Situation Assessment
The ongoing expansion and growth of AWG has allowed them to better serve their cooperative members with more distribution centers and greater access to a wide variety of quality merchandise. But, mergers and acquisitions over the years caused problems identifying common items ordered from different locations – ordering the same item could get you pizza in Kansas City but pineapple in Oklahoma. This was causing confusion for AWG across their supply chain.
There was a number of possible ways to attack the problem at hand, and Risetime’s project team worked closely with AWG to determine the best possible solution for them. Careful consideration was given to the implications of this project to the entire organization. What kind of downtime might they have? How would this solution affect other operational systems, and what kind of updates would those systems require?
Solution Overview
The existing Supply Chain Management Application was a combination of technologies. Risetime’s solution delivered a user-friendly graphical interface that allowed for rapid development, in addition to a redesign of the item attribute tables. A change in the key structure of a single table was one possible solution, but after analyzing the benefits, AWG realized that this would not position them to take advantage of other strategic goals for the company. Instead, a complete redesign of the item database was implemented, reworking the data from nine item attribute tables to nineteen. Changes on a smaller scale were also made to the vendor attribute tables. Over 90% of the existing 200 tables used by the application were modified.
The resultant database model and logic allows the Supply Chain Management Application to support AWG in the following areas:
- Unique identification of an item within the organization
- Continued merger and acquisition
- Full implementation of industry standards through use of the GTIN (Global Trade Identification Number)
- Visibility and traceability of multiple buying sources
- Compliance with state regulations for origination and destination taxes
Value Measurement
The solution has succeeded in bringing AWG’s business operations up to standards in terms of best practices for supply chain data management. AWG has a complete view of products as they move through the supply chain, and can quickly identify the size, quantity, and location of all products at any given time. Most importantly, the solution delivered by Risetime is fully scalable and will continue to support future mergers and acquisitions.