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"Seize emerging market opportunities with software that fully
integrates R&D – marketing, manufacturing, and design – to ensure
on-time and on-budget
delivery of superior,
customer-driven products."
Source : SAP
On-time Product Delivery and Customer Satisfaction
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“For a complex business like ours, SAP provides
the functionality to address any and all business
models that we might choose to undertake.
That was very important to us.”
Sarah Mather, Vice President of Business Systems Administration, Fusion UV
Fusion UV specializes in curing, but it’s not a healthcare facility.
Since 1971, the Gaithersburg, Maryland–based firm has made
equipment for ultraviolet (UV) curing, an advanced photochemical
process in which ultraviolet light instantly dries or
“cures” inks, coatings, and adhesives.
Fusion is the world’s leading producer of UV curing equipment.
Its products are state of the art, and it has a reputation for delivering
them on time. But not long ago, Fusion’s outdated IT landscape
threatened its ability to deliver promised products on time
to its customers. The company’s manufacturing environment is
so complex that its legacy IT systems couldn’t handle the load,
threatening Fusion’s ability to meet its promised delivery dates.
It was clear something had to change. That’s why the company
implemented FastTrack, a mySAP™ All-in-One solution for
complex manufacturing from SAP partner N2 Consulting LLC.
mySAP All-in-One partner solutions for small and midsize businesses
are based on SAP® technology and delivered by partners
that are experienced in various industries. With FastTrack, Fusion
now completes capacity planning in about an hour and can hit
its delivery dates.
WORLD-CLASS PRODUCTS FROM A MIDSIZE COMPANY
Fusion is a business unit of Spectris plc, a publicly traded company
on the London Stock Exchange. The company has sites in France,
Germany, Japan, China, and the United Kingdom, with sales and
distribution reaching more than 10,000 customers in 25 countries.
“We’re a midsize business, a highly complex, integrated manufacturing
company,” explains Sarah Mather, vice president of
business systems administration at Fusion.
Fusion manufactures complex products in an environment that
runs the gamut from make to order to engineer to order. The
company’s products – an irradiator (which emits radiation onto
the surface being cured) and a power supply – are built on two
separate production lines, meaning the company has to process
two work order steps in parallel.
OUTDATED SYSTEMS HINDER CAPACITY PLANNING
Capacity planning in such a manufacturing environment is an
extreme challenge. Fusion’s outdated systems just couldn’t handle
the complexity of manufacturing and the required capacity
planning. “We were operating in a legacy environment that was
closed – it didn’t allow access to any other applications,” explains
Mather. “We have five external offices, and our main software
between our U.S. office and our European sites used two different
databases. Our legacy system was archaic and not suitable for
upgrading into a more open system. We also had processing problems,
and because of that, we were unable to do capacity planning
efficiently.” As a result, the company sometimes couldn’t deliver
on the promised date, or it had to scramble to make a delivery
date, often incurring additional costs.
Fusion needed an IT system that could handle both complex manufacturing
and complex capacity planning. “SAP solutions can do
that,” says Mather. “And the partner-relationship-management
functionality in SAP is the best of the products we evaluated.”
MANAGING COMPLEX PARTNER RELATIONSHIPS
That’s important for Fusion because its partner relationships are as
complex as its manufacturing environment. Fusion’s sales force is
national and international, and each sales representative has an
exclusive geographical area. The selling cycle is very complex and
spans multiple relationships. For example, for just one customer,
an end user may be located in one geographical region, a machine
integrator in another, and a decision maker in a third. A sale to
such a company could involve three different independent sales
reps. To manage the situation and the various partner relationships,
Fusion uses the sales and distribution capabilities of its SAP
software to manage sales commissions.
The SAP solution will also provide a basis for managing customer
relationships for Fusion. “Another reason that we chose SAP was
that we wanted a solution that contains customer relationship management (CRM) ,” says Mather. “Although we won’t
implement CRM for some time, we wanted it to be an integral
part of the solution so we wouldn’t have to deal with middleware
or interfaces between different solutions. For a midsize company
like ours, it’s an advantage to be dealing with only one vendor
who is managing the whole product, and we’re able to do that
with SAP.”
“A key metric for us is being able to
effectively manage relationships with
our customers, and delivering
equipment to the customer efficiently
is critical. SAP solutions have given
us big benefits in this area – SAP
functionalities are ideal for this part
of our business.”
Sarah Mather, Vice President of Business Systems
Administration, Fusion UV
SMOOTH IMPLEMENTATION
The implementation at Fusion took only six months from project
inception to go-live. One of Fusion’s goals was that the conversion
to SAP would be transparent to customers, and it achieved that
goal: business was not interrupted during implementation.
The implementation also revitalized Fusion’s essential business
processes for finance and supply chain. The company used to
maintain a separate database for its custom products; that database
is now part of the SAP landscape, which gives the products
more visibility by displaying them online.
Mather says that Fusion employees have easily adapted to SAP
technology. “Just about everybody in the company uses it, from
production staff to executives,” she says. “Our managers have
been very comfortable with the software, which is a main reason
why it’s been so successful here.”
MULTIPLE BUSINESS BENEFITS
Fusion has reaped many business benefits from SAP technology.
For example, the company has become even more efficient
because of SAP. “A key metric for us is being able to effectively
manage relationships with our customers, and delivering equipment
to the customer efficiently is critical,” says Mather. “SAP
solutions have given us big benefits in this area – SAP functionalities
are ideal for this part of our business. Our purchase-order
process is faster and more efficient. The integration of our quotations
and order taking has dramatically increased the accuracy
and visibility of the process. Those are clear process
improvements that we’ve seen.”
Fusion is using SAP’s variant configurator to take orders for custom
equipment, and its use has delivered an unexpected benefit.
“We have years of experience using a configurator, but we were
not accustomed to having pricing drive off the configurator, and
that’s a big improvement for us,” says Mather. According to
Mather, the company’s legacy systems made pricing errors on
about 30% of orders for Fusion’s configured systems. Using SAP
technology, orders are now 100% accurate.
The company has seen other improvements as well. Shipping
products on the scheduled ship date has been a long-standing
metric for Fusion. “This year we’ve had a 5% improvement to
over 96%, which is phenomenal,” says Mather. “And that is attributable
to SAP because the scheduling functionality in SAP is far
superior to what our prior system had. This clearly has business
value for us.”
With SAP technology, month-end closing at Fusion is faster.
Previously, on the last day of each month the company’s legacy
systems closed for transactions at noon and the accounting staff
performed month-end closing activities until 7:00 p.m. “With
SAP, we make a clean cut-over at 5:00 p.m. on month-end close
day and closing activities take place at the beginning of the next
business day,” explains Mather. “This allows us to continue
operations and reduces overtime.”
That benefit extends beyond accounting. “We’re also able to
maintain our SAP environment with a very small staff,” says
Mather. “Our business volume is growing, but we don’t need
additional staff for IT, which is hard to believe given the complexity
of the SAP software.”
LOOKING AHEAD
Mather says that Fusion will continue to rely on SAP in the years
ahead. Company executives are envisioning the role that the SAP
NetWeaver™ platform will play in Fusion’s future. SAP NetWeaver
is a comprehensive integration and application platform that
works with a company’s existing IT landscape to enable and manage
change. “SAP NetWeaver is a very different platform,” Mather
says. “It’s a dynamic business application that is right for us
because we’re in a dynamic business environment.”
SAP technology has fulfilled Fusion’s expectations. “Partnering
with SAP for our business-systems software has worked very well
for us,” concludes Mather, “primarily because the solution we
chose has a lot of business functionality integrated into it. For a
complex business like ours, SAP provides the functionality to
address any and all business models that we might choose to
undertake. That was very important to us.”
AT A GLANCE
Company Name
Fusion UV Systems, Inc.
United States
www.fusionuv.com
Industry
Manufacturing (ultraviolet curing
equipment)
Key Challenges
- Make purchase-order process more efficient
- Implement IT system capable of handling complex capacity planning and manufacturing
- Improve efficiency of deliveryscheduling process
- Make month-end closing faster and less costly
- Reduce pricing errors
Implementation Partner
N2 Consulting LLC
Solution and Services
FastTrack, a mySAP™ All-in-One
partner solution from N2
Consulting LLC
Existing Environment
Legacy systems
Implementation Highlights
- Six month implementation from project inception to go-live
- No interruption of day-to-day business during implementation
Key Benefits
- Shipping accuracy improved to more than 96%
- Faster and more accurate purchase order process
- Faster and less costly monthend closing
- 100% accurate pricing
Hardware
Hewlett-Packard
Operating System
UNIX with an Oracle database