ERP II for

Mills

Covering the following industries:

Textiles, Paper, Packaging,
Carpets and Floorcoverings,
Primary Metals
 Contents

Introduction – What is ERP II anyway?.........................................................1

Special ERPII requirements for mills.............................................................2

Managing mill production with TROPOS......................................................6

Easy supply chain collaboration....................................................................9

Collecting the data you rely on ....................................................................11

Mobile computing ...........................................................................................13

Forecasting and inventory optimisation.....................................................15

Managing your systems ................................................................................19

Case Study: Cormar Carpets........................................................................21

Case Study : Don & Low................................................................................24

Case Study: Brintons ....................................................................................27

SSI customers in the mills sector ................................................................29

About SSI..........................................................................................................30

Contacting SSI.................................................................................................32
ERP II for
Mills

A special report on ERP, supply chain,

collaborative commerce and supporting
applications from SSI.

Introduction – What is ERP II anyway?

Analyst group Gartner has proposed a redefinition of the enterprise resource planning (ERP)
applications arena – a term it invented in the mid-1990s – and as a result many companies now talk
about ERPII. Gartner went to a lot of trouble to define the nature of the difference between ERP
and ERPII, but much of it is very similar to its 1999 report, predicting that e-commerce would be
succeeded by c-commerce, where “c” stands for collaboration.
The basic point is that as companies open their systems up to other companies, whether suppliers
or customers, the inward-looking nature of traditional core ERP systems and the “one vendor owns
everything” philosophy break down. ERPII now extends the scope of core systems to embrace the
internet, new virtual supply chain models, customer relationship management (CRM) systems and
the new business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumer (B2C) e-commerce models.
Whether you subscribe to the full Gartner prediction or not – for more details visit www.gartner.com
– ERPII is here to stay. For most companies in the milling sector, it means extending IT systems
beyond the conventional set of ERP business modules to include:
• Integration with production equipment
• Shopfloor and mobile data collection
• Deploying information internally using role-based portals on a company intranet
• Providing information links to suppliers, customers and beyond.
SSI uniquely provides solutions to address all of these areas, whether implemented with a
TROPOS core ERP system or integrated with systems from other ERP suppliers.
This document describes the essential ingredients for the base ERP functionality for mills and their
supply chains. It introduces areas for extending into ERPII and describes how some of SSI’s clients
have addressed their requirements with solutions from SSI.

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Special ERPII requirements for mills

A mill is a factory where value is added to raw material by processing it into a form suitable either
for further manufacturing or for immediate end-use. Outside the food industry, where traditional
mills turn grain into flour or extract sucrose from sugar beet and cane while other processes comply
with the foregoing definition, “milling” applies to a wide range of industrial activities. These include
the spinning and weaving mills of the textiles and carpets sectors through the rolling plants of steel,
aluminium and other metals semi-fabricators to the continuous outputs of paper and board mills.
This report focuses on non-food mills which, despite some similarities with food processing,
generally have different characteristics and needs.
There are five broad categories of non-food mills:
• Metals – typically rolling cast steel or aluminium into sheets and coils or extruding profiles that
are sold either to manufacturers or distributors
• Paper – products are usually downstreamed direct to printers and packaging manufacturers or
to wholesalers and distributors
• Packaging – heavier paper-based products, foil and plastics that mostly go direct to
manufacturers across all sectors; deliveries have to align with the users’ production schedules
• Textiles – woven fabrics produced mostly for apparel manufacturers and the décor trade, but
also for the retail sector
• Carpets – supplied to the retail trade cut-to-order for commercial and domestic applications;
some specialist mills make to order for corporate applications such as store chains, hotels,
cruise liners and major companies.
Common to all these mill types is that they have few input materials but there are many variations
in their outputs. An aluminium ingot, for example, could be rolled to plate centimetres thick or foil
measured in microns – and everything between. A plain clothing fabric could be printed with
hundreds of combinations of colour and pattern. This complicates conventional forecasting and
planning below the generic level. Further complications arise because both order cycles and
customer lead times are being driven down. On the other hand, production scheduling is extremely
complex: planners are challenged to maximise use of their plant and to facilitate excellent customer
service – but there are long set-up times for many key machines. So production has to be carefully
sequenced to minimise downtime between product changes.
Despite massive advances in manufacturing processes and quality control techniques, mill
operators are still have to deal with unpredictable outcomes. Where natural materials such as
cotton, wool or wood fibres are used, the outcome of production processes may be affected by the
moisture content already in the material or by the effects of ambient temperature and humidity.
Some processes, for example in the metals and paper sectors, involve re-use of scrap materials;
depending on the composition of the scrap final yields may vary considerably.
Mill pricing is also complex, especially where commodity inputs have global prices determined by
bodies such as the London Metals Exchange. This is coupled with low margins on high material
values – and often high ratios of volume or weight to value.
New production technology has brought greater manufacturing efficiency and the opportunity to
push variety and quality to new highs. This gave mill operators some of the tools to respond to the
second major trend: consumer demand as a result of modern marketing techniques. However,
many mill operators have found the introduction of conventional manufacturing resource planning
(MRP) and enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, have not met the more demanding
requirements of modern mill planning.
The switch to demand-led manufacturing meant that mills had to become much more flexible in
their planning and processes, to accommodate shorter runs and more product variations – without
compromising quality, price or lead times. Suddenly, production planners had to cope with a wider

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range of attributes such as feedstock grades, colours, patterns, textures, coatings, and finished
material widths.
The challenge was to find systems to suit the special needs of production planners in a milling
environment.

‘Standard’ ERP systems don’t suit mills

Most standard resource planning systems are designed for conventional manufacturing where kits
of materials or components are assembled into products: there are many inputs but few outputs.
Mills’ production is the reverse: with a few inputs are processed into many different outputs. This
gives mill planners a completely different set of challenges. One of these is time granularity.
Standard MRP/ERP systems reflect lead times in days – occasionally in hours – in keeping with the
speed of the assembly process. Mills, however, process material on a virtually continuous basis
and progress is measured in minutes and seconds.
Standard ERP systems are usually based on process routes with timings for making one single
product : everything is planned around the time it takes for a batch to pass through the
manufacturing process. In mills, throughput is important, but production planners in mills work
predominantly on rate based algorithms due to the volumes involved and methods of manufacturer.
What concerns the mill operator is the rate at which it emerges. However, standard resource
planning systems do not accommodate rate-based manufacturing.
Another shortcoming of many systems is the assumption that all manufacturing is batched, with
product moving from work centre to work centre. Such a simplistic approach fails to address the
requirements of continuous production. The focus on the single product leads most standard
systems to assume that one product equals one part number. In the mill processing sector, each
product may have multiple variations, all of which have implications ordering, planning, costing
delivery, tracking and invoicing functions.
The final shortcoming, demonstrated by most ERP solution suppliers, is the tendency to deal only
with the business functions of the software. Mill operations are highly dependent on the plant and
equipment, and integration with the business system is essential. SSI’s TROPOS system has been
developed specifically for the process industries, with special features for mill-based processing.
The following sections describe why these features are so important for mills.

The process model and demand driven manufacturing

Much of the output of textiles, metals and paper mills feeds other industries that convert these
products into high-demand consumer items, such as clothing, cars or newspapers. They also
provide the cans and boxes containing many of our daily requirements on local supermarket
shelves. Converters, whether clothing manufacturers or food and drinks producers, are under the
same sort of business pressures as the mills. Many resort to the “just in time” approach to their raw
material requirements – after all, why invest in inventory (and the space to store it) beyond your
immediate needs?
This means that mills have to align their output closely to the needs of their customers, and ensure
that the right goods are delivered to the right place at the right time. That’s why the standard MRP
(material Requirements Planning) model of manufacturing, integral to manufacturing control
systems since its invention in the 1960s, won’t work for mill operations.
What’s needed is to turn the planning mechanism on its head. Rather than using a BoM (Bill of
Material) based planning system, mills need to be able to model their production process in terms
of time, operations and the materials and resources required, and then to use this model to drive
planning and scheduling.
Planning with the process model streamlines the manufacturing throughput. It allows the user to
define inputs and outputs including materials, catalysts, energy, plant and labour times, machine
set points, quantities, products, co-products, by-products, recycled material and waste – none of
which are easily handled by a BoM-based planning engine – as well as the quality specifications
required by each process, stage, input and output material.
If mill operators want to align production flow with their business systems they need to complement
their production capability with an ERPII systems based on the process model.

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Quality control and traceability
Quality and traceability features simply aren’t an optional extra for mills. In the event of a product
problem, manufacturers need their IT resources to provide answers. They need to be able to trace
back to identify the source of any faulty materials and forward to identify other products that might
be affected – and the customers to whom they have been delivered.
Perhaps the next most important step in selecting a suitable system for a mill is to ensure that the
system has powerful quality functionality. This must integrate tightly with the rest of the ERP suite.
The dangers with a third party supplier for something as fundamental as quality include the
potential for vital data to be missed, compromises in usability and require duplication of much data
input.
Capturing information from process plant is key to reducing the burden of quality and traceability
recording often required for regulatory compliance. If a batch of raw materials is split into four on
the factory floor, and each sub-parcel goes into a different product batch, how is the planning
system to know which parcel went into which product? This data must be recorded, and the
information fed back to the quality system – a time-consuming and laborious process, unless some
kind of automated data capture solution is in place.

Time pressures
Mills do not face the same intense time pressures as other sectors of industry where products are
more volatile, such as in the food industry, where many products have short shelf lives. Mills’
output does not have critical sell-by dates, but there is pressure to deliver the right finished
materials at the right time to meet customer requirements and reduce expensive finished goods
inventory. In this context, the mills’ equivalent of shelf life needs to be an active control of time in
the ERP system. Many systems regard time as one of many constraints – for first class customer
service and plant efficiency it must be the driving force in the business system.

Decoupled manufacturing
The final area of critical ERP functionality for mills is support for decoupled manufacturing, or mass
customisation. Such production methods are not exclusive to the mills; across the manufacturing
sector in general, companies are realising that the demands of customers for rapid delivery
responses, combined with the parallel requirement for greater variation of product, whether in terms
of colour, pack size or specification can only be met by manufacturing in separate stages. But many
products take considerably longer to plan and make than customers are prepared to wait for
delivery, so for the mills, the problem is especially acute.
To support this kind of manufacturing process is challenging. It can be done easily enough, if you
are prepared to stock vast quantities of the partially finished product and simply configure, finish,
pack or whatever when the customer places his order. But this is hardly a practical option, not least
because of the inventory issues highlighted above.
Rather, supporting decoupled manufacturing is about forecasting accurately at a common
intermediate or part finished level, and being able to finish, and therefore customise, to order.
TROPOS is probably unique in supporting decoupled manufacturing by managing a production
plan at an intermediate or generic level, and netting off sales orders for finished products.

Attribute-based manufacturing
In many industries – especially the mills – there are few “standard” products. Customers can order
various “attributes” of a product group, for example dimension, grade, quality, finish or packaging
type. If there was a product and process code for each combination of attributes, process
maintenance would be unwieldy and the resultant planning, production, inventory, allocation and
despatch processes very difficult to manage. Most ERP systems base all production management
on item or part numbers, which may be suitable for the manufacture of discrete products but
causes problems for may process industries. SSI’s TROPOS ERP solution is one system which
does not follow this restricted path.
=

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TROPOS Attributes functionality is specifically designed for industries which sell many derivatives
of a standard product. A single product code and process of manufacture per product group/type
can be complemented by user-defined attributes on the sales order. This in turn influences pricing
and all the other manufacturing processes. The result is slicker business – and a system which is
easier to use and maintain.

TROPOS from SSI

SSI solutions are centred on its sector leading TROPOS ERP suite for process and fast-response
manufacturing applications. It has been developed to address the specialist requirements of the
process industries and has been particularly successful where standard, or MRP driven business
management simply does not fit. Solutions are modular, and can include additional specialist
applications for financial ledgers, advanced planning and scheduling, inventory optimisation, export
documentation and many other business functions.
SSI’s development resource ensures that TROPOS remains at the forefront of technology, allowing
users to incorporate new technologies such as Microsoft BizTalk to reduce cost and improve
customer service. A partnership with plant-level data-logging equipment manufacturer Nematron
has produced the unique DACS solutions. These enable live shopfloor data to be linked to planning
and control systems providing major benefits through up-to-the-minute information – from which
accurate delivery promises can be made – and highly detailed quality control data.
SSI has more than 20 years’ experience of delivering solutions to help manufacturing companies
optimise demand, cut costs, improve efficiency and facilitate growth. SSI also delivers the world-
class Optimus solution for demand planning and inventory optimisation, described in detail later in
this report. Also, SSI has a strong track record in the development of collaborative commerce
solutions, such as supply chain management and customer relationship management, developed
specifically for B2B customer support. SSI helps customers improve their performance through
powerful management information tools that deliver key management information directly to the
desktop via intranet-based employee portals. SSI’s comprehensive mix of skills makes it the
obvious partner for any mill operator looking to develop and maintain world-class manufacturing,
distribution and customer service capabilities.

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Managing mill production with TROPOS

Meeting business objectives

TROPOS is designed for mills that operate in a process manufacturing or demand-pull
environment, particularly with short manufacturing cycles and even shorter customer lead times.
This process-based approach to supply chain management is far more appropriate for these
industries than ERP systems which use traditional MRP logic as the core business planning model.
From the initial concept, TROPOS was designed to achieve two key objectives:
• to integrate a company's supply chain and associated business processes;
• to increase the velocity of that supply chain, thereby improving asset utilisation, and decrease
stockholdings, driving out excess costs and eliminating non-value-added activities.
TROPOS meets the needs of mills with specific requirements including rapid product changes,
attribute based short process cycle times and demand-driven manufacturing operations. With the
ability to manage time down to the second, if required, and to support rate-based manufacturing
such as in metres per second, TROPOS accurately reflects the way mills operate.

Planning for unpredictable demand

To drive forward planning and to deal with order expectations, TROPOS manages forecasts from a
number of sources. These can be customer/product specific, for pre-production runs or for inter-
plant/company demand. A unique feature allows the creation of a forecast at a lower level in the
product structure than the top level item. This lower level forecast can be consumed by production
(as with all forecasts) and its purpose is to support the volume manufacture of products where a
wide variety of finished options is available, based on a standard base product. Potentially the end
product is made specifically to a customer’s order – and the possible variations at the top level
saleable item are so great that forecasting at this level would always be very inaccurate. An
example of this would be to plan and manufacture alloy billets, but to extrude and finish to a
customer call-off.
By forecasting at a lower level that is probably more common across a variety of products, a more
predictable forecast can be maintained. Where this is planned into the product design and
manufacturing planning this is something called ‘decoupled manufacturing’.

The process model

A significant TROPOS feature is the ability to define accurately the production process concurrently
with the specifications rate-based if required, and with time traceability to minutes and seconds.
The production process is defined as a series of stages and steps, with resource and material input
and output defined at stage level.
The control of output material means that sophisticated material process flows can be defined. This
includes by-products, co-products, waste, scrap, yield, work-off and feed-back which can then be
inputs into other production stages on other processes, or into inventory. These inputs and outputs
are included in the costing process as positive or negative contributions. This allows the definition
of the production process in TROPOS to be a close description of the actual way products are
manufactured.
This approach includes delivering material supplies to the production process in line with
manufacturing requirements according to time and location, which is ideal for mill-based
manufacture, unlike the concept of kitting material to a works order which is used by MRP-based
systems

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Production planning and manufacturing control
TROPOS consolidates all forecasts into the master production schedule (MPS). These forecasts
can be derived from customers, from marketing, sales or production. Existing demand in the form of
orders will also be taken into the MPS. A unique capability in TROPOS is that the MPS takes all of
the different types of demand: forecasts, sales orders and schedules, and applies stock netting and
batching rules at this level before proceeding into the production and materials planning logic.
In TROPOS, forward material requirements can be planned and dynamically controlled as a direct
output from production scheduling. Traditional MRP is very good for setting up a long-term supply
chain, but is not reactive enough to support dynamic requirement changes on a day-to-day or hour
to hour basis. Scheduling of critical resources such as production capacity, labour and materials is
much more responsive on an hourly/daily/weekly basis. TROPOS uses MRP for long-term planning
and short-term scheduling.
Scheduling can be applied to the MPS because TROPOS will net off stock and apply batching rules
when the MPS is created, therefore the scheduling rules will be applied to the actual production
demand. TROPOS supports a variety of scheduling methods including both finite and infinite
scheduling, sequencing rules etc. and is available as an on-line process.
During the scheduling process TROPOS will create a production schedule of work and a material
call-off schedule for the production lines. Before production starts, the material call-off schedule will
have identified what material needs to be moved to line-side store locations and at what time. It will
also highlight any shortages and identify any existing purchase orders/schedules or requisitions
that could satisfy the shortage. This material call-off schedule is linked to the production schedule,
therefore any changes to production plans will automatically update material needs.
Production stock locations have re-order point, back-flushing, safety stock and Kanban functionality
according to the type of material and can each have different provisioning parameters (even though
they may contain the same components). This, together with the material call-off schedule, vendor
consignment stock and direct material call-off from suppliers means that the volume of inventory in
the supply chain can reduce dramatically. Information and fast delivery now replace inventory.

Planners Workbench
We recognise that production planning in a mill can be very complex – and very dynamic. Where
the standard scheduling logic within the TROPOS Production Planning suite does not cater for
multiple scheduling criteria, or a visual representation of the schedule is required, SSI recommends
the use of the TROPOS Planners Workbench. This provides a fast, effective alternative to manual
planning boards or traditional block-scheduling procedures. It is a state of the art advanced
scheduling system capable of rapid response in complex situations. It is based on Greycon’s S-
Plan Advanced Planning and Scheduling tool, and can be implemented stand-alone or fully
integrated with TROPOS.
When implemented with TROPOS, the Planners Workbench supports very sophisticated
scheduling algorithms that provide Available to Promise (ATM) responses at order entry, in addition
to supporting the production planning and management processes. The production scheduling
optimisation component can help schedule production in a manner consistent with the business
goals, which can carry varied weighting factors – customer order satisfaction, minimum labour,
maximised plant utilisation, minimum downtime etc.
Key functionality includes a plant optimisation capability, including Softblock; Available to promise,
even across the Internet; Block scheduling; Constraint-based scheduling; Material requirement
planning; Load & transportation mode planning and Intelligent semi-finished stock utilization
A series of unique features were developed for industries manufacturing dimensional products –
such as reel, coil, web, sheet, etc. The TROPOS Planners Workbench schedules are based on
attributes and manage products appearing in a large number of combinations of physical sizes and
specifications. It manages the many-to-many relationships between orders and physical entities,
while using the many units of measure that are part of the product at each step of the
manufacturing process.

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Procurement within the supply chain
In a fast-moving manufacturing environment TROPOS supports the procurement and management
of all materials, packaging and consumables. Long-term supply chain requirements are
established, allowing purchasing automatically to convert these requirements into contracts and
purchase orders with delivery schedules. Scheduling will call off material against these orders as
required. Stores (lineside or main) will also call off material as safety stock or re-order point levels
are reached.
By using TROPOS, buyers can concentrate on strategic sourcing rather than on maintaining and
expediting existing orders. TROPOS customers have put this to great effect and the automation of
clerical processes significantly reduces lead times, reduces errors and improves customer service.
For more information on the complete range of TROPOS supply chain applications to support mill
operations, please visit www.ssi-world.com.

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Easy supply chain collaboration

Supply chain collaboration for mills

Embracing e-business means much more than just opening your web store for business.
Geographical barriers have been reduced, opening new markets and suppliers, but also introducing
new competitors. Customers are more demanding in terms of availability and choice. They are also
more fickle, so more than ever a loyal customer is a valuable customer. There are many stories of
long-standing customers lost a previously unknown competitor as a result of on-line auction.
Business structures have changed, with many specialised tasks or services being outsourced or
sub-contracted. Business relationships have changed, with significantly more interdependence
between customer and supplier.
This interdependence has brought new aspects to the relationships along the supply chain. To
support the need for ever-faster demand fulfilment and cost reduction, long-term supplier and
customer contracts have become commonplace where once each order would have been sourced
individually from alternative suppliers.
After many false starts, technology to support supply chain integration is now an affordable reality.
This includes the exchange of forecasts, orders, inventory status, contract call-off and any other
information that is agreed to be available for mutual benefit not just between supplier and customer
but all along the supply chain. In the retail sector, point of sale information is available not just to
the primary supplier, but also to their suppliers and contractors who may produce packaging or
base materials such as foil or textiles.
Achieving this level of supply chain collaboration involves more than plugging in a new piece of
software. It involves a business project that may encompass cultural changes, new business
processes, change management, systems integration, new technology and application software. It
does not necessarily mean that existing supply chain applications have to be replaced – much can
be achieved through the careful integration of new technology, applications and processes with
existing systems.
Much of the IT industry’s promotion of B2B c-commerce has focused on high-profile, high-
investment projects, which understandably has not led to wholesale adoption of the concepts. SSI’s
experience of developing, implementing and supporting supply chain solutions ensures that the
focus of any solution is on the business benefit – how it will enable you to deal with your customers
faster, better and more profitably than ever before. SSI a range of solutions which start with
relatively low investment, low risk projects which can be implemented very quickly and have rapid
payback. To help companies understand better which processes can benefit from c-collaboration,
we can provide a range of services from strategy guidelines, system audits, collaborative
workshops right through to the development of a full collaborative solution. The following examples
illustrate ways in which supply chain collaboration can be introduced

Self-service customers
SSI can help you develop a secure web site to allow authorised customers to enquire on, add or
amend information to do with their products or orders. This involves providing easy to use, secure,
web-based applications across the internet or an extranet with integration into back office
applications to provide real time, dynamic exchange of information, even down to real-time
production status information. Examples of applications developed are stock enquiries, price
enquiries, order entry, order status enquiry, delivery tracking, account status checking.

Self-service suppliers
Similarly, SSI can help you develop a secure web site to allow authorised suppliers, usually
contract suppliers, to make enquiries, add or amend information to do with their products or
services. This again involves providing secure web based applications across the internet or an
extranet with integration into back office applications. Examples of applications developed are stock
enquiries to support vendor managed inventory, production forecast enquiries, order status

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updates, supplier performance analysis enquiry, requirements specifications, quality information
and test results.

Private exchanges
Usually developed from self-service supplier applications, a private exchange allows you to interact
with multiple suppliers across the web. In addition to the above applications, the private exchange,
which is accessible only to authorised suppliers, acts as a portal allowing suppliers to see
information you would otherwise have provided by fax, post or verbally, and to provide their own
information in response.
Examples of applications on a private exchange can be production forecast enquiries, where
suppliers can see future demand trends and amend their own production plans accordingly, reverse
auctions where suppliers can bid for the supply of goods and services against a published
requirement, monitoring points where suppliers can view the performance of materials or products
they have supplied to the production process, and information exchanges where relevant
information can be posted to assist suppliers in improving their product and service capability. SSI
can develop the exchange, train your key suppliers – and also host and manage the exchange if
required.

Public exchanges
There has been an explosion of new vertical industry exchanges run by third parties, followed by an
equally rapid implosion as this new market stabilises. These exchanges aim to bring buyers and
sellers together across geographic boundaries to create new trading relationships. These
exchanges make their money by charging a commission on sales, but they encourage the use of
the exchange by providing an information portal, often free of charge, where vertical industry-
specific bulletin boards, information libraries and research links are available covering all areas
from product development to production techniques.
Although it is perfectly acceptable to use these exchanges as they are, the true value of supply
chain collaboration is realised when information is exchanged dynamically without human
involvement through integration from your ERP or supply chain applications to the exchange.
Examples of this are to publish availability of surplus stocks, or include stock available at a supplier
warehouse in your own available to promise logic.
SSI can develop solutions to enable managed integration of information from the back office (ERP)
systems to web sites, trading exchanges and business partner systems.

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Collecting the data you rely on

The importance of integrated data collection

Gartner Group recently reported that up to 50% of the return on investment from ERP
implementations was locked up in integration with data collection devices. The speed and accuracy
with which data is collected is probably the single biggest influence on the effectiveness of
enterprise computer systems. Whatever the source of the data, its type or context, it must be
accurate and available. Wherever in an organisation the raw data is found, whatever its volume and
whenever it becomes available should not impact the ability to collect and process it. Fast and
accurate data entry is key to the successful operation of any application system.

Bar codes
Printed information is open to misinterpretation, while manual data entry is labour-intensive, time-
consuming and prone to error. Studies have shown that typically one in every 150 keystrokes is
erroneous. The use of bar-coded information on documents provides opportunities to reduce the
chance of misinterpretation, to save time and to eliminate input errors. Bar coding has many
advantages over other data capture techniques. It is well established and widely accepted around
the world. It is also simple to implement and extremely cost-effective. With the exception of bar
codes that will only appear on internal documents, the choice of symbology (such as Code 39, ITF,
EAN or PDF-417) will be influenced or even dictated by standards within the relevant
manufacturing sector and of trading partners.

Application areas
The use of bar-coded information on internal, outgoing and incoming documents can bring
significant benefits in a variety of situations. Using the different bar code technologies and label
types, there is virtually no environment too hostile for the reliable use of bar codes for data input.
Goods receipt By demanding that suppliers include relevant bar-coded information such as order
number, item number and quantity on advice notes, the goods-in process can be streamlined. Data
entry is minimised and the inherent accuracy of bar codes eliminates errors.
Inventory Given that a whole production line can be brought to a halt by a single item that has
been incorrectly coded, a totally reliable and accurate means of recording the movement of stock is
of utmost importance. By bar coding both locations and items and by employing on-the-spot data
capture, there can be no doubt about which item came from which location, and was loaded onto
the correct line.
Production monitoring WIP tracking is another area where efficiency gains can be achieved. By
bar-coding pallets, containers and base, semi-finished and finished materials, data entry and
manual errors can be greatly minimised. Progress through the production process can be
monitored more effectively, giving more accurate and up-to-date views of WIP

Printers and scanners

For printing bar codes on documents such as picking lists, works orders, despatch notes etc, all
that is normally required is a standard laser printer. When printing on labels, a more specialised
thermal or thermal-transfer printer is preferred. The choice of media (that is, label or tag type) will
be governed by the environment in which it will be used. Whether for use indoors or outdoors, or in
extremes of temperature from -40˚C to over 200˚C, a suitable media type can be found.
The devices used to scan bar codes vary from simple wands and wedges, sitting between the
computer and its keyboard, through laser scanners, to the other extreme of mobile terminals.
Terminals can be truck-mounted or hand-held, and may be online to the host ERP system at all
times using RF communication. Alternatively they may store scanned information and download it
when returned to a docking station. Any of these devices can be used for capturing data which can
be converted into standard transactions to be input into the ERP system.

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ERP data from machine integration
True factory integration is where data collected dynamically from production or monitoring
equipment is converted into a transaction that is meaningful to the ERP system sitting above it. This
involves data acquisition, storage and conversion into ERP update transactions. The SSI-DACS
product is a componentised software package including SCADA processing and ERP integration
components. Infinitely scalable, SSI-DACS can acquire data which in itself be used to give full
visibility across the whole factory. It can then link this with ERP functions such as quality control
and WIP. In addition it can analyse machine data and present it to business intelligence products
such as COGNOS giving management an incomparable, real-time view of factory efficiency.
SSI also supplies a wide range of fully industrialised PCs and other related hardware for factory use
and services such as instrumentation surveys, bespoke integration and development, project
management and full support.

ERP interfaces
Most ERP or MRP systems handle work-in-progress (WIP) bookings, but do not provide the means
to collect that data in real time. SSI can provide this through its data collection management
product SSI-DC/Link. This product interfaces with data collection terminals using Telnet and
controls the conversation with those terminals. It can collect bookings-on and bookings-off along
with other supplementary information without the need for complex screen designs or sophisticated
Windows terminals. =
SSI-DC/Link then formats the data into transactions or database records which can be delivered to
any ERP system. It can even query and update SQL-compliant databases directly giving added
potential for developing real-time or batch validation and shop-floor enquiries. SSI can supply a
complete WIP management solutions including data collection, data integration, the appropriate
modules of TROPOS, and provide systems integration into incumbent business management
systems.
SSI, through its partnership with Intermec, provides the widest range of bar code related equipment
from label printers through to static scanners, batch collection models and on to real-time radio
frequency (RF) devices. SSI also provides the full set of supporting services from radio surveying to
installation, commissioning and support.

12
Mobile computing

Computing on the move

For companies who have staff on the move – probably the vast majority of firms – being able to
deliver access to corporate IT resources in an easy-to-use mobile format would be a significant
advance. We’re all familiar with the examples – the salesman who is able to check product
availability while sitting in a client’s office, or the service engineer who can order spare parts while
standing next to the equipment he’s trying to repair – but the reality has proved rather more elusive.
For some years, access to corporate networks has been possible on the move by way of a remote
access server (RAS), a laptop computer and a mobile phone connection. But this has never been
an ideal solution, for any number of reasons; response times on such connections are poor, as is
signal integrity. The cost is high; if you have a substantial team of salesmen or service engineers,
providing all with this level of equipment demands an investment beyond the capacity of many
companies. But the greatest single problem is inconvenience. Laptop computers are splendid
solutions for users needing to be able to plug in and work from a variety of different locations,
especially for tasks requiring lots of typing. They are not, however, ideal for the truly mobile user.

Personal digital assistants

With the increasing power of personal digital assistants (PDAs), it’s clear that these devices offer
more possibilities for mobile users. Provide a PDA with a fast wireless connection to base, either
via a private network or via the internet, and the promise of mobile computing could start to be
delivered. Inevitably, though, there are compromises: a truly pocket-sized device can clearly only
support a relatively small display, and the operating systems used for PDAs, whether Palm, Psion,
or Pocket PC, have until recently required the creation of dedicated applications, with a subsequent
increase in costs and complexity for network managers, as well as the need for users to accustom
themselves to a radically different interface. It’s this last reason that explains why so many mobile
users still flounder on with laptop PCs: the killer application for mobile computing is the ability to
integrate with corporate systems, which are optimised for Windows clients. For enterprise users,
mobile computing will only really take off when the convenience of the PDA is merged with the
interoperability of the Windows PC.
Despite earlier beliefs to the contrary, this is unlikely to come about by way of developments in
operating systems. It would be relatively simple, nowadays, to produce a Windows PC in a pocket-
sized case, but the wastefulness – and consequent excessive cost – of this approach is easy to
see. How many users really need the processing power of their desktop PC to perform their day-to-
day tasks? The thick client model of computing is bearable on the desktop, where mass production
and ferocious competition has driven down the cost of hardware, but in the context of a pocket-
sized device, which would be far more demanding of manufacturers’ engineering skills, and
consequently far more expensive, the waste would be intolerable.
So how is real mobile computing going to be achieved? If thick client computing is out, then
obviously one looks towards the alternative. Thin client approaches have been much heralded over
the last few years, but are starting to demonstrate their viability.

Thin client
In thin client – or server-based – computing, the user’s device doesn’t itself execute any of the
application. Rather, the application resident on the portable device is simply a means of interfacing
with the user and delivering back to him the result of transactions processed back at base. This has
obvious implications for speed and responsiveness at device level, not to mention the reduced
amount of WAN bandwidth required; the user is effectively not dependent on the power of the
portable device – rather, this approach to computing uses the power of the server.

13
SSI and mobile technology
There are a number of different approaches to thin client computing, but the industry is rapidly
standardising on the equipment and protocols developed by Citrix Systems (www.citrix.com).
Citrix’s ICA protocol is delivered by way of software that sits on top of the terminal server – which
could be Microsoft, Sun, IBM or whatever – and connects to virtually any user device. Thus is
delivered the true promise of mobile computing – any location, any device.
SSI is a keen advocate of the Citrix approach to mobile technology. As well as seeing the potential
for mobile computing among its clients, SSI has itself many staff in the field who benefit from easier
access to enterprise systems. To this end, SSI technical staff have created a test application
running on the popular Nokia 9210 Communicator, which combines PDA and mobile telephone
functionality. This application – which is being tested in the field by SSI’s own staff – connects the
user to SSI’s TROPOS extended ERP suite and provides the functionality a salesman might need
at any point of the working day. This development is part of SSI’s commitment to providing role-
based applications that present ERP functionality in a fashion tailored the needs of particular job
types – thus reducing the complexity of interacting with ERP systems. “The user can log on to an
ISP of his choice and connect to SSI through our firewall,” says Development Director Dale
Barrington. “The idea is that a mobile user who needs to retrieve a particular piece of information or
execute a specific TROPOS transaction should be able to do so using the standard client.”
“The application controls all the activities that would be part of a sales order process,” says
Barrington. “The user can check his agenda; verify clients; search and select parts; get a price
quotation; confirm delivery details; place an order; and verify the order placement using email.”

Citrix integration
For SSI, the critical advantage of the Citrix approach is the low level of difficulty – and consequently
also of risk – involved in deploying applications this way. “The trial application took only a very short
time to create, because it was really only a design rather than a development challenge,” says
Barrington. “It proved to be very easy for us to integrate our own applications into the Citrix
environment. That gives us great confidence for undertaking future projects of this kind.”
SSI’s own Webcall application, which the company uses to manage its helpdesk, can be run via the
Nokia Communicator using Citrix technology, thus, potentially, allowing staff at client sites to check,
immediately, on the progress of support calls – or even enabling customers themselves to monitor
their contacts. “The great advantage is that the interface resembles something with which the user
is already familiar,” says Barrington. “It takes time to become an experienced user of complex
applications such as ERP, so not needing to retrain to access the application via a different device
is obviously a benefit.”

Working from home

For home-based staff, too, the Citrix environment is a powerful aid. SSI software services manager
Chris Baltzer has been trialling server-based computing for home working and reports it as a major
success. “If we can enable people to work on the move this way, then delivering applications to
them in their home offices is easy by comparison,” he says. “For companies with home-based staff,
the server-based computing model is very attractive; it saves them money and helps them retain
control over their systems. This also paves the way for firms to move to full hosting solutions – an
area in which SSI is already highly experienced.”

The future …
SSI director Neville Merritt is optimistic about the prospects for mobile computing using the Citrix
technology. “There has been much discussion about how internet browser applications would
enable mobile computing, but it hasn’t really happened,” he says. “With the Citrix technology, we
could really be about to see an explosion in the use of true on the move computing. And for SSI,
the risk is minimal, because there is no need for us to develop new technology. Citrix is a true
enabling technology.”

14
Forecasting and inventory optimisation

Most suppliers of traditional inventory management and ERP systems make great claims about
their ability to reduce inventory and improve business efficiency in general terms, without providing
the specific software tools or supporting management methodologies to address this complex area.
In this section, we identify the root causes of excess inventory and shortages and explain what
steps can be taken to improve the control mechanisms that allow this to happen. We also introduce
the Optimus decision support tool that can help identify areas for improvement and provide visibility
of the factors that require management intervention.

It’s all about managing risk …

In an ideal world, we would hold so much inventory that we would never be out of stock of anything.
But life is not like that – there are financial constraints, physical constraints, some products have a
shelf life, new products rarely flood into the market, and there are a host of other reasons why we
have to strike a balance between anticipated demand and expected supply.
Managing risk is about managing the cost of maintaining high levels of inventory against the risk of
running out of stock at a crucial moment. Most ERP systems record transactions, run programs to
suggest re-ordering based on fairly crude algorithms or even more dubious forecasts and
occasionally come with some form of management reporting. Few, if any, include more
sophisticated inventory management tools of the level required for the consumer goods supply
chain.
Our experience shows that companies either struggle on with significant reliance on local
knowledge, chance and effective fire-fighting, or spend time and effort developing supporting
systems, usually glorified spreadsheets, to help manage inventory levels better.
In either case, management needs an effective mechanism, or an understanding of the
methodology, to establish macro inventory targets, expressed in days cover and availability in
accordance with corporate strategy and then link these targets to line item replenishment. Too
often, little effort has been directed at establishing scientifically what those inventory targets should
be at a macro level, let alone at line item level.

Forecasting
If demand could be anticipated perfectly, there would be little need for inventory – most inventories
exist because of unpredictability of demand or supply. Most companies employ some methods of
forecasting, even if it only entails using intuition or a spreadsheet. However, almost universally,
they encounter one or more difficulties, such as:
• Forecasts are kept on scraps of paper which get lost;
• Different people each maintain their own, individual, forecasts;
• Valuable time is spent on extracting suitable data on a planned and regular basis only to have
to struggle to re-hash and format the data;
• Forecasts cannot easily be integrated into planning systems to drive the replenishment
process.
There are a number of stand-alone forecasting packages on the market, and although useful, their
effectiveness is limited because of the difficulties in using them as an integrated part of the planning
and decision making process. Optimus is probably unique in that it includes forecasting as an
integral part of the inventory optimisation process. There are a number of factors which affect the
accuracy of a forecast, and the most common basis of forecasting is historical information.
However, most historical data is a record of what actually happened, not necessarily what the
customer actually wanted to happen. Stock-outs could appear as reduced demand, when in fact
they were unsatisfied demands. The effect of stock-out needs to be automatically eliminated from
sales history to provide a more realistic forecast.

15
Embedded in Optimus is the Tournament forecast method, which runs all algorithms, optimises
parameters (based on RMSE, MAD, or a Fit Coefficient), measures accuracy against past demand
and then recommends the optimum forecast method by measuring the accuracy of the method for
each line item. The forecasting module incorporates more than twelve algorithms including moving
averages, weighted moving averages and exponential smoothing with trend analysis and
seasonality option
A key feature in the forecasting module is automatic ‘outlier elimination’. This allows the system to
adjust historical data points to reduce the effect of non-standard market events, such as once-off
sales, on forecasts. The benefits are better forecasts and less time spent in identifying these
anomalies over thousands of line item
Manual adjustments can be electronically recorded, together with user comments in the meeting
comments facility to support changes. Adjustments to future demand can also be made so that
promotional or marketing events can be added to the underlying demand by product. The net result
is reduced risk leading to improved service levels and optimised inventory levels.
Using Optimus, distribution operations can run their businesses using planned demand where
decisions are made proactively. The forecasting module enables users to conduct detailed reviews
of their data segmenting it into templates by product, supplier, major grouping, product grouping or
Pareto category. The business can forecast on a group level and explode the forecast down to the
lowest level.

Linking corporate strategy to line item replenishment

An ERP system typically uses parameters to control replenishment policy, and this is usually set by
category or product group. However, different product categories may require different decisions
relating to replenishment, safety stocks and customer service levels. Without a specific inventory
optimisation tool, it is difficult to identify which product requires which set of inventory rules – these
could be according to item cost, demand, order frequency, supplier, stocking location, value, shelf
life, perishability, purchasing rules or often, less objective criteria set by sales and marketing
policies.
Inventory targets must be scientifically derived and realistic in terms of being achievable. Clearly
this is a fundamental requirement if you wish to obtain commitment for achievement from the
inventory managers.
Optimus allows the user to filter products according to criteria such as product hierarchical
categories, supplier categories via templates for each user or stocking location. Thereafter, the user
is able to allocate products into Pareto groupings (traditional ABC–type analysis) based either on
turnover value by cost price, selling price, profit margin or by unit of issue. This ensures a more
strategic focus.
Appropriate policy for in-bound lead times, review periods and replenishment cycles can be set
prior to using highly sophisticated safety stock tables to model optimum safety stock levels.
Optimus has sophisticated user-defined mechanisms for quick and easy identification of both non-
stock and slow moving items. Both have a specialised category that allows the user to separate
them for different focus and attention.
Consequently, slow-moving, erratic demand or maintenance items can be treated differently to fast
moving items using tables to set optimal levels based on lead-time annual demand and service
level. Service level settings can be set by criticality of the product to determine the optimum bin
level for just in case or insurance items.
The calculated inventory model allows the user to determine the impact of alternative policies, prior
to implementing changes. Optimus highlights the trade-off between the cost of carrying stock and
the cost of stock outs. It allows the user to exercise ‘what-if’ scenarios with different policy settings.
When optimum policy has been modelled and set, Optimus flags any sub-optimal transactions. It
alerts the user using a management cockpit, which highlights problem areas. The management
cockpit presents the top value-adding activities to the user on a daily basis, with graphical profiles
being used to monitor the daily progress to realign inventories against the optimal policy.

16
Managing suppliers
The other side of inventory is the supply side, and unpredictability of supply is often as large a
contributor to excess inventory as difficulties in forecasting demand. Any attempt to reduce
inventory must also focus on managing the supply chain, and key to managing the supply chain is
the ability to manage suppliers and their lead-times. Most good ERP packages record supplier
performance data but few include pre-built supplier performance analysis. Often this is limited to a
few reports, and to make most effective use of the data, expensive custom reporting suites have to
be built around business intelligence reporting tools.
Using Optimus’ supplier evaluation module the buyer is able to quickly identify if a supplier is not
performing to the quoted lead-time. Optimus will not only identify problems but suggests what the
lead-time should be, using line item delivery information – displayed numerically and graphically.
Anomalous deliveries can be excluded from the lead-time calculation for more accurate results, and
lead-time outliers can be excluded from the automatic supplier lead-time update. The result is not
only better predictions of lead-time, but also more optimal safety stock – set to take account of
actual delivery performance.

Distributed demand management

The common theme running through the challenge of optimising inventory levels is identifying the
real causes of inventory. Beware of treating the symptoms, which can often hide the root cause of
excess stock or shortages. Organisations which hold stock at multiple locations have the additional
challenge of not only setting the optimum stockholding, but also deciding where to hold the
inventory. Historical transactions can provide misleading information as stock movements between
locations can indicate artificial demand and supply where the real demand existed at only one
location.
Distributed demand management (DDM) is a key component of Optimus. Forecasts can be run
across remote sites and aggregated with projected replenishment quantities back to a central
warehouse level. Optimus takes all in-bound orders from suppliers, existing customer orders,
internal lead times and forecasted branch sales into account. The result is stocking to external
demand, rather than stocking according to historical branch transfers.
The DDM is driven by strategic policy decisions regarding the company's inventory investment.
These policy decisions, which essentially dictate the way the company wants to respond to the
demands placed on it, can be far reaching. Fair share algorithms ensure that the inventory is
optimally apportioned across locations where there is insufficient inventory to supply their needs
from the central warehouse.
In addition, various reports allow the user to see where inventory can be re-distributed across
locations, rather than placing new orders on suppliers. Inter-location orders can be automatically
generated and up-loaded into the host system – reducing workload and automatically producing
picking slips for inventory transfer. This reduces overall inventory and creates a more balanced
inventory across the supply chain.

Key performance indicators and reporting

The best inventory optimisation methodology is worthless unless it is applied constantly. A one-off
exercise will make a difference, but without constant adjustments, fine-tuning and warning of
impending shortages or inventory build-up, the same problems will recur. The key to effective
ongoing inventory management is an applied methodology and visibility of its effect.
This visibility needs to be set up in a hierarchical manner. There is no point in generating large
numbers of reports and enquiries if problems remain hidden in the detail. Key performance
indicators (KPIs) can be defined overall and by strategic product grouping. Management reports,
preferably on-line and real time, can show the total inventory picture against these KPIs, and
reports can then be requested to show the detail of any discrepancies. When the detailed reports
can be requested on-line directly from the summary KPIs, they are known as drill-downs and are a
very quick and effective way of identifying potential problems even before they occur.

17
An inventory manager’s dashboard could be built using business intelligence or report generator
tools but it can be costly and time consuming. Optimus contains a suite of reports to provide highly
focused information needed to manage the inventory process effectively. Reports are tailored to
provide a total fit to the client’s needs, including forecasting, product management, order
management and supplier performance.
Optimus continuously monitors and compares all inventory related transactions against policy and
flags any sub-optimal transactions and alerts the inventory controller on a daily basis with built-in
automatic e-mail facilities. A task bar presents the top value-adding activities to the inventory
controller on a daily basis.
Graphical profiles are used to monitor the daily progress on realigning inventories against the
optimal inventory profiles. An overview shows each action category as a relative percentage of the
total inventory value. Detailed information can be obtained by drilling down into each category to
identify the relevant line items contributing to the profile.
The landscape graph details how the current inventory is invested by showing the monetary value
of inventories associated with the various months of inventory holding. Graphs are printed at
regular intervals to provide an indication of progressive improvement in the way in which the
inventories are managed.

18
Managing your systems

New technologies, new services

We are already experiencing radical changes in the way companies operate as a result of
increased use of the Internet and thin client computing. Internet technology and supporting
infrastructure are now available to support the requirements of companies throughout their supply
chain operations. The degree of take-up however, will depend on the breadth and quality of
services provided by the IT partners – and there have been new genres of service providers
appearing to deliver these services: Internet service providers (ISPs), application service providers
(ASPs), and Internet application services providers (IAPs). The key to success will be to partner
with an organisation that will deliver leading edge services so that your business can optimise the
opportunities presented by the changes in technology that are available now and will become
available in the future – quickly and safely.
Outsourcing IT services can offer companies access to software applications, infrastructure, and
related services over the Internet with all the technology (excluding client peripherals and
necessary telecommunications) at its site. This enables an organisation to concentrate on their core
business – making and delivering foodstuffs to the highest quality, in the shortest possible time, and
at the optimum cost.
There are many benefits in outsourcing, which are enhanced considerably if the outsourcing
supplier also has expertise in the food and drink industries and application knowledge. As well as
the usual benefits of ‘traditional’ outsourcing, which includes minimised resourcing issues, service
reliability and improved budgeting, outsourcing to industry specialists like SSI also includes the
following.
• ‘Future proofing’. The service supplier owns the hardware and software infrastructure so the
customer does not have to replace equipment frequently to keep up to date. It is not necessary
for the customer to have IT personnel continually keeping up to date with the latest
technologies.
• Reduced start-up costs. There is no need for the customer to purchase servers, database
software, application software, expensive training plans, or allow time for their IT personnel to
develop the experience required. These are all provided by the supplier under a service
agreement.
• Speed of deployment. Because the service supplier has the necessary technology available, it
is not necessary to wait long lead times for hardware and software supply and installation.
• More cost effective resilience. If a customer implements fail-over technology to ensure
increased uptime in the event of a failure, they have to have a dedicated fail-over server. The
service supplier will be able to provide shared fail-over servers across its customer base.

The advantage of an industry specialist

SSI has been providing technology services for 20 years. We can provide a true one-stop shop
offering services which provide:
• Flexibility – our services can complement your own expertise/resources to offer the optimum
service to your business, and, if required, your cash flow can be regulated by renting your
solution rather than capital purchase;
• Business level security;
• Data Integrity;
• The correct level of performance for the required task;
• Reliable system availability – through resilient hardware configurations and technical support,
24 hours per day, 365 days per year;

19
• Predictable capacity planning – we monitor the system continuously so that hardware
upgrades, if necessary, can be planned well in advance and, through the use of backup
hardware, downtime is minimised;
• Use of all relevant technologies, including, for example, all available "e" technologies from
electronic faxing through to full internet facilities including B2B through interactive web sites or
simple internet browsers;
• Remote end-user support tools;
• Customer care systems – we monitor your activity and calls so that we can pro-actively identify
potential problem areas before they become a problem;
• Help desk: to ensure that there is always expertise available to respond to queries.

SSI’s managed services

The services that our customers may require can be varied to suit their needs. SSI offers a
complete and flexible range of services, including;
Hosted solutions - Locate your entire IT infrastructure and servers including application, database,
business to business and person to business technology (but excluding client peripherals and
related telecommunications) at SSI’s service centre. You are responsible for putting paper into
printers and maintaining the data in the database – we do the rest (including data security and
integrity). You have full internet access, e-mail and e-business capability. As well as giving your
own personnel the maximum opportunity to provide improved service to your business, this model
can provide total one-stop shopping for all your IT requirements.
Out tasked solutions - You own your own solution, including all technology components, on your
site but SSI manage it remotely. You own and manage the technical infrastructure and servers but
SSI manage all software components to ensure that your system is available, performs, is up to
date in terms of software patches, that your data is secure, and that you have all the technical
resource and expertise you need – when you need it. This model enables your own IT personnel to
utilise their skills without having to undergo constant training to keep themselves, and your solution,
up to date with the latest technologies and best practices in their management to enable them to
provide the maximum benefits to your business.
Out tasked applications - You own your solution, including all technology components, on your
site. SSI manage your application, database, and operating system remotely (as with out tasking)
but you, or another service provider, manage the business-to-business and person-to-business
components of your solution.
Hosted collaboration - Locate your application, database technology, client peripherals and
related telecommunications, on your site, but outsource business-to-business and person-to-
business technology to SSI’s service centre.
All our services are fully flexible and we can create a unique service package for any customer,
with any combination of term, scope and service level.

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Case Study: Cormar Carpets
Bury-based Cormar Carpets has installed SSI’s TROPOS fast-response ERP solution to support its
development. The advanced functionality provided by TROPOS has been delivering measurable
benefits to the company since the early stages of the project.

How many manufacturing companies in Britain can claim to have made a profit in each of the last
20 years? With all the doom and gloom over UK manufacturing of late, Bury-based Cormar Carpets
is a real find – a company that has doubled in size, organically, over the past seven years. “When I
joined in 1995, our turnover on tufted carpets was about £29 million,” says financial director Robert
Barker. “Now, it’s about twice that.” At that time, Cormar was part-way through a much extended
computer system implementation – Barker says the project had been ongoing since 1992, and only
payroll had gone live. The next two years were spent completing this implementation – but, by
2000, Barker and his colleagues concluded that the project had gone as far as it could. “Our main
problem was that we’d developed the system – using internal IT resources – so much that it bore
little resemblance to the
original package,” he
explains. “And any further
development by the vendor
cost a fortune and took
ages.”

Barker and his colleagues

therefore decided to
evaluate alternative
systems. Because of the
inadequacy of their previous
application, Cormar’s IT
staff had been forced to
develop a wide range of
skills, so the company was
looking for a system that would provide a core toolset of functionality, but which would be easy to
customised to suit particular needs. After a selection process that encompassed their existing
supplier and specialist vendors of carpet manufacturing systems, Cormar settled on the TROPOS
fast-response ERP suite developed and supplied by SSI.

TROPOS is designed to suit the needs of process manufacturers, notably those in dimension-
based industries such as carpets and paper. But Barker says that the major reason for selecting
SSI was the supplier’s close focus, during the sales process, on business issues such as return on
investment, rather than technical IT problems. “What we were looking for was a software house that
we could see thought in business terms, not narrow IT terms,” he explains.
=
“And that business thinking has to pervade the entire organisation – you’d expect a salesman to be
able to explain a system in terms of what it could do for your business, but I think the focus needs
to go much further. Even coders need to understand how what they are doing affects the business,
and that’s the impression I got from SSI.

“We wanted to work with a supplier that was forward-thinking. We weren’t getting any new ideas
from our existing supplier; it wasn’t a two-way street. And that was a problem, because we need to
be pushed – we have ideas of our own, but they need to be supplemented by ideas coming from
the supplier. At the solution planning stage, the SSI people were driving us to think more deeply
about how we run our business – they were ahead of us, and that’s the kind of partner we need.”

Technologically speaking, SSI’s solution appealed to Cormar because the flexibility of the TROPOS
architecture meant that the internal IT skills developed over the previous few years could be put to
use enhancing the system, both in terms of functionality and ease of use – the IT department has
used the TROPOS Software Developers’ Kit to create a number of new screens that simplify data

21
entry for irregular users. Cormar’s previous system had been progress-based, so the Oracle
database that underpins TROPOS meant their IT skills required updating, but Barker says that
SSI’s facilities management services are helping to fill in the gaps while IT staff gain Oracle
experience.

Cormar, the largest independent carpet manufacturer in the UK, promises its customers – who
range from one-man carpet fitters to major multiples – that any order received by Friday lunchtime
will be delivered the following week. Tufting is carried out in the firm’s plant at Holme Mill, Bury, with
17 looms each producing around 100 metres of carpet each day. The carpet is then transported to
Brookhouse Mill, Cormar’s headquarters, where it is backed, cut, and either stored or sent for
delivery to a customer.

Key front-end processes computerised using TROPOS include purchasing, goods receiving and
production in the tufting plant, and the same operations in the backing plant, as well as
warehousing and distribution, which – like the backing plant – operate from Brookhouse Mill.
Scheduling production through this number of separate processes is a considerable challenge, not
least because timescales in tufting and backing are very different. Because TROPOS is a ‘pull’
system, though, the backing plant is able to drive production, pulling unbacked carpet through from
the tufting operation.
As part of its customer service policy, Cormar commits to providing any length of carpet a buyer
might want. Although roll lengths are not completely standardised, this inevitably means that a high
proportion – and a very large number – of orders require carpet to be cut to order. Cormar’s ‘cut
lengths’ operation is key to the success of the company; unlike the rest of the manufacturing
process, it operates on a make-to-order basis, cutting over 3,500 orders per week. This part of the
business has grown rapidly in recent years – Barker says that Cormar used to carry much more
finished goods inventory, and that the growth of the cut lengths operation has helped to reduce
stock levels. But, until the implementation of TROPOS, the cut lengths business had been
managed manually without any IT support, with consequent problems for wastage. “The potential
for waste is huge, which is why it was so important for us to get a really good cut lengths system,
which we now have,” says Barker.=
=
A key issue in the cut lengths business is stock allocation. Up to now, this has been done manually,
but Cormar and SSI are currently developing algorithms to enable automatic allocation, which will
significantly reduce the amount of finished goods inventory needed to meet customer requirements
– and, equally importantly – cut the volume of carpet which, the result of cutting to length, has to be
sold off at reduced prices, or goes to waste. “The best time to optimise allocations is just before
you’re going to cut,” says Robert Barker. “We’ve always felt that implementing automatic allocation
would be relatively easy in the sales department – but much harder in cut lengths. There’s potential
for huge wastage in that area of the business: once a roll has been cut, the remnants fetch only low
prices.” Cormar aims to cycle remnant stock every eight weeks, so TROPOS monitors the length of
time each remnant has been in the warehouse, and will identify any roll that is suitable to fulfil a
customer order – if a customer orders a 2 metre roll in a particular shade, and the warehouse
contains a 3.5 metre roll in the same shade that has been in stock for close to eight weeks,
TROPOS will highlight that roll.

Traceability is very important to Cormar. Carpet specifications, such as colour, can vary subtly from
roll to roll, and the only way to guarantee an exact match is to go back to the ‘mother roll’.
TROPOS’s lot traceability functionality makes this easy: each roll is linked back to the mother roll,
and without the complexity of Cormar’s previous system, which required a 15 character lot number
to identify an individual cut length.

Cormar operates its own fleet of delivery trucks, and its TROPOS system has been configured to
associate each of the company’s customers with a particular delivery route. The system also
enables staff to optimise the days on which a particular route will be serviced. In the finished goods
warehouse, SSI consultants have implemented TROPOS Putaway Logic, which – as rolls come off
the backing plant – identifies an empty warehouse location of a suitable size for the finished roll.
The warehouse forklift trucks carry handheld computers, enabling them to see, as they pick up the
roll, exactly where it should be placed.

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Implementation of TROPOS represented a major project for Cormar. “When implementing our
previous system, we’d kept the whole project very close to the IT department’s chest,” says Barker.
“We didn’t have a team that included members from all departments to run the show. I know that’s
not the ideal way to do things, but we evaluated the situation and concluded that the users simply
weren’t ready to take on the responsibility. This time, though, we were determined to get people to
take control of their own areas.”

Getting this kind of input from users wasn’t easy, though, because, until recently, Cormar’s
corporate culture had been relatively command-and-control. “We realised we needed to do a
substantial amount of management development work first,” says Barker. “So we put 14 of our key
people through training, and they – off their own bat – created a group called Cormar Senior
Management in Control, or COSMIC. And it was these people who formed the base of our
implementation team.”
=
Barker admits that go-live was not the seamless transition that he might have wished. Partly,
though, this is down to the dramatic growth of Cormar’s business, which continued unabated
through the period of implementation. “Our two busiest months are generally April and May, and we
went live in April 2002,” he says. “We expected business to slow after that period, but then we got
even busier. As a result, we were under a lot of pressure during the implementation, and we don’t
have the resources to put half a dozen people on to a project full-time.”
=
Phase 2 of the TROPOS project, currently being rolled out, will give Cormar control of its point of
sale (PoS) and merchandising material, such as sample books. This, according to Robert Barker, is
a major problem at the moment. “Our only control of PoS material at the moment is manual,” he
says. “We have literally thousands of samples and display units – and we spend over £1 million a
year on them – but we have little idea where they are and what return we get from our investment.
We need to be able to work out what business is coming from a particular retailer who has
particular point of sale material, and so come to informed conclusions about whether our
investment in PoS would be better spent elsewhere.” Sample books and other such items will be
bar-coded, and, says Barker, sales reps will be issued with handheld devices which they can use to
scan materials when they visit a customer site, hence building up a record of where the books are
located.

Also on the agenda is the ability to give precise available to promise dates when customers contact
Cormar. “Lots of our customers are asking us to fax them back to confirm that we’d received their
orders. But what they really want is for us to be able to tell them, there and then, is when their order
will be delivered. And retailers often work late at night, so orders appear on our desks the following
morning.
=
If he had his time again, Barker says he would want user training to be more closely aligned to
individuals’ roles, rather than being generic. “We should have focused more on training people on
the transactions they actually use day to day,” he says. “It would have been beneficial to have
identified key themes up front, and concentrated on them.

“It’s a constant process of refinement. We’re much, much better than we were, but we’ve still a very
long way to go. That’s why it was so important for us to get the right foundations that we could build
on.”
The TROPOS project, Barker says, has provided those foundations. “SSI are bound to take us
forward,” he says. “We’ve doubled in size over the last seven years – and expect to continue
growing – so we need a partner who will be able to support us in the long term and drive us to think
about how we run our business. SSI fits that bill.”=
=
=

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Case Study : Don & Low
Industrial textile manufacturer Don & Low has completely overhauled its IT systems with assistance
from e-business and supply chain specialists, SSI. SSI helped Don & Low bring together a complex
web of 'best-of-breed' solutions in a £2 million project covering five sites and two businesses. SSI's
TROPOS supply chain software now lies at the heart of a system which will help Don & Low to run
its business more efficiently and deliver better service to customers.

Don & Low is a major European manufacturer of industrial textiles, headquartered in Forfar,
Scotland, with a history stretching back 200 years. The company is currently owned by Thrace
Plastics and employs around 600 staff at five sites in two major businesses – woven and non-
woven textiles. It has a turnover of £46 million.

"While an initial impetus for the system replacement project was to be able to deal with the
Millennium Bug, a key driver was an IT strategy produced to improve and change the way we do
business in the new millennium," says Karen Souter, project manager for Don & Low.

Souter explains that the project enabled the company to tackle a number of other business issues.
"We had a patchwork of systems which we could never have taken forward in a consolidated way.
Bringing all that information into one system gives us transparency of information and helps us
manage our processes from end to end."

In particular, linking the various elements in the manufacturing cycle through a single system would
allow Don & Low to improve its planning. The company also knew that an integrated approach was
vital if it was to introduce changes to shorten its lengthy manufacturing chain. This used to last up
to six weeks and involves stockpiling significant amounts of buffer stocks to ensure machines were
able to keep running. Finally, the company wanted to be able to run "what if" scenarios in its
planning process and use reporting tools on top of a core database to produce flexible business
information quickly and easily.

Selecting the right supply chain solution would be key to the success of the project and Don & Low
took considerable effort to ensure it made the right choice

"We originally thought we would introduce one single system across all areas, but what we chose
was a best-of-breed solution with SSI taking responsibility for the integration," Souter explains. "A
key factor in our choice of SSI was that not only could they offer the right combination of products –
we would have chosen all the different offerings if we had selected them independently – but they
were also willing to take responsibility for integrating those five or six products into a completed
solution."

The backbone of this end-to-end business solution is SSI's supply chain solution, TROPOS, which
has been integrated with several other products including: Don & Low's existing Unitrac contact
management system; new shop-floor data-collection systems from Barco; Greycon's S-Plan finite
scheduling software, which schedules work on to various machines; Coda financials; and Cognos
PowerPlay and Impromptu reporting tools.

According to Souter, Don & Low decided not to work with the largest ERP suppliers such as J D
Edwards and Invensys because it felt their developers were too remote and that they wouldn't be
able to influence the product. "We wanted a supplier we could work with in true partnership," she
explains. "SSI owns and develops the package itself and, at its current size, we are still able to
have implemented enhancements for our industry sector, so long as SSI feel they will benefit their
core product."

Souter points out that such changes were few thanks to the rich functionality within the core
TROPOS product and power of the Software Developers Kit, which allows users to reorganise
processes and add extra elements without compromising the basic software package. For example,

24
Don & Low has developed simplified data entry screens for production staff, but TROPOS is able to
take that data and manipulate and store it in the right way behind the scenes.

In those few areas where the underlying TROPOS functionality didn't match critical aspects of Don
& Low's processes exactly, Souter says SSI was willing to make slight changes to the core package
rather than forcing Don & Low to compromise. "SSI was willing to spend time understanding what
we wanted and would then try to fit it into the TROPOS product. If they couldn't, they were flexible
about the options," she explains. "We also felt very comfortable with the SSI people. We felt very
confident they knew what they were talking about and they made a real effort to understand our
business."

Don & Low used SSI's Talisman methodology as the foundation for the implementation. The tight
timescales for the project – just 13 months from selecting TROPOS to going live in October 1999 –
meant that key to the success was the company putting in place a strong project management
structure to underpin the implementation methodology. However, Souter says, "Talisman is useful
as a starting point, because most companies have never done anything like this before."

According to Souter, the biggest issue in the project was simply the quantity and complexity of
integration to be undertaken. "We did try to be ruthless in selecting what we did, but there were so
many areas which were crucial," she points out. She says a significant component was the
integration of S-Plan with TROPOS. "That hadn't been done in such depth anywhere else and the
relationship between SSI and Greycon was still in its infancy when we started, so we suffered from
having to bear the brunt of that integration work during our project," she explains. "However, the
two products are now well integrated, with SSI and Greycon still adding minor enhancements to
improve the solution further."

Souter adds that the integration work was further complicated by the fact that Don & Low consists
of two separate businesses. The wovens business uses traditional looms to weave polypropylene-
based fibres into products such as carpet backing and post office sacks. The non-wovens business,
however, uses technology which extrudes polypropylene fibre and spreads it across a moving
frame to create rolls of material for applications such as crop coverings. "Although we are using the
same software in both businesses, they have different requirements, so even when we had solved
issues for one side of the business, we had to re-solve them for the other side. That meant we had
to go through the hoops multiple times to find a solution that would fit both."

Don & Low also went for a big-bang rollout, even though it knew it was a high risk strategy. "We
realised early on that if we were going to implement the system in stages, we would have to divert
resources to writing interfaces with existing systems. We decided that we had to jump off a cliff and
go for it," Souter explains. "I think if we had introduced the system in phases, we might not have
completed the rollout in time to be millennium compliant. Even so, the tight time scales meant we
were developing and simulating the solution right up until the last moment before go live." She adds
that the company paid close attention to risk management, especially during the later stages, and
made the board fully aware of the implications of decisions about when to go live, which finally
occurred in October 1999.

Throughout the project, SSI provided a 'facilities management' service to support the new
infrastructure required for TROPOS. It also worked closely with Don & Low's information systems
manager to install and configure the Unix server, Oracle database and 150 PCs on which TROPOS
now runs. The next step, over the coming years, will be for Don & Low to become self-sufficient in
these new skills and take the operation of its systems back in house.

The new integrated system, known as Dallas, now covers every aspect of Don & Low's business.
Potential customers and quotes are managed through the Unitrac contact management system.
When a customer places a firm order, the details can be automatically transferred to TROPOS to
raise a sales order. The demand generated by that order is passed into the TROPOS planning
system, which in turn raises a work order. This is passed across to Greycon's S-Plan finite
scheduling system, which schedules the work onto a particular loom or extrusion machine and
confirms a delivery date back to the TROPOS sales system, so that the sales team can let the
customer know when the order will be available.

25
The schedule is also brought back into TROPOS so that its impact on other steps in the process,
such as production of tape for weaving, can be assessed. That information is then passed back to
S-Plan so that these steps can also be scheduled and on to Barco's PCMS shop floor system to
create work lists for each machine. Once the product has been manufactured, PCMS records
operational data, such as the length of product made, and returns this data to TROPOS to
complete delivery of the item into stock.

From here, TROPOS handles despatch of the order, generating all the necessary shipping
documents and pick lists. Furthermore, it has been linked to the Intermec radio frequency (RF)
handheld terminals used by staff in the warehouse to allow them to access and capture data as
they receive and pick goods. The final stage involves raising an invoice within TROPOS and
passing it to the Coda Financials suite, which now handles all of Don & Low's accounting needs.

The new system successfully saw the company through the Year 2000 rollover and helped it ship
record levels of product in its first couple of months of operation, but it's still early days when it
comes to achieving long-term benefits. As Souter points out: "You can't achieve all your business
benefits in just four months. We spent time during the implementation looking at where we wanted
to be in the future and ensuring that the way we set the system up initially would allow us to move
in the direction we wanted to go. We now have to put in place processes to achieve those longer
term aims. This year will see us pushing forward on medium and long term planning as well as
taking advantage of the new reporting facilities we have and strengthening the links between the
contact management system and the sales admin side of TROPOS."

The company expects to achieve a number of targets over the with the system: shortening the time
taken to respond to customers' requests for information; reducing its buffer stocks at each stage of
the process; and minimising downtime through better scheduling.

One area where the company soon started to see major benefits is reporting. "Reporting is much
more flexible and we can get reports much more easily," says Souter. "The management
information is now there and it's accessible."

Now that the hard work of the implementation is over, Souter would have no doubts about
recommending SSI to other process manufacturing companies. "We had direct lines into key SSI
people and they were responsive to what we were trying to do," she says. "They had the resources
to meet our needs and we got good service during the rollout."

26
Case Study: Brintons
Brintons Carpets employs 2,000 people across three sites in Kidderminster and one each in Telford
and Portugal. It is using the TROPOS ERP system from SSI to streamline and support the
production of both a large number of standard products and a constantly changing stream of `one-
off' jobs. The company's operations cover all aspects of production from raw wool processing to
distribution of the finished carpet including wool blending, carding, spinning, dyeing and weaving.
In addition, Brintons builds all its own carpet weaving looms utilising the resources of a
considerable engineering facility.

According to IT Manager Bryan Cowley Brinton’s began working with the TROPOS system during
1995 in response to a need to upgrade its IT support for business operations in the face of
changing market conditions. TROPOS was chosen to replace a centralised, mainframe system
running bespoke software that was difficult to maintain and had deficiencies in functionality,
including limited manufacturing planning facilities and insufficient integration with accounting
functions. As a result it was impossible to obtain
information on the financial performance of the
business direct from the system.

In contrast the company is now running an

integrated TROPOS system across all its sites,
in which some 400 PCs running in the Windows
NT operating environment act as clients to half
a dozen NT servers which are in turn linked to a
central Digital Alpha UNIX hardware platform. In
addition about 100 character cell terminals are
connected to the system. The TROPOS
modules involved are those for: Control;
Resources Products and Processes;
Warehousing and Inventory; Purchasing; Sales
& Distribution; Scheduling; Process & Materials
Planning; Production Monitoring; and Finance.
In addition several third party packages are
integrated with the TROPOS system including
the Coda IAS accounting system, the Genetik scheduling
package and the Logol forecasting package.

Brian Cowley says the company had both immediate and

longer term objectives in making the changeover. In the
immediate term it had to respond to increasing market
pressure for customised products to satisfy the increasing
demand from the contract market in addition to the extensive range of standard products.

Further ahead the company also anticipates that its operations will become more globalised and
that it will need further secure communications links for business and manufacturing information
across wide area networks. The underlying principles of the exercise, says Bryan Cowley, were that
the company should configure its IT systems in a way that supported both best practice and
responsiveness to change.

But the company was also aware that an IT system composed solely of standard software modules
would not provide it with sufficient functionality. The carpet manufacturing business imposes
various requirements that demand their own specific solutions. As such a system that could provide
the company with effective control and `visibility' of its business and manufacturing processes
needed to combine not just modularity and ease of integration but also able to accommodate a high
degree of customisation.

27
The key to achieving this objective has been SSI's Software Developers Kit (SDK). SDK provides a
series of standard interfaces to TROPOS and the ability to generate customised TROPOS
transactions. SDK has enabled Brintons to modify its ERP system by building a core of native
TROPOS modules supplemented by a range of custom-written transactions and interfaces to third-
party packages.

Underlying SDK is the TROPOS Network Interface (TNI). This provides the component-based
architecture of TROPOS, and it is SDK's ability to reuse and manipulate existing components that
provides the flexibility and adaptability inherent in TROPOS. A component based architecture such
as TNI, allows for high levels of customisation and modification without compromise to the standard
package integrity.

Bryan Cowley explains that carpet manufacturing imposes some highly exacting requirements.
Ensuring consistency of colour, for instance, requires that all the yarn of a particular shade used to
meet a specific order must come from the same dye batch. Other standard practices unique to
carpet production include feeding back waste yarn into the manufacturing process, and selecting
the most appropriate stock item when cutting length of standard carpet. These practices cannot be
easily handled in a conventional MRP system.

To cope with these and other demands, Brintons has configured around 80 new components. One
component, for example, allows the company to take account of fluctuations in the weight of
batches of raw wool caused by variations in moisture content. Another provides a single screen
input for new product detail that automatically generates the multiple TROPOS transactions for item
creation, inventory parameters, formulae, processes and costing.

Other capabilities customised using SDK include:

• Sales order entry
• Interface between TROPOS forecasting module and Logol
• Order progress tracking
• Telephone stock enquiry and reservation
• Wool and yarn blending - to allow different attributes to finished product
• Management and control of stock between manufacturing sites
• Management of the `cut and wrap' process through to despatch
• Optimisation of carpet slitting
• Support for new product introduction
• Integration with a finite sequencing package to optimise loom and dye vat sequencing

The TROPOS implementation has provided tangible benefits to the whole company. A reduction in
IT resource requirements of 75% plus a general streamlining of maintenance and support
procedures will save the company as much as £1 million a year, in IT expenditure alone.

Other than a cost saving, TROPOS and the integrated software packages have brought increased
agility and competitiveness through enhanced control and visibility of Brintons’ processes. "In
effect", says Bryan Cowley, "the entire company is covered by what appears to be a single software
package, but one whose functionality is precisely tailored to the needs of both particular
departmental users and the company as a whole".

Moreover a foundation has been laid for further expansion and development. Any increase in the
number of the sites from which the company operates will be easier to accommodate, irrespective
of their location. The same is true for possible future enhancements to system functionality, such as
the incorporation of EDI links to customers and suppliers or integration with office automation
systems.

Achievements at implementation were considerable. Bryan Cowley sums them up like this: “We
have completed a move from a mainframe system to a client/server environment, in which we have
combined all the benefits of integrated standard software functionality with the flexibility of
customised user interfaces and, where necessary, front-end programs.”

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SSI customers in the mills sector

The following companies are examples of customers of SSI operating in the mills sector:

Manufacturer of traditional wool carpets for commercial and

Axminster Carpets
domestic use.

UK arm of leading European brass extruder using SSI’s TROPOS

Boliden MKM supply chain solution and Software Developers Kit to replace a
bespoke mainframe application.

TROPOS is used to streamline and support production of standard

Brintons Carpets products and one-off jobs from raw wool processing to distribution
of completed carpets.

Bury-based manufacturer installed TROPOS fast response ERP

Cormar Carpets systems for purchasing, goods receiving, production (tufting and
backing), warehousing and distribution.

TROPOS ERP solution helped Corus subsidiary Brinsworth Strip

Corus Steel Mills, Rotherham, deliver customer service at competitive prices in
the short lead-time, make to order market.

Industrial textiles manufacturer uses TROPOS supply chain

Don & Low software to operate more efficiently and deliver better service from
its five sites.

Europe’s leading supplier of coloured and specialist papers based

James Cropper
in Kendal, Cumbria

Leicester based manufacturer of disposable tissue products and

LPC
suppliers to the pharmaceutical industry.

European arm of Japanese-owned polyester and nylon textiles

Toray Textiles producer installed TROPOS in two phases to cover the full scope of
its business.

Employee-owned UK papermaking business replaced a mainframe

Tullis Russell system with TROPOS ERP and support a focus on niche markets
and manufacturing to customer specification.

Manufacturer of packaging for consumer goods, primarily aerosol

US Can cans for household and personal care. Their TROPOS system
takes requirements directly from their customers’ systems via XML

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About SSI

History and Values

Since 1982 SSI has been developing, implementing and supporting integrated supply chain
systems that deliver competitive advantage and increased agility to companies operating in the
industrial sector. Since 1992 with the launch of TROPOS, SSI has specialised in systems for
process industries, particularly food and drink.
Our key company values are the lifecycle support of our customers’ systems, helping our
customers do business more easily, faster and more cheaply across the complete supply chain.
SSI has focused on the delivery of high quality, market leading functionality and a service ethic built
around customer partnership, commitment and common goals for achieving business benefits.
Our strategy is to invest in the development of innovative products, quality people, value-added
methodologies and a range of strong post-implementation services to ensure the success of long-
term partnerships with our customers. We focus only on the manufacturing and distribution
sectors, developing products and services which use the latest techniques and technologies to
deliver competitive advantage through supply chain solutions.
SSI developed the TROPOS range of software products to support batch, semi-continuous and
continuous production across process and fast response manufacturing. There is a high
commitment to ongoing development with a track record of technical achievements and innovative
concepts within the product range.
In August 2000, Chelford Group plc, a cash shell listed on the Alternative Investment Market (AIM)
acquired SSI in a reverse takeover. The Board of SSI is now the Board of Chelford Group plc. The
AIM listing gives the company access to capital for improving the products and services available to
our customers and to support the expansion of our business.
The Chelford Group goal is to become the leading supplier of Supply Chain solutions to the mid-
market. This will be achieved through a combination of organic growth of SSI and acquisitions. In
2002 Chelford Group acquired the assets of one of the largest SAP Resellers in the UK, which now
operates as the Chelford SAP Division focussing on Distribution and CPG markets. There is
currently around 100 staff employed by SSI, based either at the Basingstoke office or regionally to
support local requirements.

Commitment, skills and market knowledge

At SSI, we understand the pressures under which you operate and are committed to working in
partnership with you to ensure that business and project goals are met. We have a long-term
commitment to key verticals in the process industries and consumer supply chains.
SSI skills encompass consultancy in manufacturing and distribution, business and information
technology, software engineering, training and customer support. By specialising in manufacturing
and distribution, SSI has built a professional knowledge base, backed by proven methodologies
with a wealth of experience in delivering business advantage. In delivering our solutions, our
products support the use of the latest demand management and production planning techniques
including advanced planning and scheduling (APS), multi-site demand planning, warehouse
management, de-coupled manufacture and mass customisation.
E-business supports fast ordering. Our objective is to ensure that our customers have the
manufacturing and distribution agility necessary to deliver on the e-business promise.

Minimising risk
SSI is a ISO9000 2000 Quality Certified Organisation. Our focus on delivering quality includes the
delivery of systems on time, within budget and meeting the business objectives of our customers.

30
We use our Talisman implementation methodology and to deliver results quickly and to provide a
fast return on investment.

Providing a solution not a product

We recognise that your solutions partner must have a wide range of skills and services to cover all
requirements from a single source of supply. These include
Project management Applications implementation support
Hosted application services Remote managed services
Customisation Bespoke systems development
systems integration Business intelligence
*-net development Technical consultancy
The dedication and professionalism of our team underpins our market position. Our aim is to
become the solutions partner of choice for companies operating in our target markets. SSI has an
established, expanding customer base which includes a wide range of SME organisations including
subsidiaries of major corporations.
SSI is committed to setting high standards, to listening and responding to customer needs and to
maintaining effective, respected business relationships. We have an active user group with which
we work closely to ensure we remain focused on our customers’ needs.
Our underlying philosophy is to ensure that we deliver the products, knowledge and service skills
our customers demand from a long-term strategic partner, committed to unlocking profit from
supply chains.

SSI is an Oracle Certified Solutions Partner.

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 Contacting SSI

Web Site
SSI has an extensive web site with full details of products and customer case studies. There are
regularly updated news items, opinion pieces and events. Please visit www.ssi-world.com
e-Mail
Please e-mail information requests to sales@ssi-world.com
Telephone
Switchboard +44 (0)1256 685200
Fax +44 (0)1256 685201
Sales Information +44 (0)1256 685276
Address
SSI,
Hampshire International Business Park
Crockford Lane
BASINGSTOKE
Hampshire
RG24 8WH
United Kingdom

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