Planning meetings began almost immediately.  As a result of those meetings, the project kickoff meeting was held in July 2000, with top management participation from both AUTECS and SCL.  Management commitment (imperative to the success of an implementation project) was promised by AUTECS and project goals were defined:

• Upgrade to the latest version of PRMS (version 9.0)
• Re-educate the work force and improve system utilization
• Improve inventory accuracy and planning reaction time
• Implement ongoing system process evaluation and training

Education Phase

After development of a highly detailed micro-plan for the project, SCL began the rigorous education phase for the AUTECS personnel.  The Project Manager was key to the project success.  He constantly encouraged everyone’s input and participation.  The project demands were balanced with AUTECS fulfilling its commitments to its customers. 

Education was conducted as if the client had little or no experience with PRMS.  Due to attrition and growth, this was the case in many instances.  In total, thirty classes (including some basic ERP classes) were held over a two-month period.  SCL used the client’s system, test database and products so the students would be familiar with the data.  The participants rated each of these classes in the very good to excellent categories.  They were impressed with the depth of knowledge the consultants brought to the table, not only about PRMS, but also about how to apply this software knowledge in a manufacturing environment such as theirs. 

During this phase of the project, AUTECS recognized that they could be employing better manufacturing control techniques in their current process.  As a result of this discovery, the project team, led by the project manager, recommended to management that they should make the change from a discrete environment to a repetitive environment during the cutover to the 9.0 version.  The management team agreed with the need for this change.  It would be incorporated in the scope of this project. 

Piloting Phase

Piloting is where education theory and real-world application come together.  AUTEC’s project team

members got “hands-on” experience setting up the system, loading their data, and utilizing the tools as if they were in their live environment.  Real enlightenment resulted as the team members made one discovery after another.   

Piloting is also the phase were the SCL technical team became significantly involved in the project.  By this time, the project team had developed a very good understanding of what PRMS could provide and what modifications would be needed to improve its applicability to their specific business processes.  Modification requirements were listed and prioritized, determining what must be done before the cutover and what could be done during post-implementation.  SCL’s technical resources were assigned accordingly. 

By the time the Consolidated Pilot was to begin, SCL’s project manager had sufficiently “weaned” himself away so that the project team members could function as the module “experts” during this phase.   

Additional AUTECS employees were brought into the training environment and taught how to perform their daily duties by the AUTECS module leaders.  SCL supported AUTECS throughout this phase whenever problems arose or clarification was needed.  However, AUTECS was clearly in control of their project at this point. 

Technical commitments were completed, and the entire process, including third-party applications, was repeatedly processed to assure a smooth functioning system had been designed and built. 

Cutover Planning

Cutover Planning involved preparation for the actual cutover date.  A majority of this project phase involved data-conversion planning.  All programming modifications that were required prior to cutover were implemented and tested.  SCL’s technical consultant assigned to the project wrote specific data conversion tools to deal with the evolution from discrete to repetitive manufacturing during the cutover.  The micro-plan was further expanded to include a highly detailed cutover plan incorporating a step-by-step guide for each cutover or data-conversion activity.  This document alone listed more than 200 activities that would be performed during the cutover. 

An entire weekend was planned for the cutover.  At the close of second shift on a Friday night in December, the cutover plan was executed, checking off each step one-by-one to assure