Multidomain platform streamlines automaker’s data organization and retrieval efforts

Situation

Manufacturers need documentation for a variety of reasons and for an increasingly larger audience. Is the production process sustainable or the product environmentally friendly? Where are the factories located? Have the components of this structure been produced in compliance with the Buy American Act? Is a green mission statement available? Are conflict minerals involved? Is the catalog complete and current?

In the past, this information wasn’t often required from early-stage suppliers that made a bracket or formed metal into grating. But now these plants must call raw material suppliers to amend material test reports to an updated spec, show carbon emission data, forward certifications, provide greater product transparency, and draft official compliance statements referencing purchase orders.

It is costly and time-consuming to hunt down all these nongoverned documents with inconsistent information, located in multiple internal formats/ERP systems, sometimes involving vendors who take days to respond, or requiring manually matching ERP item codes to receiving paperwork or email attachments.

This was the situation faced by SGMW, a joint venture among SAIC Motor, General Motors, and Liuzhou Wuling Motors. One of the largest manufacturers of microvans in China, SGMW needed to streamline its business operations while reducing dependency on its existing ERP system.

With a multitude of data sets from ERPs, users, and suppliers, SGMW spent a lot of time merging formats, locating critical data, sharing product information, researching specific parts from suppliers, and providing transparency into its process—and that was having a negative effect on workflow. With the inflow of data increasing at the rate that it was being requested downstream, manually acquiring, managing, normalizing, and sharing information that was fragmented throughout the ERP and other systems became a major accuracy and efficiency concern.

Resolution

After learning of SGMW’s needs and challenges, Stibo Systems proposed a scalable system that melds workflow efficiency and data quality.

The multidomain master data management (MDM) platform reaches across the entire enterprise from supplier through production to customers, serving as an aggregator for SGMW’s internal and external data sources. The system allows the automaker to acquire or upload all necessary information easily and acts as a central hub for all part, factory, bill of materials, logistic, assembly, and supplier data. The company then can share the critical data points downstream automatically for greater transparency into its product and process.

Complete product master records are already linked to a raw material when onboarded through supplier portals, and those records follow the product’s life cycle through to the complete information of the manufactured product itself and beyond.

Using MDM data that has been governed, onboarded, and organized provides instant transparency into an asset, customer, location/facility, process, product, supplier, and regulatory compliance with a few clicks in its consolidated platform, no matter how many systems are involved. This also helps automate and streamline the process should complete details need to be pushed to digital catalogs, distribution channels, or e-commerce with regionalized personalization such as cross-referenced classifications, specs, or local languages.

With more tasks being placed on fewer individuals, automating these types of processes not only saves time but also improves information accuracy and standardization, which in turn mitigates risk.