Apriso Customer Saint-Gobain Recognized for High Achievement at Progressive Manufacturing AwardsSaint-Gobain – Innovative Materials identified as leader in data and integration mastery through firm’s implementation of Apriso’s FlexNetLONG BEACH, CA – May 24, 2011 – Apriso, a leading provider of manufacturing software solutions, today announced one of its customers, Saint-Gobain – Innovative Materials, was recognized as the leading manufacturer in the Data and Integration Mastery category at the 2011 Progressive Manufacturing Awards. Saint-Gobain was chosen ahead of 29 other category nominees, according to a judging panel at this year’s Manufacturing Leadership Summit, held at The Breakers in Palm Beach, Florida.
The Progressive Manufacturing Awards honor manufacturing companies that have transformed themselves through the use of information technology. The program recognizes innovative projects that deliver competitive advantage. The data and integration mastery category recognizes companies that have achieved systems and process integration between two or more business functions.
Saint-Gobain’s recognition was based on results achieved when integrating Apriso’s FlexNet with SAP ERP to improve shop floor efficiency, resulting in the seamless integration of planning, execution, visibility and control across their global manufacturing operations. By leveraging Apriso’s “Core” implementation methodology, business processes comprising most of the necessary functionality for a typical Sekurit facility were identified as a “blueprint” of best practices, which were then packaged, distributed and implemented to every location, ultimately resulting in:
“Each facility may have some unique way of doing things that could benefit other plants,” says Pascal Ober, director, SAP+ global delivery center, Innovative Materials Sector. “We identified best practices and incorporated them within a Core profile, to then deploy across the enterprise at each location. The template is flexible enough, however, that it can be easily modified to meet local conditions, as well as be updated to reflect new process improvements.”
“We thought it was better to do one big change than two medium-sized ones. A traditional approach would split a large project into smaller elements to reduce risk. Also, some might argue that decentralized IS and IT might be too plant-specific, prohibiting efficient change,” notes Ober. “We saw this implementation as a unique opportunity to bring our factory IS and IT people on board early in the game. We envisioned IT savings by avoiding the proliferation of small local projects at the plant-floor operations level in parallel with the SAP implementation. We also sought to optimize both centralized and local resources.”
Saint-Gobain - Innovative Materials is one of the company’s premier divisions, which includes 11 operating companies covering two key areas – glass and high-performance materials such as abrasives, ceramics, solar etc. This award was for work performed at Saint-Gobain Sekurit – the operating company that provides auto-glass products.
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