Service-Oriented Architecture

Since implementing IFS Applications in 2002, Value Plastics has been able to standardize its business processes and deliver the type of documentation that is necessary for a company that manufactures tubing connectors used in FDA-registered medical devices.

However, according to Value Plastics Vice President of Information Technology, John Gibson, the most remarkable thing about the company’s instance of IFS Applications may be the way that Gibson’s small IT staff has been able to use IFS Applications’ .NET framework to create web services that are consumed by various departments and trading partners.

CENTRALIZED, STANDARDIZED
Value Plastics initially implemented IFS Applications for manufacturing and financials in 2002, and upgraded their solution in 2006 – utilizing IFS’ service-oriented architecture (SOA).

“Prior to implementing IFS Applications, we had a home grown application that we used to handle our specific way of doing business, but did not have a solution for some of our business processes,” Gibson says. “Furthermore, we were faced with an inability to pull information to support business decisions and were challenged when it came to making sure that all of our activities hit the general ledger so that we could balance our financials in a meaningful way.”

Part of the challenge that Value Plastics faced stemmed from the fact that it was running several point solutions that were not integrated with each other, according to Gibson.

“We were running non-integrated applications, including a process-based application used for customer orders and shop orders that had no tie-ins with our financial systems,” Gibson says. “We had been running a Great Plains financial application for banking, payroll and accounts payable/receivable, and that system had no tie-in back to costing. When it came time to make decisions on capital equipment purchases or the standards used for costing or inventory evaluation, we were almost running blind. Meanwhile we were running a homegrown solution in Microsoft Access to track our shop orders.”

According to Gibson, IFS Applications not only provided a single repository of information that allowed for good management decisions, but expedites the auditing process required of Value Plastics’ medical and FDA registered customers.

“IFS gave us a very flexible platform to accommodate specific business functions without a concern that we would meet barriers within the ERP solution as we made changes to our business,” Gibson states. “Our enterprise application now helps us capture and disseminate large amounts of data. We have 4,000 SKUs, and all of them are proprietary items and most are maintained in inventory. Some of those items involve multiple routers run on separate tools through separate processes, and we need to track 100% of that manufacturing history for lot based control because we serve the medical industry.”

According to Gibson, Value Plastics submits to over 240 self-audits and many customer audits last year in order to help customers comply with their FDA requirements.

“Our tubing connectors go into devices made by many of the most prominent device manufacturers in the healthcare industry – and they are of course manufacturing FDA-registered devices,” Gibson says. “Each part in their devices must be religiously tracked and audited to maintain their FDA certification, so our customers have to do their due diligence and complete very detailed audits of Value Plastics. To maintain certified supplier status with them we must demonstrate strict control of our processes and the resultant data.”

Gibson explains that the IFS Shop Order serves as the centralized source of information about individual lots of parts, providing visibility of information on the resins, colorants, machines and other variables involved with each individual manufacturing run of each product.

“We can demonstrate to our customers that the shop orders that we create reliably capture information on each product,” Gibson says. “We can prove that we are giving them correct information with product and material certification. The customer then conducts a physical audit of our building and processes. We have made a commitment as a company that IFS Applications is the sole vessel to capture all of the information on that process, with the shop order as the repository for information on each part manufactured, and that pays off not only to provide visibility to our processes and performance internally, but in the way it provides visibility for our customers. If a customer has a particularly unique question for an audit, we can generally walk through one or two IFS Applications screens to find the information they need.”

SOA SUCCESS
One way to ensure that an enterprise application remains a central repository for information and avoid data silos is to extend the enterprise application out using web services and a SOA. While companies many times Value Plastics’ size reportedly struggle with this process, Gibson and his small department have been able to use IFS Applications’ SOA-based framework to open the applications to new internal and external users.

“Six to seven years ago, when we first went through our application selection process, we heard the first rumblings of SOA,” Gibson states. “IFS has done a good job in releasing new versions that are true to that initial commitment to support the SOA way of doing things. We do get value out of SOA and will get more value in the future.”

Gibson has been able to leverage the fact that IFS Applications is built on an SOA to open up the company’s business systems with a web shopping cart, provide thin slices of the IFS applications to internal audiences and to create a portal for a business partner in Mexico.

“For our web shopping cart, we created an application in-house and that application has a real time dynamic tie-in to IFS Applications including customer-centric pricing and real-time product availability,” Gibson says. “It is a good example of how we can maintain everything in IFS and maintain it in one system while opening our business systems directly to customers. For our inventory room, we use IFS Applications’ .NET framework and created web services for the picking side of our operation. We deliver these services to a handheld windows based scanner to do real time bar code based validations against pick list, inventory moves, and inventory receipts We also have leveraged web services for internal use on our intranet, there we deliver a narrow slice of the application for repetitive processes so that end users are not burdened with the full application or the full form. This is an elegant solution for people involved with straightforward, non-changing processes. If a user just needs to give an input or receive an output or a validation, this can be a great way for them to access the applications.”

In order to make sure that a trading partner in Mexico could report directly into IFS Applications shop orders, Gibson and his staff of three were again able to open up a web service.

“We were having trouble taking outputs from our partner’s systems and wedging them into an IFS shop order,” Gibson explains. “But we knew we needed to maintain information within that central IFS shop order repository and its underlying database. So we exposed a small slice of the IFS shop order and IFS transport task and extended those out through a secure SSL through an extranet site. When we have work that is shipping to that company, we now will generate an IFS transfer task, they can see that part coming down immediately on their extranet, and we get immediate notification that they have received them. This extranet also allows us to capture scrap, scrap reasons, counts of completed components and backflushes. Additionally, our Mexican partner maintains some finished goods inventory at their site, so we have extended out a small slice of the customer order component. That way they can print and execute a pick list generated within the IFS customer order module, and we can ensure accuracy and lot traceability to meet customer needs. We anticipate doing more things like that.”

The flexibility of IFS Applications means Gibson feels he can configure IFS to meet changing business needs, and where necessary to drive efficiencies and accuracy, create a web service for virtually any situation.

“If there is an IFS application program interface for it, we can write a Web service for it,” Gibson concludes.”

IFS North America
Schaumburg, IL
http://www.ifsna.com

Value Plastics
Fort Collins, CO
http://www.valueplastics.com