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Dramatic Growth Demands Spur Unisia PRMS V. 8.4 Support

 

When Unisia of Georgia Corporation (UGC) faced an exponential increase in volume, management began to prepare their facilities but also review their enterprise resource planning system (PRMSä V8.4). Their key objective was to determine current user expertise and overall system capability to handle the increasing business demands.

Project Background

Growth was literally on the horizon at Unisia of Georgia Corporation, (UGC).  As you approach their Monroe, GA facility, a second 110,000 square foot building is rapidly completing construction on the site. 

InterBiz’s PRMS is the primary operating system for production of a variety of electronic and mechanical Engine Control Units for Nissan.   These include Purge Control valves, Crank angle sensors and valve timing controls.  An impending contract with Ford is expected to fill the new building and provide opportunities for even more expansion.  

With these objectives in mind, Unisia turned to Systems Conversion Ltd., (SCL) of Cartersville, Georgia.  UGC was familiar with this respected consulting firm’s experienced personnel, breadth of technical resources, and superior project-implementation methodology from their initial PRMS implementation success in 1998. 

Project Planning

Systems Conversion conducted a systems evaluation, keeping several factors in mind: 

·         PRMS was the only ERP system most people at UGC had known. 

··     There were a limited number of people to re-train.

·    The emphasis would be on Planning and Shop Floor, with some attention given to Order Entry and Purchasing/Receiving.

·     UGC management realized that raising users’ skill level and confidence was key to continuing success.

Systems Conversion’s findings confirmed what UGC management had suspected.  Many current employees came on board after initial training and implementation. As a result, planning and shop floor execution was not getting full benefit of PRMS functionality.  Many processes had become manual efforts.  Re-training and familiarization with the  

 

software’s capabilities would be required to keep UGC on track when daily activity increases dramatically.  In short, UGC had a very capable ERP system, but the software was significantly misunderstood and under-utilized. 

UGC then contracted with Systems Conversion to provide consulting services including education for Manufacturing Set up, Planning, Repetitive execution, Purchasing and Order Entry.  In addition, there were days scheduled for a process review and consolidated pilot activities.  There were concerns about some specific functions in PRMS including:

·         Bills of Material effectivity dates

·         Soft bills of material accuracy

·         Material Requirements Planning and order allocation  

These along with other issues would be specifically addressed in the education phase of the project. 

SCL consultants also determined that additional PRMS technical training would be beneficial.  UGC agreed with this assessment and authorized additional training in this area.  This benefits all users by providing improved IT staff support. 

Systems Conversion recommended, as they always do, that a copy of UGC’s live production database be used for class.  By using this instead of generic training data, exercises for the classes would closely reflect ‘real world” situations.  This recommendation yielded two very real results:

  • The users understanding of the software’s functionality was increasing significantly.

  • Some serious data integrity problems were identified.  These had not been previously recognized in UGC’s live system given the limited use of PRMS planning functions.

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