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NM Visual implements Express5800 Series
as a production management system to support Global SCM
NEC Mitsubishi Electric Visual Systems Corp. was created through
a merger of the display monitor operations at NEC and Mitsubishi
Electric Corp. The company completed system integration over the
course of 18 months, and established a totally consistent global
system that supports global supply chain management (SCM). NEC's
"Express5800 Series" IA Server and "EXPLANNER"
ERP package were implemented as the production management system
that makes up the core of this SCM system, which has proven its
ability to perform at the level of a mainframe system, executing
two million MRP calculations in three hours.
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Construction of consistent and comprehensive system for supporting
global SCM operations
IT Promotion Section, "G-Project" members
From left to right: Yamaguchi, Masayuki Ando (Section Manager),
Yoshitake, Toshiaki Takao (Group Manager) |
NEC Mitsubishi Electric Visual Systems Corp. (NM Visual) was established
in January 2000 through a merger of the display monitor operations
at NEC and Mitsubishi Electric Corp. The company develops and sells
products under various brand names, including NEC's "MultiSync"
and Mitsubishi Electric's "Diamondtron" (CRT) and "Diamondcrysta"
(LCD). "Seventy-five percent of the market for these products
is overseas, mainly in the United States," says IT Promotion
Section Manager Masayuki Ando. "We are developing our operations
as a global company, with sales bases in the U.S., Europe, and Asia,
and development and production bases in Japan as well as in Taiwan
and China. So right from the time when the merger company was first
established, we had to quickly construct a system for developing
our supply chain on a global scale." The two parent companies
spent about a year and a half on system integration. Ando, who was
instrumental in the reconstruction of the production management
system, talks about the background to the construction of this comprehensive,
consistent system that supports global SCM.
"Before the merger of the two companies' operations, NEC's
system---called 'Argofast'---was located within the former NEC Home
Electronics, which was mainly in charge of display and monitor operations.
This SCM system covered a full range of processes, from design to
sales and maintenance. About a year before the merger, Argofast
(with the exception of the production system) was entirely reconstructed
on a UNIX platform. Mitsubishi Electric, meanwhile, had a system
for the monitor operation division at its Nagasaki Plant that it
was using as a production management system, but because this was
only designed for a single operation division, the overseas procurement
system and sales system were operated out of Mitsubishi Electric's
head office."
There was only six months between the decision to integrate the
two companies' operations and the start of sales activities, so
when the new company was established, its initially used a two-system
configuration, but there was a strong need to reconstruct the backbone
system quickly in order to achieve global SCM. Shortly after the
merger, the "G-Project (Global SCM Project)" was initiated
with the goal of implementing reforms in business processes and
production methods. As a result of studies conducted through this
project, explains Ando, the company came up with a plan to make
use of the existing backbone system. "We determined that building
an entirely new system using SAP and Oracle ERP would require at
least a two billion yen investment and development time of more
than two years, so we decided our best course of action would be
to integrate all the system elements into NEC's Argofast system."
Although most of these elements, including the sales management
system and supply/demand systems, could be integrated gradually
into Argofast, the integration of the production management system
remained a major issue. Both NEC and Mitsubishi Electric's monitor
operations division had independent production management systems,
and both of these systems were built on mainframes. No matter which
system was integrated into the other, SCM would not be optimized
on a global scale, and operation would be very costly. The G-Project
members thus decided to build a new production management system,
downsized to operate on an open platform.
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Windows 2000 EXPLANNER selected for low cost and past performance
Ando says that the most important functions for a
production management system in the context of SCM are related to
the reduction of manufacturing lead times. "For this reason,
there were two important areas we had to focus on: increasing the
frequency of production plans---that is, achieving MRP (Manufacturing
Resource Planning) management on a weekly or even daily basis---and
establishing a JIT (Just In Time) production management system.
We selected NEC's EXPLANNER ERP package because we needed a production
management system that would fulfill both these requirements."
Another important indicator for the company's selection was the
EXPLANNER's extensive track record of installations. "The EXPLANNER
had been implemented at Mitsubishi Electric's overseas plants,"
says Group Manager Toshiaki Takao, "and after receiving product
explanations from NEC and watching various demonstrations, we found
its functions to be very attractive." An even greater motivating
factor was the issue of implementation costs. When downsizing a
large-scale production management system into an open system, UNIX
had usually been selected as the platform. "I've worked on
mainframes in the past, of course, and also on UNIX-based production
management systems, but in either case the implementation costs
are very high," says Takao. This was part of the motivation
for selecting EXPLANNER, which operates on a Windows platform.
Even so, there were concerns regarding the performance of the IA
server and the Windows system.
Express5800 Series achieves two million MRP calculations
in three hours
The process that creates the greatest burden on a
production management system is the MRP calculations, which are
conducted using extensive batch processing. "In most cases
where EXPLANNER has been implemented, MRP management is conducted
on a relatively small scale, so the throughput on a scale like that
at NM Visual was a major issue," says Takao. NM Visual had
told NEC its performance requirement was that the system be able
to conduct two million MRP calculations in three hours. "We
had been conducting MRP in this time frame on our mainframes, and
we couldn't compromise on this, particularly when we thought about
the need for recalculations in the event of a problem, or the need
to forward data to the accounting system. To be honest, we thought
this would be next to impossible with the IA server."
This was hardly the case. The new system passed with flying colors
during the performance benchmark tests. "These benchmark test
results were the biggest factor in our decision to go with the Express
server," says Ando, who emphasized that these tests gave him
a clear impression of the high performance of the Express server,
and the ability to apply a Windows platform on a backbone system.
In the new system, the Express5800/140Ra-4 (with a 3-CPU configuration)
was adopted as the operation server, and the Express5800/120Rc-2
was adopted as the backup server, all in a cluster formation. The
iStorage S2130---one of NEC's SAN solutions---was implemented as
the storage unit. This system configuration enabled the company
to increase response performance by 50%.
Meanwhile, the issue of response was still a concern in terms of
the Client/server configuration in the WAN environment, so a terminal
server approach, utilizing Citrix's "Metaframe," was adopted
to prevent any loss of response.
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Investment costs expected to be recovered in one year, with operating
costs reduced by over 50%
Basic design began in April 2001, and the cutover was achieved in
the very short time span of about one year. Despite the development
of about 100 add-ons, which required to accommodate additional functions
for production method reforms and to ensure functional compatibility
with the old system, the company conducted trial operations in April
for a single monitor model, and shifted to full-scale operations for
all models in June.
The previous production management system was based on a schedule
of two MRP orders per month, but this system was unable to adapt quickly
enough to the fluctuations in the supply and demand plans, which were
created on a weekly basis. With the operation of the new system, however,
the company has achieved reforms in both business processes and production
methods revolving a round a consistent, comprehensive system that
operates on a weekly cycle, incorporating all elements of the work
process from supply and demand plans to orders, production, and shipments.
The startup of full operations in the SCM system, which now includes
the new production management system, is expected to delivery such
effects as reducing the volume of work in process, cutting back on
total inventory, and lowering distribution costs. According to Ando's
forecast, "We expect to be able to recover investment costs for
the production management system in about a year."
In terms of production costs as well, adds Takao, "We should
be able to reduce costs by over 50% compared to our mainframe system,
which will mean a cost savings of several tens of millions of yen
each year." |
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| Name |
NEC Mitsubishi Electric Visual
Systems Corp.
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| Head Office |
4-13-23 Shibaura, Minato-ku, Tokyo |
| Established |
January 2000 (Sales began in April) |
| Sales |
190 billion yen (FY 2001) |
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| Employees |
600 |
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| Established through a merger of the
display monitor operations at NEC and Mitsubishi Electric Corp.
Involved in the development, design, manufacture, sales, and
maintenance of CRT displays, LCD displays, and products related
to display and monitor applications in markets throughout the
world. Products include NEC's "MultiSync" and Mitsubishi
Electric's "Diamondtron" (CRT) and "Diamondcrysta"
(LCD), as well as OEMs supplied to manufacturers in Japan and
overseas. It has three development bases, two production bases,
and four sales bases in Japan, and operates a development base
in Taiwan, production bases in China and Malaysia, and sales
bases in North America, Europe, and East Asia. |
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