When Sun Chemical Corp. (Fort Lee, NJ) and Eastman Kodak Co. (Rochester, NY) formed the Kodak Polychrome Graphics (KPG, Norwalk, CT) joint venture in January 1998 and then purchased Horsell Graphic Industries and merged it into the business in April 1998, officials at the new company immediately set out to replace the legacy ERP systems each company had been using with a single platform, the iSeries-based Prism ERP system from SSA Global (Chicago). Prism went live just a few months later.

Soon, however, KPG officials realized a key piece of the picture was still missing. While KPG now had a consolidated system for tracking financial and other transactions, it lacked a common reporting platform that would allow demand planning and other organizations to easily access data generated by the new ERP system and other systems. So, at the end of 1999, KPG deployed Graphical Performance Series (GPS) business intelligence software from Vanguard Solutions Group Inc. (Glen Ellyn, IL).

GPS WINDFALL

"Prism could generate reports, too, but required programming time to create them," explains Nigel Penhearow, KPG's business operations director for the U.K. and Irish markets.

Currently used on a daily basis by KPG's IT and demand planning personnel, as well as for major projects, GPS has helped the company consolidate warehouse operations, cut production cycle times, improve picking and order accuracy, monitor product shelf life, calculate costs per customer, reduce losses due to out-of-stocks, determine order profitability and significantly slash freight costs. In fact, since implementation, freight costs have been cut by about 50%, a figure that translates into hundreds of thousands of dollars over the past four years.

BI WITHOUT THE DATA WAREHOUSE

Now owned solely by Eastman Kodak and part of its Graphic Communications Group, KPG provides products and services to the graphics communications market including printing plates in stock and custom sizes. With operations on six continents, the company generates about $1.7 billion in annual revenue. Since plates are cut to size, turnaround time and waste monitoring are critical. In addition, plates have a finite shelf life; therefore, expiration dates must be monitored so product can be shipped before it becomes out of date.

At KPG, GPS pulls about 99% of its data from the Prism ERP system. "However, it can pull data from any ODBC-compliant database," says Michael Powers, director of marketing at Vanguard Solutions. "Our customers use GPS to consolidate data from a variety of databases, including ERP, CRM, Logistics, Demand Planning, even Excel spreadsheets."

Most reports run in just a couple of minutes. The eDeployment function sends analyses to the appropriate recipient via e-mail. Users also can set up personalized information views and schedule them to be delivered at regular intervals.

The first major project to use GPS was a consolidation of U.K. warehouse operations in Watford, a town located about 10 miles north of London. With inventory and shipping divided 50/50 between facilities in Watford and a second KPG facility at Leeds 150 miles away, it was clear consolidation could cut operational costs. "Merging inventory could reduce stock levels while providing better service to customers," explains Penhearow.