Combustion equipment manufacturer Hamworthy Combustion is implementing a turnkey TROPOS and CODA ERP solution from SSI to help manage its expanding global operations and deliver market leadership ambitions.
The Poole-based company has rapidly expanded its global operations over the last ten years, incorporating Peabody Engineering, Airoil-Flaregas and Chentronics within the Hamworthy Combustion brand. The company now exports over 80% of its products worldwide and is a top three leader in its industrial, power, marine and offshore, and refining and petrochemical market sectors.
Hamworthy Combustion will use TROPOS and CODA to standardise and integrate business processes across its global business. It expects the system to help improve efficiency and competitiveness, reinforcing the companys position as the top combustion solutions provider in the world. Implementation of the new system is due for completion in August 2005.
Its time to consolidate our expansion with an ERP system that everyone can use, that enables us to take best practice from each of the businesses and gives us consistency of reporting and ease of access to management and operational information, says Hamworthy Combustion project manager, David Webb. We are confident that TROPOS and CODA will help us meet those objectives.
SSI Managing Director, Trevor Lewis says: Its exciting for SSI to be so involved in such a major development. Hamworthy Combustions confidence in putting TROPOS and CODA at the hub of its business processes shows the versatility of our products and people.
Hamworthy Combustion has used SSIs older generation PROTOS system since 1986. But as the company took on new acquisitions, sometimes with their own information systems, it became clear that standardising on PROTOS was not the right strategic move for this ambitious global player. David Webb and his team analysed a number of replacement options and became convinced that TROPOS and CODA were the right solution.
We felt comfortable with both the TROPOS system and the SSI people. The SSI team worked hard to convince us that TROPOS and CODA would do everything we needed. When we started presenting the benefits around the company, I got more email support than I have ever known for a computer system! That kind of enthusiasm gives us a great start.
TROPOS will impact the working lives of most of the companys 500 UK and overseas staff, replacing a wide range of autonomous work styles from spreadsheets to manual record- keeping with an integrated system based on state-of-the-art technologies.
Hamworthy Combustions system is a comprehensive package of TROPOS modules and CODA Financials. It includes ledgers; product and process management; purchasing; inventory control; customer contact and campaign management; sales order processing, despatch and invoicing; forecasting and capacity planning; shop scheduling; spares and service management; and project planning and control.
The system also comes with tools for application design and development, and for customising standard documents and automating business processes. TROPOS Incoming Generic Interface (TIGI) will interface with the companys CAD system. With a view to the future, SSI is also developing role-based applications for Hamworthy Combustion, with web-based screens that can be customised to individual job needs.
Among key benefits, Hamworthy Combustion expects the sales process to be improved through better distribution of technical information and faster delivery of estimates. Contracts will be quicker to construct as data duplication is reduced and better materials cost analysis enabled. Service and spares department processes will gain from remote sales order entry and online engineer visit scheduling. Production will benefit from automated reporting and improved forecasting.
One of the first uses for the new system will be consolidation of group accounts from around the world in February 2005, ahead of the August go-live date. This will be a real demonstration of the systems speed and efficiency over the previous spreadsheet-based process.
David Webb says: The TROPOS and CODA system should reduce duplication across the company and increase automation of standard processes. This will save significant time and allow our people to add more value and gain job satisfaction. We expect that as information becomes more accessible, we will find efficiencies that we cant begin to forecast today.
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