JD Edwards EnterpriseOne Implementation Powers GE HITACHI HVB
Company Overview
Founded
in 1977, this joint venture between GE and Hitachi,
Ltd. has become known internationally as a premier
manufacturer of high voltage equipment. Hitachi,
Ltd. (Japan) lends its excellence in technological
resources, while General Electric (USA) provides its
established network of highly trained responsive
field sales engineers. GE-Hitachi HVB, Inc. (GE
Hitachi) includes a 75,000 sq. ft. manufacturing
facility housing state of the art equipment and
personnel necessary for the manufacture and test of
gas circuit breakers and gas insulated switchgear.
Challenges Faced
In 2000, GE Hitachi was facing growth opportunities,
yet had old systems that were not integrated and not
supported. Going back on their system’s maintenance
proved prohibitively expensive. They had many
disconnected departments, manual processes and Excel
spreadsheets. It was time to look for and to
implement a new solution.
The Solution
The executive team reviewed four solutions in depth.
JD Edwards was one of them, provided by the
CD Group. This was also the solution with the
highest bid. When the president of GE Hitachi, Fabio Zanni, looked at all of the hidden costs associated
with the other options, he determined that the long
term costs of working with CD Group would prove to
be the lowest. According to Mr Zanni, “the primary
reason we chose CD Group was because of their
employees. CD Group consultants proved to be serious
about improving our business.” Mr. Zanni also stated
that the fact that CD Group was local to their
business was a large advantage.
GE Hitachi chose JD
Edwards EnterpriseOne (formerly OneWorld)
and CD Group to implement the following
functionality in Phase One:
General Ledger, Accounts Payable, Accounts Receivable, Financial
Reporting
Inventory Management,
Procurement, Sales Order Management
Forecasting, Requirements
Planning
Quality
Configuration Management
Product Data Management, Shop
Floor Control
Change Management
Job Costing
Technology Infrastructure
GE Hitachi was exceptionally pleased that the
implementation went live only one month later than
originally scheduled. Mr. Zanni stated that CD Group
“taught us how fast we should move and stayed on top
of the schedule. We had no major issues after going
live in November.”
Benefits Realized
While benefits are apparent in all departments, the
two impacted the most included Finance (especially
reporting and analysis) and Materials (orders,
purchasing, inventory tracking). The primary benefit
can be summarized as follows with several quotes
from Fabio Zanni.
Productivity Gains
“Now
that we have been live for a while and everyone
has adjusted to the new system, the productivity
benefits are readily apparent.”
Inventory Visibility
“The
manager of materials used to collect data
manually. Now we have the details necessary to
see where the inventory is and what is moving.
We can really begin to focus on excess
inventory.”
Timely reporting
“I
can get my financial reports in a matter of
hours in as much detail as I need. Our financial
close is complete by the 10th of the next month,
when it used to be complete by the 15th of the
month after that. That’s a reduction of more
than 4 weeks. This increased efficiency gives me
more time to analyze the data, such as
expenses.”
Better reporting
“I
get reports that are useful to me. I can review
profitability by product line and by product. I
can compare this to our assumptions at the time
of sale and make adjustments.”
Tighter controls
“Moving from excel spreadsheets in many areas to
EnterpriseOne forced us to have tighter
controls, thereby reducing chances for error. An
example is our control over Accounts
Receivable.”
Business Process Efficiencies
“While we didn’t execute any major business
process changes, we did improve overall
efficiency by integrating the departments as an
order flows from the Sales department to the
Materials Department to the Engineering
department to the Production department and
finally to the Financials department.”
Improved Documentation
“When we started this implementation, we didn’t
have our business well documented. That would
have helped us to communicate better with CD
Group at the beginning. However, now our
processes and systems are well documented and
that has proven to be a benefit.”
Overall, through its partnership
with CD Group, GE Hitachi HVB has met its goals of
moving to an integrated, fully functional
Enterprise Resource Planning
(ERP)
manufacturing system that is capable of providing
the information necessary for the management to run
the business. The combination of good software and a
team that knew how to drive the customer
implementation has enabled GE Hitachi to achieve
further advancements in their business. ”
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