Microsoft Dynamics AX manufacturing case——solution of Elec-Tech International Co.,Ltd.


Industry: Home appliance,Discrete Manufacturing

July 1, 2013 9:21 AM | 2485

Customer Information

Guangdong Elec-Tech International Co.,Ltd. (ETi), formerly known as China Resources Electric, was founded in May 1996, mainly engaged in the design, production and sales of smart home appliances. The company was listed on Shenzhen Stock Exchange in 2004 with the stock code of 002005. It is one of the first eight enterprises listed on the SME board.

After more than a decade of development and growth, ETi has now become a leading global manufacturer of small home appliances in terms of scale and technology, with three production bases in Zhuhai, Zhongshan and Shenzhen, a plant area of 500,000 square meters, a total of more than 10,000 employees and an annual production capacity of 35 million units of various small home appliances. The company's leading products such as automatic computer-controlled toaster, oven and electric fryer occupy the top three market shares in Europe and America, and the first market share in North America.

With more than 500 technology patents, ETi has invented the world's first all-plastic toaster, the world's first DC motor-driven quick toaster, the world's first light-wave oven, the world's first automatic thermostat-controlled outdoor oven and other products, ranking at the forefront of the industry in terms of innovation. While becoming a major supplier of OEM/ODM for small home appliances worldwide and occupying a high international market share, ETi has started to actively expand its domestic market. The company now has two well-known brands "ACA" and "P.H.S", of which "ACA" has become one of the fastest growing brands in the domestic small home appliance market. The "P.H.S" brand series of health products with independent intellectual property rights were officially launched in 2006, marking the company's entry into the field of intelligent household products.

In 2008, ETi's turnover reached USD 400 million. The company aims to achieve annual sales of US$1 billion in three years, laying a solid foundation for becoming "the world's most competitive supplier of intelligent household products". Since 2008, ETi has started to enter the field of new materials and is taking a place in these sunrise industries.

With the continuous expansion of the business scale, the information interaction between the original systems can not bear the burden, the imperfect functions and the existence of information islands are plagued by the further development of enterprises. In particular, the simple financial software of purchase, sale and inventory has been far from meeting the needs of business development, causing great pressure on the accuracy of business plan. After careful scheme selection, Microsoft Dynamics AX system, with its flexibility, easy development and powerful planning function, won the selection and was used in the manufacturing center of ETi Group. Through the secondary development of cooperation with Microsoft partners, we have achieved real-time analysis and decision-making of enterprise business data, helped enterprises implement the idea of centralized management, and provided guarantee for the long-term development of enterprises. At the same time, it is also being promoted in the group.

Project Background

Founded in May 1996, Guangdong Elec-Tech International Co.,Ltd. is an outward-oriented listed company that develops, designs, manufactures and sells intelligent small home appliances and micro motors. Over the past ten years, with independent R&D and multi-business development, this "young" company reached a turnover of USD 400 million in 2008 and has more than 10,000 employees, including more than 2,000 professional and technical personnel.

Adhering to the eight-word policy of "innovation, speed, quality and cost", the company is committed to establishing a modern enterprise management model based on scientific and technological innovation, vigorously exploring international markets, enthusiastically serving customers at home and abroad, and cooperating with trade and research partners in all aspects, gradually forming three competitive advantages represented by innovation ability, global sales ability and cost leadership, and establishing its own strong position in the international smart small home appliance market segment.

It should be said that it is the above-mentioned deficiencies and the current situation of rapid development of the enterprise that prompted ETi to make determination to carry out information system transformation. It is not difficult to see that a manufacturing enterprise, which has been operating for more than ten years and is still in a period of rapid development, is in urgent need of a centralized IT system to support its business development. In other words, the construction of a set of system application integrating enterprise logistics, capital flow and information flow is imminent. The implementation of Microsoft Dynamics AX project is first applied to ETi Group's manufacturing center and will be extended to other subsidiaries of the group, such as motor factory, die-casting factory and oven/baking factory. In the next 3-5 years, the software application scale will be further expanded to pave the way for the future development of the company.

Solution

As a professional small home appliance manufacturer, ETi has very high requirements for information systems: a centralized information management platform must be able to support the business development of the company and the increase or decrease of applications, while a high degree of reliability, superb planning, and perfect system support capabilities are all important to ETi.

In fact, since March 2007, ETI Group's manufacturing center has adopted a set of purchase, sale and inventory software, and UFIDA U8 at the same time. However, due to its poor planning and unable to meet the complex order / inventory management of enterprises. Since 2008, the company has considered adopting a new management system. At that time, the company's senior management put forward the goal of informatization construction of the company, and proposed to first use one year to strive for informatization, so as to solve the problem of timely update and accuracy of the company's inventory management information, so as to meet the needs of the company's future development. Through careful selection, ETi finally selected Microsoft Dynamics AX, and from January 2009, it completed the previous information import work and started the single system operation, completely getting rid of the previous manual document information entry and verification work.

In the selection of ERP system, ETi also consider some other well-known brands at home and abroad. Finally, they consider that Microsoft Dynamics AX is an international well-known product and can fully meet the basic business needs of enterprises. Its powerful secondary development ability can also be adjusted at any time according to the future development of the enterprise. The powerful planning function provided by Microsoft Dynamics AX can solve many problems such as inventory, production data accuracy and so on. In addition, the familiar operation interface of Microsoft Dynamics is very easy to use for end users, and it is also very easy to export data between Microsoft Dynamics and previous systems. Moreover, Microsoft Dynamics is more cost-effective than other international products.

Beiwei Business Management Consulting (Shenzhen) Co., Ltd., a local Microsoft Gold Certified Partner, also played an important role in the successful implementation of Microsoft Dynamics AX of ETi. As a Gold Certified Partner of Microsoft, Shenzhen Beiwei has rich product knowledge and ERP industry experience. Its excellent implementation method and nearly perfect history of successful launch make ETi establish confidence in the success of ERP project. In the specific implementation process, with the assistance of IT Department of ETi Group, Shenzhen Beiwei carried out business research and status analysis on all departments of the enterprise, and discussed specific problems. In view of the uneven original information foundation of ETi, the two sides worked out a complete set of practical solutions. At the same time, a set of strict and feasible training program has been developed. After many times of training and strengthening the management process, the smooth implementation of the project has been ensured.

Implementation Effect

For a long time, ETi Group attaches great importance to the construction of informatization. The Information Department of the company has been leading the overall information work of the company since its establishment. Wang Donglei, chairman of the group, once pointed out: "we used to implement ERP system in Westar, but we failed. This is a very embarrassing thing, so it should be carried out unswervingly.Failure has the lesson of failure. That is, the first-hand thought cannot be too conservative and can not be self-contained. All systems feel that without modern information system, such a large body can not operate. Financial, procurement and production systems all have this requirement. I believe that the information system is pushed now, and the requirements from the grass-roots level and the management front end are more, that is, more power. I can say that whether ERP system can be well and successful is a benchmark to measure whether an enterprise can move from traditional management to modern management. It is hard to imagine that thousands of people's factories have no information system. All personnel and cadres who are not suitable for the information management system will be eliminated. We are not allowed to fail again. In this matter, if you don't do well, you can change people. If you don't have one, you can get out there. We are clear that the difference between us and practical and modern management is our huge inventory. Inventory will die. I have said that for many years, but it has no effect on catching every year. Summarize practical experience, with ERP system may be good. So the inventory is a decisive factor to test whether ERP is successful. Inventory is out of control, everything is crap. " With the close attention and support of the senior management, the selection and implementation of the project went very smoothly.

Rich and accurate data

After applying Microsoft Dynamics AX products, ETi's inventory inquiry speed has been greatly improved. in 2009, ETi's monthly inventory amount decreased by 62 million RMB year-on-year, while the inventory turnover rate increased from 6.24% to 7.95%, which brought great economic benefits to the enterprise. In addition, the new system has helped the company improve its logistics management, while helping to reduce its inventory rate and improve its capital turnover. The new system achieves accurate information data management, which makes the planner's work much less intensive and enhances the accuracy and timeliness of relevant data and information for the enterprise.

After a period of training and integration, the senior management of ETi started to use the decision information and reports provided in Microsoft Dynamics AX. For example, various material gross profit status, cash flow status, capital balance status, production progress status, order gross profit status, cost status of each workshop or department, etc. Through the successful application of Microsoft Dynamics AX products, business processes are standardized and optimized, and information sharing between departments is enhanced so that sales can be monitored, orders managed and inventory needs forecasted quickly and efficiently, significantly reducing inventory backlogs. Enhanced data management for accurate and timely data. Accurate, complete and timely data supports the company's decision making, improves the efficiency of the entire enterprise, and increases the leverage for the company in the fierce market competition.

Superb planning capabilities, supply chain management and optimization

After deploying Microsoft Dynamics AX platform, ETi has improved the unified management of trade agreements, and all purchase orders can be analyzed and managed according to the data given by the system, which has realized the overall reduction of enterprise raw material procurement, production, inventory, sales, logistics efficiency and cost.

In addition, for the management of some common consumables and hard-to-buy materials of ETi, the safety stock management mode is adopted in Microsoft Dynamics AX platform, and the actual purchase is made according to the system safety stock demand order. This not only avoids unnecessary procurement waste, but also avoids the reduction of production capacity caused by certain materials out of stock, which ensures the stability of production operation to the maximum extent.

For the common inventory data required by enterprises, ETi basically entered and counted the information through manual documents, which often resulted in untimely information and poor accuracy rate, which seriously affected the inventory turnover rate of enterprises. In this regard, Microsoft Dynamics AX platform has shown great flexibility in helping and supporting the company. For example, the company uses to let upstream and downstream suppliers see the relevant purchase orders sent by the enterprise online, and check the inventory status of suppliers' materials in the enterprise, and view the accurate and timely information of products and materials in and out of the warehouse, so as to achieve inventory and timely account analysis, and maximize the efficiency of procurement and production.

Secondary development and a familiar and easy-to-use interface

Microsoft Dynamics AX products provide an easy-to-learn X++ development language that makes secondary development easy, fast, and very flexible for enterprises. The layered development of the source code reflects the application of this technology from the core, emphasizing the ease of maintenance for secondary development.

This powerful function of secondary development is beneficial for enterprises to adjust or add new processes according to their own situation while retaining the advanced western management concept. It is also beneficial for enterprises to develop functional modules with their own characteristics based on Microsoft Dynamics AX. ETi can also adjust the ERP system at any time with the needs of the enterprise's own development, so as to better support the future business development of the enterprise.

In addition, the familiar operation interface provided by Microsoft Dynamics AX allows ETi's end users and management to get familiar with it and use it smoothly in a very short time, which improves the management quality of the enterprise in all aspects. After applying Microsoft Dynamics AX, ETi's decision makers deeply appreciate the benefits of flat management, which greatly improves the management efficiency and quality. At the same time, the senior management of the company has become more sensitive to the changes of each department, and the decision making is faster and more accurate.

Summary

With the great cooperation of ETi's ERP project team and Beiwei Company, the current MRP system operation was finally realized after Microsoft Dynamics AX was selected. The inventory turnover rate and delivery on-time rate, which are the most important concerns of the chairman, have improved significantly, and the manufacturing center is entering into a benign development state. On the contrary, QAD in sister factories is gradually shrinking, while UFIDA software in some factories is still stuck in the low version of U820 and U860, which is mainly used by the finance department. The group software needs to be integrated urgently, and ETi is going to promote the use of Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009 in the group in the next step, so as to improve the overall informationization level of the group and realize the overall improvement of the group. To achieve the overall improvement of the group's efficiency.