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Content archived on 2024-04-30

Integration of business functions in manufacturing - a best practice approach

Objective



Six SMEs have identified their common need to solve the problem of efficient exchange of information on product models and variants among different business functions, and therefore they agreed to work together on the introduction of advanced IT tools for information integration of different business functions. Each of them have certain priorities, based on their strategic business objectives regarding the business functions they need first to integrate. EXALCO SA and Maniatopoulos SA need integration between marketing and sales and product design; Edu Hundt & Co needs to integrate incoming order processing with production planning and material management; Kritikos SA needs to connect the storage system with marketing and sales; while LAMAPLAST and DESMA are interested in establishing a connection between product design and production planning. For each company this information integration will result in considerable and measurable improvement of business practice and better customer orientation, and lead to benefits with respect to market share, utilisation of the available production capacity, improved price/cost ratio, flexibility etc. The SMEs are interested in exchanging experiences on the integration so that they can effectively extend their information systems in the future. The BEP-IFM SMEs have to solve similar problems related to aggregation of information on product models and variants which have to be exchanged among different business functions.
The companies will apply the same approach for analysis, implementation planning and the initial implementation phase. It is based on the methodology to support SMEs in the introduction of advanced IT tools which has already been effectively applied in a number of ESPRIT and other EU and local research and industrial projects by the Best Practice Co-ordinator, ATB. This common approach, emphasising a clear phasing of the activities to be carried out, ensures an effective exchange of experience throughout the whole project. The methodology to be applied includes definition of the implementation plan which addresses a holistic information architecture, enabling SMEs to easily continue with the integration of the other functions.
In order to ensure efficient exchanges of experiences, another objective of BEP-IFM is to further build a European wide network of regional nodes supporting SMEs in improving their overall business processes.

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Call for proposal

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Coordinator

University of Patras
EU contribution
No data
Address
Rion Campus
26500 Patras
Greece

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Total cost
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Participants (7)