IT boosts manufacturing sector

10.07.2006
Management information is a major concern for Karl Ting, GM for the Crystal Group's Information Services Department. Crystal Group designs and manufacturers fashion garments for many of the leading international brand names. With 25,000 employees and manufacturing facilities located in twelve countries across Asia, the group produces 180 million garments a year.

An important new IT project is the Crystal Business Intelligence Framework, which provides unified information from management systems, including SAP, and a production management program called GPro. "We have a successful SAP ERP," said Ting, "but we needed to go beyond that to provide a unified real-time business intelligence framework."

The user interface is a web services portal based on Microsoft Sharepoint Portal 2003, which can be accessed through the group's intranet or remotely, through the Internet. Other Microsoft products in the mix include Business Scorecard Manager 2005 (used to monitor Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), and SQL Server 2005, while development tool Visual Studio.NET 2005 is used to extract data from various systems for the data warehouse.

Microsoft's Live Communications Server 2005 is used as a communications tool between users. "If a sales figure fails to reach its budget, and the chairman wants to know why, he can see if the general manager of the relevant division is online and, if so, contact him through text, speech or videophone," said Ting. "Users can also use a white board, or share Excel and PowerPoint files."

RFID streamlines Hanoi factory flow

Another interesting project managed by Ting is the adoption of RFID devices to replace smart cards in providing information on work in progress (WIP) in the company's new Hanoi factory.