ERP expert looks outward
Flextronics' Yves Perreault believes in best-of-breed
Staff -- Manufacturing Business Technology, 12/1/2002 12:00:00 AM MST
Few managers at companies using enterprise resources planning (ERP) systems can say they wrote the book on implementing a particular ERP package. But Yves Perreault can, both figuratively and literally.
Perreault works for Flextronics, a Singapore-based contract manufacturer to the electronics industry. As director of business consulting for the ERP group within Flextronics' Enterprise Solutions unit, Perreault has implemented ERP and supply chain management software from Herndon, Va.-based Baan at more than 80 Flextronics sites worldwide. He also wrote one of the first books about Baan deployments, Implementing Baan IV, back in 1996.
How has all this experience shaped Perreault's view of enterprise applications? For one thing, Perreault says companies need to be disciplined in the way they deploy systems. He says business process modeling software within the Baan suite has delivered a common structure for Flextronics' ERP deployments, but so has a data handbook that codifies the way Flextronics treats part numbers and other nomenclature within the context of ERP installations.
"We use best practices in the way we implement," says Perreault, who adds that the average time for deploying Baan's ERP system at a Flextronics site is eight weeks.
The ERP system, which Flextronics began deploying in 1997, today runs 80 manufacturing sites, and the Enterprise Solutions unit also has deployed Baan's supply chain planning tools at multiple sites. The implementations, says Perreault, "have enabled faster scheduling and synchronized production across sites."
As much of a believer in ERP as Perreault is, he sees ERP as a backbone system. At Flextronics, says Perreault, the solution set includes integrated plant systems software from Datasweep, San Jose, Calif.; product data management software from Agile Software, also based in San Jose; as well as Baan's ERP and supply chain planning software. The Enterprise Solutions unit implements these packages within Flextronics, and also for some of Flextronics' customers. Additionally, says Perreault, his group has developed a few software packages of its own, including a quality management solution.
Perreault says this best-of-breed approach forms what Flextronics calls its "Reflex" solution set. "Reflex, quite simply, is the infrastructure we use to be responsive to customers," he says.
Over the years, Perreault has noted changes with ERP systems. Back in the early 1990s, a new set of ERP vendors took hold because they offered client/server technology, relational databases, and up-to-date graphical user interfaces and tools. "The major change has been in the architecture—in adding Web-based capabilities, and in making integration very smooth compared to what it was even a few years ago," he says. "With Baan, for instance, there is an integration framework called OpenWorld that is used to tie Baan's software into any other package."
The shift in architecture was inevitable, says Perreault, since end-user companies have come to the realization that ERP packages—no matter how effective—cannot possibly tie every conceivable function under one database and tightly integrated suite of modules. His advice to other end-user companies: "Consolidate around a common backbone, keep the openness, and be ready for a plurality of solutions interacting to respond to customers."
