When managers at thousand-employee enterprise Pegler Ltd started looking for an IT system to replace their existing inadequate legacy systems in early 1998, they knew that they had unique and specific requirements, yet they also understood the necessity for standardisation and interoperability.

Project Manager Barry Blagden says, ‘We manufacture high quality heating and plumbing products from scratch using the fundamental raw materials, and have a wide and complex product range which needed to be monitored throughout the entire process from raw materials and orders coming in through manufacture to packaging and distribution.’ Not only does Pegler manufacture its own brass plumbing and heating valves, but it also makes it own brass. The Doncaster-based organisation has a continuous cast brass furnace, a foundry and stamping shop on site. Gerry Boundy, Project Manager with Supply Chain and e-Business specialists SSI, adds ‘Pegler also had a complex discounting system with many variables which had to be built into the system and made as easy to operate as possible. They are also under pressure from key Customers such as Plumb Centre and Grahams to deliver consistently against much shorter lead times.’ According to Blagden, Pegler needed something which ‘could handle every aspect of our business from sales right back to raw materials production.’

Having previously embarked on a protracted and ultimately aborted attempt to replace its old computer system and widen the automation of its business processes, Pegler was wary of making another mistake and choosing a supplier which would be unable to deliver an IT solution to solve its needs. Its managers approached the specification and selection process with great care. Blagden says, ‘We wanted to replace the in-house system that ran the warehouse and sales, and the Wang system that was supposed to run the manufacturing side but was incomplete. We had already decided in 1991 that we needed a complete new system to improve the efficiency of the business, but unfortunately our choice, Wang, proved to be disappointing so we found ourselves in the same position again seven years later. But this time we were going to get it right.’

With an overall budget of £1.5m against turnover of £55m, the managers at this former subsidiary of Tomkins plc initially embarked on their own internal process to appraise their requirements and define their objectives. Blagden says, ‘We needed to know what we wanted the IT system to do, and to streamline any processes that we could make more efficient even before we appointed the solution provider.’

This procedure led to some basic business process re-engineering and generated the ITT which Pegler’s managers gave to three pre-selected potential suppliers. ‘We had already narrowed the field somewhat,’ says Blagden, ‘because we knew that we needed a supplier who understood our specialist manufacturing requirements.

SSI was chosen for several reasons. One was the fact that it had a track record in providing supply chain systems to firms involved in the key areas of raw materials management and manufacturing. ‘Turning raw materials into finished goods is a highly complicated process,’ says Blagden, ‘and we needed a supplier who already understood the difficulties involved in our workflow processes.’ Another key reason was the experience of the project managers at SSI.

‘We were very impressed by the years of practical experience that the SSI staff could demonstrate, and in fact this expertise became a very important factor in our achievement of a solution which met our present and future needs.’ He explains that Boundy and his team were able to think on their feet and demonstrate flexibility and originality in problem solving that can only come from years of hands-on project management. ‘There were several occasions when a less experienced project manager might have said that there was no solution to the problem and closed the book, but the SSI project team were able to think creatively and laterally, solving any problems that arose and taking everything in their stride. I’m really glad that we recognised the value of their experience early on, because it really paid off later.’

SSI and Pegler signed a contract in May 1998, and Blagden and his team then worked with SSI’s Talisman Methodology to achieve the successful implementation of the TROPOS Supply Chain software, along with Coda Financials, Business Intelligence and EDI. This involved breaking the job into three clear phases. Boundy explains, ‘First we take a good look at the existing processes, which we have found is a good opportunity for all managers throughout the enterprise to learn details about how other managers and departments operate and so help streamline them all. The next phase is to explore the new system, design the solution and start to merge training with the daily routines of managers and all employees so that they are prepared for the switch to the new system. This process ensures that the new system incorporates all their requirements. The third phase is the actual implementation when the system goes live, which we did in two phases at Pegler.’ Boundy tells how the first phase to replace the sales, despatch and accounts systems went live on 1st April 1999. The second, manufacturing phase went live in October 1999. ‘We had a tight timetable which kept us extremely close to the agreed targets,’ he says.

Blagden says, ‘It was essential that the new system delivered decoupled manufacturing yet we knew how important it was to have a flexible system which would expand and be easy to use and modify in the future.’ TROPOS and the other software modules have allowed the Pegler team to make small modifications already, and Blagden is now looking to integrate e Commerce based on the browser version of TROPOS, which is fully compatible with the existing processes. ‘There is an in-built software developers module which we quickly mastered, and allows us to make modifications and extensions.’ Blagden is also enthusiastic that TROPOS users share developments, and future iterations of the product include the best developments from users. ‘It’s ironic that when software works well there is less pressure for an active internal user group. When we were trying to use the Wang system this group was very busy.’

Pegler will be looking at developing an e-Commerce enterprise with full integration to the TROPOS back office system. Based on his experiences to date, Blagden anticipates that this will be a ‘quite painless and logical process with a smooth transition from the human to automated processes’. Blagden says that from the start he could see benefits being driven out. ‘The managers have so much more information available to them that they can make better decisions, which improved stock holding, order fulfilment and supply chain efficiency and effectiveness. In addition, the users reported that they found the system extremely easy to use, and they can see the benefits it can bring them.

Managers throughout Pegler continue to work together to see which other areas of the firm’s processes and supply chain can be improved with the help of the IT system. As Blagden says, ‘There seems no end to the amount of process tightening and efficiency improvement that the SSI solution can ultimately deliver.’