Dow Corning integrates "to do what you say, and say what you do"

A presentation at the recent ARC Advisory Group conference by Barry J. MacGregor, global business process manager, Dow Corning, and Sudipta Bhattacharya, VP-manufacturing applications, SAP, had a seemingly modest goal: to establish why a manufacturer would want to systematically integrate its plant-floor and business systems.

Then again, before investing millions of dollars in said integrations, it seems only right that the reasons for them be neatly stated.

Together, Bhattacharya and MacGregor did it very well.

MacGregor says Dow Corning employs a single instance of SAP, and is committed to servicing its customers via Web front ends, through the enterprise system, delivering accurate data about their orders within four hours of the physical reality as to order, shipping, and quality status.

"The information on the Web is automatically generated," says MacGregor, "so the underlying data taken from the enterprise system has to be accurate."

That means, states Bhattacharya, "When a quality problem occurs, it's not real until it's in the ERP system."

Dow Corning, MacGregor adds, also is committed to OSIsoft's PI system—a real-time event management and data historian system—as a corporate standard, and "has one of everything when it comes to process control."

To deal with this problem of disparate plant-floor systems, Dow Corning recently standardized on Lighthammer as a Web services-based infrastructure for collaborative manufacturing processes based on widely dispersed data, "providing visualization for company employees," says MacGregor.

Dow Corning's return from SAP 4.6B ERP includes better expense tracking; more accurate financials (especially important in light of Sarbanes-Oxley); and better quality and service.

For example, "ERP is used to track pump life cycles, so when limits are reached, a signal to the ERP system automatically generates a needed maintenance order," says MacGregor, pointing to the larger issue that plant events really do impact the business in terms of inventory reductions based on real-time information, asset efficiency based on the ability to operate to capacity and plan, reduction of cycle times, and financial transaction accuracy.

In short, because ERP embodies order-fulfillment business processes, it inevitably influences the manufacturing systems in a profound way.

Some of the gains from enterprise/plant-floor integration may seem pedestrian, but given that 3-percent inaccuracy is considered inevitable with manual data input, the cost savings associated with not having transactional errors are substantial, MacGregor points out.

Currently, Dow Corning is about halfway through a 10-year effort to integrate its operations.

In conclusion, MacGregor asked his audience to imagine a workplace where production month-end closings are no longer necessary, where ERP is the "conduit" into e-business environments, and satisfied customers that know "you do what you say, and say what you do."