, the flexibility and ease of use in BPCS Client/Server version 6.0 facilitated teamwork and enabled our lean, cross-functional end-user team to identify the `business rules infrastructure` of this new and complex operation and configure and reconfigure our work processes as they evolved - minimising our implementation," says Pete Polomski, chief financial officer, American Video Glass.Competitive advantage: empowered learning organisation"BPCS Client /Server`s agility and ease of use actually empowered this team of end-users to iteratively design their business processes in real time until they found the best way to do things," comments Jon Erickson, VP client solutions. "One of American Video Glass`s competitive advantages is their employees` ability to freely experiment, learn fast and change fast to leverage uncertainty. BPCS Client/Server lets them do exactly that. This team is not afraid of uncertainty; they welcome it." The future: enabled by interoperability vs integrationOne of American Video Glass`s most acute evaluation criteria was the need for a highly responsible operation; requiring robust yet flexible integration between several cornerstone applications. Ralph DiNinno, American Video Glass IT & Controls Engineering manager, adds, "BPCS Client/Server offers us the best potential system for interoperability in the industry. By using the SMGs we will be able to rapidly integrate with other world-class applications and establish a level of interoperability at the lowest cost of implementation and maintenance. We anticipate that BPCS Client/Server will enable us to minimise the application-to-application interface maintenance costs and significantly reduce the time to make changes to our integrated system."Jon Erickson emphasises, "BPCS Client/Server`s agility helps new greenfield operations become efficient quickly; providing a much quicker ROI than any other ERP system. This allows companies to undertake future projects sooner and remain more competitive."Looking to the future, Pete Polomski says, "From an investor`s perspective, American Video Glass`s management believes SSA`s continuous commitment to R&D, focused on industrial companies, provides a competitive technological advantage in an otherwise uncertain client/server marketplace."
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