CIMdata PLM Industry Summary Online Archive
27 December 2006
Implementation Investments
Polypipe Aims for Improved Efficiency with IFS Applications
IFS announced a significant deal with Polypipe , one of the UK's market leaders in plastic piping systems, to delivered improved efficiencies across its UK sites. Polypipe has chosen IFS Applications to achieve better insight into its financial, supply chain, manufacturing, distribution and maintenance operations. Polypipe expects their implementation of the latest technologies from IFS to be able to support improved efficiencies in operational activity whilst also leading to improvements in customer service.
IFS Applications 7 will replace numerous disparate legacy systems to automate a range of labour-intensive and costly manual processes. Polypipe will benefit from having a single integrated system providing improved visibility of information across the group and the capability to respond with greater agility to internal and external market requirements.
The group-wide Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) solution will enable more effective operations across the wide range of Polypipe's UK businesses. Each business is focused in particular market areas, including production of specialist plastic components, manufacturing of subassemblies and fittings, and distribution of pre-packed merchandise. As well as supporting the needs of the individual companies, the IFS implementation will strengthen the inter-company activity within Polypipe, a key element in delivering the range of product solutions to each of the markets which are served.
"Polypipe has attained its market-leadership position by providing a broad product range, reliability and value. Managing our processes to deliver best value products into every market is critical, and as such we need to streamline many of these to improve efficiency across the company as a whole," said Mike McKay, Head of Information Services, Polypipe.
"With IFS Applications 7, IFS was able to demonstrate a better match to our requirements than its competitors. IFS' experience in the plastics and manufacturing industry reinforced that it has an understanding of our business and our industry, and provided the confidence that it is able to deliver the system to support Polypipe."
Industrial manufacturing is one of IFS' targeted vertical markets. IFS has a broad customer base in the industry, focusing on medium to large-sized manufacturers that need support for complex order-driven and mixed-mode manufacturing across the extended enterprise. With strong support for project management, engineering, constraint-based scheduling, product configuration, and after-sales support, IFS' component-based business solutions are designed to help companies improve quality, contain costs, and improve their competitive position in manufacturing industry segments such as machinery, defence, fabricated metal products, and plastics. Industrial manufacturing companies also benefit from IFS' lifecycle management solution, which goes beyond product lifecycle management (PLM) to provide better integration and management of three critical business areas-products, customers, and resources-throughout their lifecycles.
IFS customers in the plastic products manufacturing industry include Coba, Richco, Schlemmer Filtrona Extrusion, Nolato Plastteknik AB, Linpac, Value Plastics, and Euroform AB.
"Increasingly, UK manufacturers are under pressure to achieve a higher level of agility and responsiveness to changing market conditions," said Paul Massey, Managing Director, IFS UK. "Companies like Polypipe, with a diverse product portfolio and multiple site base, need to have accurate information and analysis across their operations. In this case our software will help increase efficiency and productivity."
Polypipe's 400-user, site by site implementation of IFS will take place during 2007.
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