Maxtor
Dramatically Improves Manufacturing and Supply Chain Operations
"Maxtor strives to be the most flexible manufacturer in the industry. It combines rapid access to information with the ability to quickly adjust and respond to changes in that information. That's part of our core philosophy and the Business Objects data integration platform helps provide that availability."
Scott Hicar, Chief Information Officer and Vice President of Worldwide IT for Maxtor.
Challenge
Maxtor Corporation is the world's largest supplier of hard disk drives in terms of unit shipments, as well as a leading supplier of workgroup-class networked attached storage devices. Customers and partners include leading computer OEMs, global distributors and systems integrators, and more than 2,000 U.S. retail outlets. Maxtor meets demands with a flexible manufacturing architecture that provides its partners, customers, and self with a unique competitive advantage by more efficiently responding to market variability.
Maxtor, however, faced a 24-hour communication lag time between its supply chain and worldwide reporting departments. This lag was the result of manual information sharing among all domestic and international time zones. Maxtor sought a solution that would provide real-time communication so it could quickly and efficiently track inventory and optimize inventory stocking by fulfilling orders on a just-in-time (JIT) basis - which means not starting the production cycle until a customer has placed an order.
Maxtor also wanted volume and gross margin reports on a daily basis to provide key personnel with critical business information, including general inventory availability and invoicing overviews. With this information, Maxtor could make immediate adjustments to better manage inventory within the supply chain, improve time-to-market efficiency, and cuts costs by reducing the amount of goods and materials kept in stock.
The simultaneous deployment of business intelligence (BI) software from Business Objects with a new enterprise resource planning (ERP) system was the perfect solution. The BI environment would complement existing enterprise applications by allowing daily access to key billing, booking, backlog, tracking inventory, and finished goods inventory information.
Approach
Thanks to the integration of BusinessObjects™ Data Integrator (the industry's first real-time, batch data integration tool) and BusinessObjects Sales Analysis Rapid Mart™ (a customizable solution for extracting information from enterprise applications), Maxtor's supply chain and manufacturing facilities now operate within a more flexible real-time, collaborative environment.
These BI tools allow critical information to be extracted from Maxtor's ERP systems. In fact, Maxtor uses the solution to provide real-time supply information in adjusting the daily build plan for its factory. This process optimizes customer fill rates and satisfaction, reduces inventory by tightly managing the build schedule, and maximizes income by building only revenue-generating products.
Three times per day, before each geography's operations begin, Maxtor gets a true picture of what to supply to whom, and exactly what to build. Maxtor's supply chain picture shows the current inventory position at all customer JIT sites worldwide. The account teams then match the inventory position with demand inputs, where they are dynamically assessed with a supply and demand process.
Data Integrator and the Sales Analysis Rapid Mart are used extensively in the collection of supply data, serving as the core extraction engine around SAP®R/3. At Maxtor's data center, Data Integrator sits between SAP R/3 and i2®'s supply chain management (SCM) solution. Data Integrator integrates SAP R/3, i2, and other data at all of Maxtor's customer JIT loca-tions, along with information from its transport carriers, factory, and distribution centers. Maxtor also uses BusinessObjects to generate reports published on the web. In total, the tools from Business Objects enable Maxtor to extract 5,000 line items - or approximately 1,000 orders - per day.
According to Scott Hicar, chief information officer and vice president of worldwide IT for Maxtor, the Business Objects data integration platform was very easy to incorporate into its new environment. "This was extremely important as we had plenty of other tasks to worry about as we rolled out SAP R/3. In fact, I think the Busness Objects products are great, but just as impressive is the company's professional services organization.You can find plenty of SAP R/3 or data warehouse experts, but it is highly unique to find people that know both so well. We have greatly benefited from the consulting expertise at Business Objects."
Results
Since Data Integrator automatically generates reports in ABAP (a programming language for developing applications for the SAP R/3 system), Maxtor is able to make changes very quickly. As Hicar explains, "Maxtor has saved thousands of hours worth of development time by implementing the Sales Analysis Rapid Mart. Before, we were looking at thousands of hours of generating custom ABAP code just to produce critical, must-have reports. With Business Objects, we eliminated that initial coding and continue to benefit each year in the reduced amount of maintenance required to keep Business Objects tools running, versus maintaining all the custom code we would have had to develop."
Maxtor has put itself ahead of the market by creating a flexible environment, allowing it to successfully forecast demand in the erratic PC OEM market space. By sharing information across the extended enterprise, the company has improved its global view of supply availability versus service demand. Now, it can rapidly respond to fluctuating hard disk demands while effectively managing supply chain costs - including inventory obsolescence, work-in-process, raw materials inventory buildup, spares and field return inventories, and JIT inventory hubs.
Through the use of BI, Maxtor has truly put itself in a much better position to match supply and demand, improve fulfillment based on customer priority and fill rate targets, and dramatically enhance the use of its manufacturing facilities worldwide.
Quick Facts
Industry
Hard disk drive and workgroup-class networked attached storage device supply.
Business Pain
Manual information sharing created a 24-hour communication lag time between its supply chain and world-wide reporting departments, thus preventing optimal inventory stocking.
Why Business Objects?
BusinessObjects Data Integrator and BusinessObjects Sales Analysis Rapid Mart complemented Maxtor's existing enterprise applications, allowing its supply chain and manufacturing facilities to operate within a more flexible, real-time, collaborative environment and providing daily access to key billing, booking, backlog, tracking inventory, and finished goods inventory information.
For More Info
Visit Maxtor website www.maxtor.com