Benefits

• New applications end manual 'work-arounds,' add efficiency to process
• Communication groundwork enables clients to consider, select options
• Despite deadline, project completed at budget, ahead of schedule

Challenge

Adopting a new enterprise-wide computing platform is always a tricky proposition. Making the change under an aggressive timetable only adds to the difficulty.

Saint-Gobain Performance Plastics' facility in Portage, WI, a newly acquired member of the diversified, multi-national industrial corporation Saint-Gobain, faced that challenge. Saint-Gobain, which employs a global work force of 170,000 people, had recently acquired the Portage facility along with its state-of-the-art medical silicone molding and extrusion capabilities. As a critical part of the acquisition, the Portage facility would have to abandon its AS/400-NetWare computing platform and ERP system and move to a client/server-Windows NT environment.

The change meant that the Portage facility would lose two critical functions, built into its old system, that the new system didn't offer. One, a notes-routing application, conveyed specialized manufacturing instructions on a variety of products to the shop floor.

A second application, which prepared job quotes for proposals, was difficult to use and required numerous manual processes. But despite the difficulties involved, it still worked in the AS/400 environment. Those two applications would both be lost in the platform shift.

Saint-Gobain's Portage facility would need to make the transition to the new platform within three months. One month had already elapsed.

Stratagem's Solution

Stratagem assembled a team consisting of a project manager and two developers to restore the lost functionality to the Portage facility's new system. The team participated in several meetings and conference calls to collect the necessary job requirements before beginning off-site development.

At the Portage facility's request, the Stratagem team created a Visual Basic application using SQL Server for routing the manufacturing notes. The old process of printing and reading paper instructions was replaced with a system that enabled employees on the shop floor to read those same instructions on-line.

Stratagem's second challenge was to replace the client's system for generating job quotes. Previously, the process involved numerous manual steps, including cutting and pasting pieces of Excel spreadsheets to create monthly reports. Stratagem built a centralized, streamlined application that enabled the client's proposal/quotes specialist to do more work on-line, thus saving much time and effort.

Stratagem kept the Portage facility involved during the design, development, and testing phases of the project to ensure that the outcomes would be acceptable. The project was finished within seven weeks, one week before deadline.

Result

The Portage facility has successfully made the transition to the client/server environment. But, with the new applications designed and built by Stratagem, the client now enjoys simplified procedures and improved workflows that would otherwise have been lost.

"Stratagem sent us some very capable individuals, and the applications they built provided the functionality we were afraid of losing," said Rich Paulson, PC Technician at Saint-Gobain's Performance Plastics Portage facility. "Their efficient effort helped make our transition to Windows NT a painless process."