Performance management suite gives optical products maker laserlike business view
By Jim Fulcher, contributing editor -- Manufacturing Business Technology, 9/1/2005 12:00:00 AM
Spectra-Physicscan't compromise on product quality, but it still has to keep a lid on production costs.
The key to succeeding with this delicate balancing act is generating and monitoring reports on all production processes. Initially this was a problem, says Mark Rowell, IT director for the Mountain View, Calif.-based manufacturer of optical laser instruments, because the company's only means of generating reports was to have workers type data taken from transactions systems into PC-based spreadsheets.
That exercise left numerous opportunities for data-entry errors, but even worse, says Rowell, was the time lag between when data was entered and when users received reports. Likewise, there was no efficient means of consolidating reports across business units.
To remedy the situation, the Spectra-Physics IT team launched a data warehousing initiative that resulted in all company data—from its primary enterprise system and a collection of disparate systems servicing individual businesses—automatically being funneled into a single Oracle database.
This eliminated problems associated with data being late or inaccurate, but Rowell says Spectra-Physics could not extract useful reports from its data warehouse until it added a business performance management software package from Hyperion Solutions.
This package, called the Hyperion Performance Suite, allowed Spectra-Physics to replace the spreadsheet-based reports—which presented only narrow views of production operations—with a broad picture of how the entire operation was performing.
"As soon as we implemented [Hyperion], we got information we wanted in a way never before possible," says Rowell. "Users can easily generate ad hoc reports delivered direct to their desktops. They don't need to search for data anymore. And if necessary, reports pulled from the data warehouse can be validated against the source data for accuracy."
Use of the Hyperion Intelligence Dashboard Builder module has improved visibility to enterprise data. One of the first dashboards the team created monitors product returns and inventory—delivering clear views of inventory in five Spectra-Physics locations.
"This wasn't possible before—not even manually," Rowell says. "Using the inventory dashboard, we can see total inventory as well as inventory levels at various locations."
Another dashboard was developed for buyers and engineers involved in Spectra-Physics' Materials Review Board (MRB) efforts to prevent product-quality issues by summarizing data about materials that don't pass quality assurance, are reworked, or are returned to the manufacturer, says Rowell.
In total, Hyperion Performance Suite delivers more than 120 reports, most of which are generated daily, while others come monthly, weekly, and even hourly. What's important, says Rowell, is that Hyperion transforms all of Spectra-Physics' data into useful business intelligence—regardless of where the data originates.
"This centralized data store and the dashboard views deliver the type of visibility decision-makers just couldn't get before," Rowell says.
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