Corning Focuses on Customer Data - ' Information System Overhaul '
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Information System Overhaul
Click here to see the three phases of Corning's specialty-glass manufacturing process.
- Nine factories run nine different
homegrown manufacturing systems,
can't exchange data.
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- Three plants so far run Camstar's
manufacturing software, which swaps data with PeopleSoft 8 financial and factory
applications via XML messages.
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- Each factory schedules own jobs.
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- Job scheduling is balanced between
factories based on overall plant capacities.
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- Impossible to move unfinished goods between plants.
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- Busy factories can transfer unfinished products to less-busy plants—all systems share data about work-in-progress.
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- Each factory keeps own customer files.
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- Customer specs maintained on a secure Web server, accessible companywide.
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- Orders entered manually—often from faxed printouts—into five incompatible
systems.
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- Job scheduling is balanced between
factories based on overall plant capacities.
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- Plant workers and technology staff collect data from various systems to send
to customers—sometimes as long as several days after product ships.
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- Measurement data recorded by Camstar as glass is created, allowing technicians
to e-mail data to customers as soon as product is done.
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- Analysts use Excel spreadsheets to figure the cost of making a product, pulling data from 25 to 40 applications and from paper files. Takes three months or longer.
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- PeopleSoft-Camstar integration lets costing be done as soon as product is polished.
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- Systems can't share product data—thus, manufacturing process can't be improved.
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- Detailed genealogy data recorded automatically. Helps Corning recreate factory conditions that produced top-quality ingots.
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- Plant managers oversee factories; rewards tied to factory's own profits and losses.
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- Plant managers oversee product lines, no matter which factories create goods.
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Projects: Customer Service 
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