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| Case Studies
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Snow and Rock/Exact Abacus (July 2008)
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Snow and Rock is a true multi-channel retailer marketing sports equipment
and clothing in a fiercely competitive marketplace. Quality products sourced
from specialist manufacturers across the world coupled with a commitment to
exceptional customer service positions Snow and Rock as a premium brand.
The roots of the business stem from bricks-and-mortar retail. However, Snow
and Rock was quick to identify the opportunities presented by home shopping and
e-commerce in the 1990s.
Initially the company’s 300-page directory style catalogue was mainly used as a retailsupport
tool, driving footfall to the stores. However, as the customer database grew in
size and geographical diversity, more mail orders were generated, which demanded the
set-up of a designated home shopping department. 3EX Enterprise software by Exact Abacus was selected after a lengthy search of the
marketplace.
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Baker Ross/Exact Abacus (July 2008)
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Baker Ross sources and distributes crafts, toys and fundraising products
direct to both schools and consumers through mail order catalogues and ecommerce
websites.
The company runs mail order and e-commerce – with a difference. Its unique
Yellow Moon fundraising scheme enables consumers to purchase products
direct, whilst raising money for a nominated school or nursery. Innovative marketing and efficient customer service have driven significant business
growth over the past five years. This has placed increasing emphasis on the
efficiency of IT systems and processes. The ‘need for speed’ coupled with an ongoing and often complex programme of
process change has proven the wisdom of implementing an enterprise-class IT system
whilst the business was relatively small. In 1999, Baker Ross installed the 3EX system
by Exact Abacus.
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Dairy Crest/Oracle (June 2008)
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With 17 factories and 180 local depots, Dairy Crest Limited is the UK’s leading chilled dairy foods company, producing
household-name brands such as Clover, St Ivel and FRijj. The company’s expertise in developing new markets won it the
prestigious Dairy Exporter of the Year award in 2005. Dairy Crest's challenges were to drive innovation, improve food quality, optimise production capacity and cut waste by upgrading, automating and
standardising manufacturing processes at all plants; maximise performance of assets such as pasteurising equipment, processing vessels, filters, silos and forklifts; and centralise long and short-term forecasting to improve agility and respond quickly to changes in supply or demand. It decided to use Oracle Process Manufacturing.
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Wolseley plc/3M – exclusive interview (March 2008)
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Wolseley is the world’s leading distributor of heating and plumbing products to the professional market and a leading
supplier of building materials. Headquartered near Reading in the UK, it operates in 28 countries across Europe and North
America. The company is listed on the London Stock Exchange and is among the top 100 companies in the FTSE 100
index. Over the last few years Wolseley has embarked on a major business change programme to re-design and standardise its
business processes and supporting information technology infrastructure so it is ready to meet future business challenges.
One element of this programme is to provide a leading-edge global warehouse management system across all its distribution
centres in North America and Europe. In turn this will interface with a new core supply chain management (SCM) solution that
will begin implementation in the second quarter of 2008. During the selection process to consider a suitable global solution, it evaluated offerings from several tier-one SCM
suppliers and finally decided to partner with HighJump, who are now a 3M company, for their warehouse management
solution.
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Eaton Corporation/QAD (February 2008)
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Eaton Corporation is a worldwide leader in the design, manufacture and distribution of a comprehensive line of high-efficiency
hydraulic systems and industrial components. Once known as a vehicle components supplier, Eaton has diversified to include
a broader industrial and commercial focus. Today, its businesses comprise four distinct segments – electrical, fluid power,
truck and automotive.
Eaton reported 2005 sales of $11.1 billion. Headquartered in Cleveland, Ohio, the company has 60,000 employees and sells
products to customers in more than 125 countries. Decision makers chose to replace the old ERP system with QAD MFG/PRO, to standardise the Cleveland facility with other Eaton
sites. The business managers at the Cleveland warehouse recognised that the operation would also need an up-to-date WMS
to work efficiently with other applications throughout the company.
Eaton chose QAD Advanced Inventory Management (QAD AIM) based on the company’s long-term partnership with QAD and
its own internal expertise in QAD product functionality.
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gm2 Logistics/3M Supply Chain Solutions (December 2007)
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As part of the MAP Merchant group of companies, gm2 Logistics provides warehousing and logistics services for two of the
UK’s largest paper merchants, McNaughton Paper Group and Premier Paper Group.
Through its two central distribution centres (CDCs), at Coalville in Leicestershire and Erith in Kent, gm2 holds more than
37,000 tonnes of paper, board and plastics for the printing, graphic arts and office stationery markets, for rapid despatch to
customers throughout the UK.
gm2 also provides logistics services to a number of third-party paper suppliers, who are able to take advantage of gm2’s
extensive infrastructure and facilities, including over 500,000 sq ft of warehouse space. Building sales and profitability in the paper business is predicated on offering fast response to customers’ needs. From 1995 to
2005, gm2 had made a considerable and sustained investment to develop its previous warehouse management system (WMS)
to achieve this goal.
However, by 2005, the WMS vendor informed gm2 that support for the system was to be withdrawn. The project team at gm2 evaluated a number of WMS providers and selected HighJump Warehouse Advantage from 3M
Supply Chain Solutions.
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Rosebys/3M Supply Chain Solutions (December 2007)
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Rosebys is the UK’s largest retailer of soft furnishings and household textiles. Modern retailers must continually renew their product offerings to maximise sales and constantly attract new and existing
customers. Behind the scenes of the ever-changing storefront, the logistics operation must also be extremely flexible to keep
pace. Rosebys selected the HighJump Warehouse Advantage WMS from 3M Supply Chain Solutions. The software is architected to
support special user-defined functions without changing the core software or its interfaces. This promotes long-term stability,
by preventing successive customisation projects from compromising the foundations of the system. Moreover, powerful and
intuitive adaptability tools empower inhouse staff to customise the system quickly and confidently.
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Uniq/IBM Business Consulting Services (September 2007)
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Uniq is a chilled convenience food group
focused on the value-added sector of the food
industry, addressing the growing market for
convenience foods in the UK and Europe. It
has a turnover of £900 million, employs 9,400
staff and has operations across three divisions
and 28 manufacturing sites in Europe. The chilled food market is highly competitive,
with manufacturers under increasing pressure
to meet the stringent requirements of major
retail chains that want high-quality food at low
prices.
As many of Uniq’s factories were acquired through mergers, the processes, staff organisation and systems at each had
evolved separately. There were many opportunities to reduce inventory levels and costs, improve the manufacturing mix and
ultimately improve customer service. Following an initial scoping exercise, Uniq’s Board decided to bring in external best
practice expertise to help realise its vision for a leaner, more efficient organisation. Uniq was impressed by IBM’s industry knowledge and collaborative approach.
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Pressman Toy Corporation/IBM Global Services (September 2007)
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Founded in 1922, Pressman Toy Corporation is the third largest games manufacturer in the US. The company specialises in board games featuring licensed characters from the children’s books, movies, and television programmes, such as Hulk, Scooby Doo, Spiderman and The Simpsons. The company also produces games designed for an older audience, covering popular television programmes. Pressman manufactures in New Jersey and serves retail stores, from giants such as Wal-Mart to one-off specialist retailers. The company’s revenue of about $50 million is highly seasonal, with the majority coming from Christmas sales in August, September and October. Judging required manufacturing and stock levels as accurately as possible is essential, as profitability is a fine balance between longer, more economical production runs and the risk of overstocking warehouses with unsold product. Pressman wanted to lower its inventory levels and still maintain a high level of customer service. It turned to IBM Global Services, and was pleasantly surprised to find that an SAP solution was within its budget parameters.
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Halfords/Manhattan Associates (August 2007)
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Halfords is the UK’s largest retailer for auto parts and for cycle and leisure equipment. The company has 426 stores across the
country, served from three distribution centres. Two of these, based in Redditch, near Birmingham, are operated by Halfords,
while the third, in Cowley, Oxfordshire, is run by Unipart. Halfords’ customers can also shop online at www.halfords.com, so
the warehouses are also required to support the fulfilment of orders placed via the web. The company’s legacy warehouse
management system dated from the era when Halfords was still part of the Boots Company plc. Being largely manual, the
system was complicated to use and had become increasingly difficult to support technically. Halfords needed a new solution that would allow for growth and expansion without requiring major modifications in the future. Halfords chose Manhattan Associates’ Warehouse Management solution to manage all three of its distribution centres.
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Mothercare/Manhattan Associates (August 2007)
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Mothercare is one of the UK’s leading retailers of products for parents, mothers-to-be, babies and young children. In addition to its
241 stores in the UK, it has over 300 stores (franchisees) in 35 countries. Mothercare has faced a number of business challenges
in the last six years, a period throughout which Manhattan Associates and its solutions have provided critical supply chain support. Following Mothercare’s de-merger from the Storehouse Group in 2000 and its return to operation as an independent company,
one of the company’s main challenges was to replace its logistics network to satisfy Mothercare’s business strategy of growth,
specialisation and reach. After that was established, the company’s objective was to maximise productivity and reduce costs. Mothercare selected Manhattan Associates’ Warehouse Management solution to run on IBM’s System i platform.
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The Cromer Crab Company/Access Supply Chain – exclusive interview (April 2007)
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Cromer Crab is a 26-year old former family business, now part of the £40 million Seafood Company. The group also
owns Anchor Seafoods, which processes frozen seafood, while Cromer Crab’s factory in Cromer, North Norfolk,
produces chilled seafood products, including prawns, lobster and other shellfish, as well as its own-brand crabs.
In 2000, Cromer Crab was a loss-making business with a turnover of £8 million. Today it is an expanding
£27.5 million company with national and international accreditations, anticipating further growth.
A key factor in the company’s transformation has been its adoption of an SCM system that enables it to control its
costs, improve the quality and efficiency of its processes and offer increasing value-for-money to its UK supermarket
customers.
Cromer Crab needed a system that supported a high
level of process automation and that fitted the
scale of its business while providing the tools to support the company’s growth. It chose Access Supply Chain.
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Geest/SSA – exclusive interview (March 2006)
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Geest Limited is a leading UK-based fresh prepared foods and produce company. It supplies over 4,500 products to
its customers – the major supermarkets and food service providers. In 1935, the first Geest company was
founded in the UK to develop the sale of bulbs. In the 1940s Geest diversified into fresh produce and in the 1970s
into fresh prepared foods.
Geest now has over 40 manufacturing sites. In May 2005, Geest was acquired by Bakkavör, a food manufacturing company of Icelandic
origin specialising in chilled convenience foods. The business operates a decentralised structure and requires real-time information to make immediate operational
decisions. It is standardising on SSA’s Protean ERP package in order to achieve this.
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DEVI/Epicor (October 2005)
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With 18 subsidiary companies and partners across Europe, the Americas and new ventures in the Asian markets, DEVI
is the leader in electrical under floor heating. In 1994, following a decade of continual expansion, the company reevaluated
its IT infrastructure and decided that it would be best served by moving away from its mainframe systems
towards a more localised server approach to support the international structure of the organisation.
The Epicor Scala solution was chosen as the group-wide enterprise resource planning (ERP) system and in 2003, the
switch to Epicor iScala 2.2 combined with a move to a thin-client model enabled DEVI to streamline both its IT support
costs to around 1% of turnover while improving manufacturing and order processing efficiency.
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Sterling Hydraulics/Sanderson (July 2005)
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Implementing a lean manufacturing environment was essential to supporting Sterling Hydraulics’ move from batch
manufacturing to a build-to-order service. The backbone of the implementation is a flexible management system
provided by Sanderson’s comprehensive enterprise resource planning (ERP) software suite. This enables the hydraulic
cartridge valve manufacturer to react rapidly to customer demands and to manage change more efficiently and
effectively.
Based in Crewkerne, Somerset, with a sister company in Chicago, Sterling Hydraulics offers the most comprehensive
and technically advanced cartridge valve ranges and customer-built manifold blocks in the world. Customers include
producers of construction equipment, agricultural, forestry, mining and tunnelling machinery, military and industrial
equipment and general hydraulic applications. The company sells through over 30 distributors in Europe, Africa, the
Pacific Rim, and the Middle East with an extensive distribution network across North and South America.
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Nutriblend/Access (July 2005)
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Nutriblend Ltd is amongst Europe’s top three suppliers of nutritional systems – and the largest in the UK. From its
Rochester HQ, the company designs, manufactures and exports custom-made powder mixes. These are used by many
high-profile clients to fortify a wide range of foodstuffs, including beverages, baby milks and dietary supplements. Breaking from its parent company prompted Nutriblend to re-evaluate its business systems. At that time, a SAP solution
was being used for both the manufacturing side and the back-office accounts. But this solution was clearly hampering
operations, not least by making the company far too dependent on the IT department. Bringing an end to this dependency was a major factor in choosing a replacement system, alongside faster reporting
and more detailed sales analysis.
Nutriblend chose to investigate Access Accounts. The company decided Dimensions was capable of meeting all of the company’s financial requirements.
This only left one further question: how to control the manufacturing process. The answer came in the form of Access
Supply Chain, a manufacturing application (from Access Supply Chain Ltd) that integrates seamlessly with the
Dimensions system.
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