Managing Automation - March 2008 - (Page 20)

[ COVER STORY ] Celestica Blazing the Integration Trail elestica is best known as a lestica has since replaced the Extricity tool with global provider of electronics SAP’s XMII middleware tool.) manufacturing services (EMS). Celestica developed two other integration-enBut you could easily make the abled business processes. One allows ERP users to argument that the $8.8 billion drill into plant floor production systems to get realglobal company is really in the time visibility into component consumption and business of reacting to change. finished goods inventory. This allows Celestica to Ever y day, Celestica’s cusrespond with information quickly when customers tomers come to it wanting to request last-minute order changes. change orders or change the enThe other integration-fueled process enabled gineering specifications of the products Celestica is Celestica to respond quickly to customers’ enmanufacturing for them. In the fast-paced, hypergineering change orders. The integration allows competitive electronics industry, if Celestica can’t SAP, Visiprise, and MatrixOne to operate with a react to these change requests quickly, its cussingle set of master data so that when a design tomers will find an EMS company that can. change is implemented, it shows up immediateNot surprisingly, executives at Celestica figured ly in the ERP and production systems. That elimout long ago that, under those circumstances, inates a time lag that could result in Celestica’s searching for design specifications or inventory producing parts that don’t reflect the engineerinformation in different, siloed ERP, production, or ing changes. product data management systems didn’t make a All three integration-enabled processes, Celot of sense. That’s why, about nine years ago, Celestica officials say, are focused on the same oblestica became one of the first global manufacturers jective: to allow the company to respond quickly to to invest heavily in developing and implementing customers’ business requirements. “In order for us business processes built around the integration to be an important part of our customers’ supply of ERP, MES, and product data management chains, we need to share a lot of information with (PDM) systems. The effort has enabled Celestica to respond quickly to customer “To be an important part of our customers’ demands and to eliminate lots of cost assupply chains, we need to share a lot of sociated with manually moving data from information with front-line employees and one system to another. In 1999, Celestica decided to standardize customers.” — Celestica’s Nithiyeswaran on SAP as its ERP platform and Visiprise MES software for manufacturing execution. At front-line employees and customers on a real-time the same time, the manufacturer decided to imbasis,” says Tilak Nithiyeswaran, director for MES plement three cross-functional business processes deployment at Celestica. “Having end-to-end visithat would require the integration of SAP, Visiprise, bility into things like shop order status, WIP status, and MatrixOne, Celestica’s product data manageand material consumption aligns with our comment (PDM) platform. pany strategy of presenting the most flexible soThe first integration Celestica developed linked lutions to our customers.” the SAP order management module with the proThe initial integrations were implemented at duction scheduling functionality in Visiprise. It auCelestica’s headquarters plant in Toronto. In entomatically generated shop production orders in suing years, however, the company grew rapidly Visiprise from sales orders executed in SAP. Cethrough acquisition. So, Celestica needed to delestica created data translations between SAP and velop a methodology for deploying its standard Visiprise and, using business process integration application suite, including integrations, quickly tools from Extricity Inc., defined process flows at each of its newly acquired plants. So far, that, for example, let Celestica employees track Nithiyeswaran says, Celestica has done so at nine any serial number produced on the shop floor acquired plants. The company’s IT organization back to the original customer purchase order. (Ceis able to replace the existing systems at newly ma March 20 2008

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Managing Automation - March 2008

Managing Automation - March 2008 Contents Take 1 Mailbox Mitsubishi, IBM, and ILS Team Up to Make Integration Easy for Automakers Former Agile Exec Takes the Reins at Arena Solutions The Next Phase for 2006’s PM Award Winner Integration Firm Boomi Redesigns for On-Demand Ex-Wonderware Chief Takes Helm at Apprion Notes Cover Story: A Rare Breed Special Report: Where are Control Architectures Heading? Transformation: Back to Reality Integration: Getting Standards Under One Roof Industries: The Quest for the Perfect Order Product Scan Advertiser Index Next

Managing Automation - March 2008

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