High value, low volume alloy steel group Firth Rixson (formerly ANI Aurora) had two major problems with the computer systems in its Forgings Division. Firstly, they were not Year 2000 compliant, and secondly, the three businesses within the division were all running different systems.

As if Year 2000 wasn’t enough of a time bomb, the group then bought a new company for its Distribution Division, Cromdane, whose former parent company committed in the sale process to support its current computer system only until September 1998.

So Group IT Services Manager Jonathan Downing had a clock ticking loudly over his head when he set out to find a new system which would not only be millennium compliant, but which could be implemented quickly at Cromdane, and then across the three Forgings Division sites within 12 months.

Six months from signing a contract with SSI, for its TROPOS ERP system, along with Coda financials, Cognos OLAP reporting tools, Crystal reports and other complementary software, Cromdane was up and live on the new system, followed quickly by the first of the Forgings Division sites.

The Forgings Division of Firth Rixson, with a turnover of approximately £50m with 500 employees, makes forged and machined components for specialist applications in industries including aerospace, defence, oil, gas, and petrochemical, etc.

From the start, Downing involved all parts of the group in developing a statement of requirement. He pulled in representatives from each of the company’s divisions, with specialists in each of the disciplines within the group. The company sent a statement of requirement to a large number of suppliers, and from their responses narrowed down the group to some ten to fifteen suppliers, to whom it sent an invitation to tender.

It then narrowed these down to three or four potential suppliers, who were invited in to present to the Firth Rixson team in workshop sessions lasting three or four days. “It was a natural process”, said Downing. “The teams sorted out the wheat from the chaff. Eventually, there was an overwhelming vote for SSI.”

However, this gave Downing another problem. Although the company had identified SSI as being the supplier it thought would best provide the flexible system it needed, in the time scale required, their parent company, then Australian National Industries had embarked on a different tack.

“I had to propose to our Australian parent, which had started to implement SAP in one of its divisions in Australia, that we had selected a system from a smaller UK based company”, said Downing

Nonetheless, Downing was convinced he’d found the right system. One of the major benefits of SSI’s TROPOS, he said, is its flexibility. Even though two of the Forgings Division sites were ostensibly running the same system, Weir software on a Data General AViiON box, they had each customised their old system to such an extent that the systems no longer looked the same at all.

“The sites had ended up with a real mish-mash of systems. They were very independent and results focused. People tended to take their own initiatives on a site by site basis, and would change the system accordingly. This made the infrastructure very difficult to support,” Downing said.

Basically, all three sites used the same underlying business processes, but culturally each was different, and each had different products and different methods. So what Downing was looking for was the ability to provide a customised front end for each site, while retaining the same system underneath.

“One of the selling points of TROPOS was the ability to manipulate the front end to suit individual sites without changing the back end transactional system. That way we retain the ability to support the application across the whole division,” said Downing.

But it was not just the software itself that impressed the company. SSI’s Talisman methodology fitted very well with Firth Rixson’s culture of employee empowerment and team working. Talisman helped Firth Rixson to scope the project accurately and set itself clear, achievable, objectives for both the short and longer term. Downing admitted that with the very tight timescale it had for getting Cromdane onto the new system, the company did not have the luxury of time or people to enable it to follow the methodology to the letter. Nevertheless, the Cromdane implementation was on time, and more importantly, on budget.

With the other three sites, Firth Rixson did follow the Talisman methodology to the letter, and Downing said the whole implementation process was incredibly smooth as a result. He said the Talisman methodology led Firth Rixson down the route of first understanding its business and its processes fully before it started mapping those processes onto the TROPOS system. Similarly, it highlighted where the company might change some of its processes. Downing said before going onto TROPOS, the company tended to have more departmental functions, but now it has broadened these to a more process based approach across multiple departments.

The two other Forgings sites were due to have gone live at the beginning of December 1998, but there were certain outstanding company issues which the company felt were risks, and it opted to wait until February 1999 before going live at these sites. “This totally fits with the Talisman methodology, which says if there’s a risk, don’t do it”, Downing said.

The other thing that facilitated the project for Firth Rixson, was working so directly and closely with SSI itself. Glyn Booton, SSI’s consultancy Director said “People talk glibly about the customer/supplier relationship but I would really like to think we have built the kind of trust between us and Firth Rixson, that they can just pick up the phone any time they have a problem, and know it will be solved”.

Downing said there were huge benefits working directly with SSI, rather than through a third party systems integrator. “We have ready access to support people, and behind them, directly to the developers who have written the system,” he said.

“Working so closely with SSI also helped SSI to understand our business,” said Downing. Although SSI has gained a wealth of experience in the metals business, there were naturally elements of Firth Rixson’s business that were unique. “SSI came to understand why we were asking what seemed to be such silly questions.”

Downing said there were certainly elements of SSI’s experience relevant to Firth Rixson’s business. For example SSI’s experience in dimensional processing gained through its paper manufacturer customers matched some of Firth Rixson’s requirements. Also SSI has customers in the pharmaceutical and chemical industries, where it is used to dealing with quality assurance issues fundamental to Firth Rixson in its aerospace business.

The Forgings Division has now been live on the system for some five months, and Downing says the results have been very positive. Its initial focus was simply to get up and running on the basic TROPOS and Coda systems in order to continue doing what it has always done. The next phase was to harness the full capabilities of the system in order to gain new business benefits.

The company’s focus now, is to get the real benefits out of it. SSI is now looking at helping Firth Rixson improve its business intelligence reporting from the system. Firth Rixson will also focus on interfacing the Harbinger electronic data interchange (EDI) product with TROPOS which it bought as part of its £1.2 million contract with SSI. Downing said in the next few months the company will be under considerable pressure to get going with Harbinger in order to “be a little smarter with EDI”.

Ultimately, the company expects to reduce the costs of its work in progress and significantly bring down its inventory cycles with improved lead times. It expects to see improvement in its sales order processing systems, and enhanced quality management, planning, financial management and reporting.

“The general view from the whole company is that the roll out to date went very well indeed”, Downing said, and after a period of consolidation, in which the system is completely bedded down in the current four sites, Downing is hoping to be able to continue the implementation across the rest of the group.