Midsize supplier to vehicle manufacturers likes EDI flexibility
By Staff -- Manufacturing Business Technology, 5/1/2006 6:00:00 AM
Red Dot isn't a big company, but the 500-person, Seattle-based supplier to heavy-vehicle manufacturers has complex supply chain communication requirements, says John-Mark Tucker, Red Dot's IT manager. In fact, it was the ability of an ERP suite from Oracle to flexibly handle EDI that was a big factor in helping Oracle land Red Dot as a customer.
Red Dot makes heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) systems and replacement parts for construction vehicles, buses, fire engines, and other heavy vehicles. In searching for a new ERP system, Red Dot looked at offerings from vendors focused on small and midsize companies, but found Oracle's EDI functionality superior.
Oracle almost didn't get a foot in the door because its solution was perceived as too expensive. "Everyone here assumed that Oracle would be far too expensive, but that turned out not to be the case," says Tucker. "The quotes were similar to the point that cost became a non-factor."
Red Dot is deploying Oracle's eBusiness Suite in two phases. The first phase, completed earlier this year, put in place order entry, accounting, shipping, and other distribution functions, including EDI. The EDI needed to be flexible, says Tucker.
For instance, some OEM customers will order a single part number for delivery to multiple locations, but because some locations require different packaging, Red Dot needs to be able to split an EDI order into different part numbers as a means of tracking packaging variations. Oracle's EDI can handle this, says Tucker, and "was by a landslide more robust than the other systems we looked at."
Another plus to the Oracle solution, says Tucker, is its configurability using Oracle Forms and stored procedures, a capability that is being folded into Oracle's Application Server—the middleware the suite runs on. The technology, says Tucker, allowed for the first phase of the ERP deployment to be completed with only four customizations. By contrast, the system the Oracle suite is replacing has about 170 customizations. "For us, the configurability is huge," says Tucker. "We may want an extra field to show up on an order screen so we don't have to call up a new session to see an extra piece of information. With Oracle's tools, we can add a field in a matter of minutes."
Tucker concedes that he has one resource that other midsize companies may not have: an experienced Oracle database administrator. Tucker says this person has been crucial to smooth deployment.
