Today, many manufacturing organizations are turning to CorVu’s strategic enterprise management systems, such as Business Intelligence and Balanced Scorecard solutions, to effectively translate and manage corporate vision throughout the organization.  Transitions Optical, the global leader in photochromic lens technology and manufacturing, recently implemented CorVu's Integrated Business Intelligence Solution to manage performance in such areas as manufacturing operations, product quality, supply chain deliveries, shipments and customer satisfaction.  By providing Transitions Optical with immediate access to valuable performance information found within their ERP-based data, CorVu's solution helps them to make efficient and effective business decisions to enhance overall profitability.

According to Tony Vallin, Transitions Optical's Manager of Integrated Manufacturing Systems, "Our requirements were clear, our Operations Leadership Team needed a comprehensive performance management system that would allow them to capture the strategic value of our Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) solution, QAD's MFG/PRO.  CorVu has helped us gain access to the information that is being collected in our ERP information storehouses.  Using CorVu, our operations personnel can measure, analyze, plan and manage manufacturing processes, operational activities and accounting performance.  CorVu assists managers in achieving their team objectives, while monitoring day-to-day performance.  As a result, we have empowered our organization to improve business processes and increase market competitiveness." 

Transitions Optical's Global IT Director, Bob Ashford, wanted a consistent strategic enterprise management solution and chose CorVu as the global standard. He explains, "The software allows our users the freedom to view information in many formats and is relatively simple for our IT staff to support. CorVu provides a standard interface for our associates anywhere in the world to analyze and make decisions based on information retrieved from QAD and the Progress database."  CorVu is an integral part of Transitions Optical's global implementation of QAD and is rolled out with the manufacturing suite as the de facto strategic enterprise management environment. "CorVu consultants' extensive experience of MFG/PRO gave us a jumpstart in building a user-friendly reporting environment and we are using the software in our U.K. and U.S. manufacturing plants with good results."

CorVu's Integrated Business Intelligence Suite also enables Transitions Optical to tightly monitor manufacturing output and process yield, inventory, overall quality control and customer service through direct native interfaces to their ERP solution.  Additionally, with CorVu's ability to natively connect to other relational and ROLAP databases, such as Oracle, SQL Server and the Red Brick Data Warehouse, Transitions Optical is positioned to maintain a common Business Intelligence paradigm as the business rolls out new in-house developed and purchased applications around the world.  "We are looking forward to correlating the activity in our MFG/PRO ERP system with our new Oracle-based Maximo, Enterprise Asset Management application, - as part of our Total Productivity Management initiative," said Vallin.  With direct access to performance information, the CorVu solution gives Transitions Optical the ability to translate their manufacturing, operations and sales data into performance information for isolating potential sales demographics, streamlining manufacturing processes and identifying and meeting customer needs.  In addition, Transitions Optical's users have access to up-to-the-minute performance information through CorVu's Executive Alert module, an intuitive on-screen "dashboard" display that provides real-time measurement of the company's Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), such as quality control, manufacturing throughput and customer satisfaction.  Then, using CorVu's Balanced Scorecard, managers can take these KPI metrics and evaluate them against the company's long term objectives, isolating problem areas, uncovering hidden trends and improving overall company performance. 

CorVu enables Transitions Optical to employ the Internet or corporate intranet to effectively and efficiently communicate crucial real-time manufacturing and sales information to their mobile marketing force.  Also, as Transitions Optical continues to establish additional manufacturing facilities abroad, CorVu's WebServer will enable timely, streamlined communication to link these dispersed facilities to a common, centralized source of critical manufacturing, operations and performance information.  "With the ability to communicate key company performance information to our in-house staff, marketing force and our manufacturing/operations facilities abroad, CorVu offers us a true universal management platform and methodology," said Vallin.  "With key offices throughout the globe, CorVu provides us with a common language that we can all reference as we collectively evaluate overall company performance metrics and move forward to streamline our most critical manufacturing and operational processes." 

To illustrate, until late 1998, the Irish manufacturing facility relied on the reporting capabilities of MFG/PRO and Excel for its management reports.  In contrast, CorVu's Business Performance Management and Balanced Scorecard solutions offered a faster and more strategic view of plant's performance.  Bert Farrell, the QAD project manager for Ireland has implemented CorVu in the customer service department.  With CorVu, plant personnel monitor service level achievements, order processing and shipping status performance.  Farrell explains, "We can gather the information much faster and present it in more strategically meaningful ways.  What would have taken hours, if not days to produce, now takes a matter of minutes."  Prior to implementing CorVu, one employee in the Planning and Development department was dedicated to gathering information on work-in-progress and inventory reports.  Farrell continues, "CorVu effectively automated the information gathering process and made that job redundant.  Now we can plan ahead.  This was not possible before."   In addition, before CorVu was introduced, department managers relied on the Finance department to obtain fiscal information.  Now managers produce their own current financial performance synopses with the click of a mouse.  CorVu is also being deployed to manage sales performance, "Our Paris sales office, which services the whole of Europe, will now be self-sufficient in monitoring revenue and marketing expenditures."

Perhaps the most significant benefit that CorVu brought to Transitions Optical, however, was a quick return on their Business Intelligence investment, an essential requirement for a fast growing, mid-sized company.  With much of their financial resources tied up in establishing regional manufacturing plants abroad, Transitions Optical needed an immediate return on their Business Intelligence investment in order to maintain their sound financial base - CorVu's solution delivered this rapid ROI.  "With CorVu's solution, we are free to spend less time on manual data crunching and more time for thoughtful analysis and managing of our performance," said Vallin.  "In this way, we are building a reliable foundation for process improvement, profitability analysis and resource allocation.  I believe that CorVu will be an invaluable asset to us as we move to further expand our operations internationally, enabling us to fully capitalize on our competitive advantages and lead our segment of the manufacturing industry into the new millennium."

Mischa@corvu.com

www.corvu.com