ES/No ERP.

Here are the many companies that have installed Enterprise Software
but not done much about improving business processes. In
most respects, they’re quite similar to re-implementers: Some of the
implementation tasks have been done—mostly software-related—
so those steps can largely be dropped from their plans.
Multiplant.
How about a company or division with more than one plant? How
should it approach implementation? Broadly, there are three choices:
serial, simultaneous, or staggered.
Take the case of the Jones Company, with four plants. Each plant
employs hundreds of people, and has a reasonably complete support
staff. The company wants to implement ERP in all four plants.
The serial approach to implementation calls for implementing
completely in a given plant, then starting in the second plant and implementing
completely there, and so forth. The schedule would look
like Figure 3-2:
This time span is not acceptable. Sixty months is five years, and
that’s much too long.
The simultaneous approach is to do them all at the same time, as
shown in Figure 3-3.
Company-Wide Implementation—Overview 51
Plant 1 Plant 2 Plant 3 Plant 4
Month 0 15 30 45 60
Figure 3-2
Serial Approach
This approach looks good because the entire project is finished in 15
months. However, there may be some problems. One would be availability
of centralized resources such as Information Systems, overall
project management, and so forth. It may be impractical to support
all four plants simultaneously.
Another potential problem gets back to the catch-22 of ERP. Implementing
ERP is not the first priority. Some companies may wisely
conclude that implementing simultaneously in all plants could be
more than they want to bite off at one time. The effort and intensity
required may be more than desired.
This leads most companies to choose the staggered method shown
in Figure 3-4.
This approach has several advantages
1. ERP gets implemented throughout the entire company fairly
quickly (in this case, in slightly over two years for four plants).
2. The impact on centralized resources is lessened.
3. Only one plant is piloting and cutting over onto master scheduling
(MS) and Material Requirements Planning (MRP) at a
time, so the overall level of effort and intensity is reduced.
4. Plant personnel can teach each other. For example, users from
52 ERP: M I H
Figure 3-3
Simultaneous Approach
Plant 1
Plant 2
Plant 3
Plant 4
Month 0 15
plant 2 may participate in the pilot and cutover at plant 1. In so
doing, they can learn from the first plant’s mistakes and avoid
them. Plant 3 people can learn and help at plant 2, and so on.
One company we worked with brought all nine of its plants from
time zero to Class A in less than three years. This was a very complex
implementation, and the staggered method served them very well.
Please note: Even though their implementation was staggered, Sales
& Operations Planning was implemented across the board and was
done early. The reasons:
1. S&OP only really works well when it operates across the entire
business unit.
2. Implementing S&OP does not typically involve major resources.
3. In a combined ERP/ES implementation, S&OP can be implemented
independently of software considerations. It doesn’t
need to “wait for the software.”
4. It’s an early win.