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Process Makes Perfect
Approaching software as a business service is just what they're doing at FormFactor Inc. in Livermore, Calif., a manufacturer of probe cards that semiconductor makers such as Intel use as part of their "wafer sort" process. In this quality-assurance process, chips printed on silicon wafers are tested before they're separated from the wafer.
An industry leader, the 10-year-old company has annual revenue of $350 million and 146 employees. And thanks to a strategic decision that embraces Web services and SOA, it's growing like gangbusters, with record quarterly revenue that has increased 55% year over year. In fact, if not for its move to SOA, FormFactor's growth might well have stalled.
"We couldn't continue to do things the way we did when we were a $25-million or $50-million company," says Nilay Banker, senior director for business applications. "A lot of things were done by people running around, handing off paper, faxes and email. Every time we hired somebody, they introduced new ways to do things. There were too many ways to achieve the same result, and that's just inefficient."
Instead, in October 2005, the then-$300 million company decided to implement a SOA to align IT services with business functions and requirements. "It was clear to the IT organization that SOA was the way to go," Banker says.
But it wasn't clear to management, which expressed skepticism about depending on a cutting-edge approach to deliver crucial business services. Undaunted, Banker's team embarked on a high-stakes plan to prove the benefits of SOA and to motivate company executives and managers to buy in.
Three systems were targeted for process automation using Web services: an Oracle enterprise resource planning (ERP) system; the company's core business platform; and Promis, Brooks Automation Inc.'s system for manufacturing. Complicating matters, Oracle's shop floor management package was already slated for rollout, so it needed to be on speaking terms with Promis as well.
A successful effort would streamline supply chain and manufacturing operations by going beyond mere system integration; with Web services, the specific business processes would be documented across disparate platforms. So, for example, the company was able to use the data from its ERP and materials requirements planning systems and integrate that information with its manufacturing execution system (MES) to determine how much product to build and when as well as the number of assemblies required.
All the information flows in real time into Oracle's shop floor manufacturing module. As a result, the ERP system has an up-to-the-second view of manufacturing execution, which is required for accurate materials and production planning, purchasing, inventory management, product pricing, and customer invoicing. "You can't just integrate systems without tightly integrating business processes," Banker says. "That's a classic mistake midmarket companies make."
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