Automating an Enterprise-Wide Order Processing System

Business Challenge
One of the world's largest window manufacturers needed to integrate and automate its order processing system, which handles all of its orders for windows. This was a mission-critical application, with requirements for high availability and reliability. The revamped order processing system would give the company a competitive advantage, allowing its distributors and dealers online access to the system, and giving them a streamlined way of configuring, quoting, and ordering both standard and custom products. The order processing system needed to do the following:

• Provide online performance for remote customers.
• Automate product quoting and configuration, which was a manually intensive, tedious operation.
• Integrate ordering process to materials, manufacturing, shipping, and billing.
• Develop a scalable solution that would grow with the business.
• Represent a vast quantity of window design options, while at the same time reducing the quantity of standard part-numbered items required.
• Improve service to distributors and dealers.

Solutions
Using a number of software technologies, including Sun ONE IBM CrossWorlds, UNIX, and Oracle, and Baan, ATI did the following:

• Redesigned large portions of the order processing system's three-tier environment.
• Integrated the order processing system with legacy systems, Baan ERP, and two different new quotation systems.
• Automated the configuration and pricing of all the company’s products.
• Provided support for multiple client and server platforms: Windows PC, Macintosh, and UNIX.
• Routed all product orders to legacy applications for materials, manufacturing, scheduling, and invoicing.
  

Key Business Results

• Improved ease of ordering for customers, while at the same time increasing pricing accuracy, and greatly reducing the staffing required for custom order processing.
• Reduced the quantity of standard part-numbered items required, from around 85,000 to the approximately 6,000 most commonly ordered items.
• Delivered a highly available, mission-critical, enterprise-quality system.
• Closely integrated the new ERP system with legacy client/server and mainframe systems.
• Enabled faster turnaround of custom products.
  Supported future growth with a scalable environment.