Background
Swindon Pressings Ltd (SPL) is part of the BMW group and is the largest independent press shop in Europe. The Company has a turnover of more than £250million and employs 2000 people. As part of the disaggregating project set up by BMW when they sold the Rover and Land Rover business, they initiated a project to replace all the legacy systems at SPL.

The core of the IT project, relating to software and hardware, was handled by SPL’s own IT team in conjunction with the software and hardware vendors. However it was recognised during the pilot phase that significant business process change was required to implement the system and gain the full business benefit.

Project Summary
Initially Allman Horrocks Consulting was asked to support a three month task force reviewing the overall supply chain, with a focus on the use of IFS and the establishment of a new planning organisation around the master scheduling concept.

This work involved process analysis of all key business processes, reviewing the system capabilities and the proposed configuration. The result was a series of recommendations relating to system and organisational design and a change management programme to operate during the go live phase.

AHC were engaged to implement the change programme which involved chairing function-based change meetings, training in best practice, process review and system amendment and working closely with ‘super users’ and software consultants.

As the switch over from legacy systems started to stabilise, the next task was to monitor progress on system usage, information quality and process change. During this period we ensured that the change process became part of business as usual and that appropriate information analysis were developed and integrated into departmental management.

Benefits
The Company will significantly improve its customer service and better manage its inventory. The immediate benefits have been the development of a new function to plan the business at the top level, staff being recruited from within the business.

The business is more reactive to market change but is not subject to rapid changes in requirement due to better planning and management of capability.

Testimonial
"The introduction of a full ERP system was a massive project for BMW's Swindon Pressings Plant. The fact that it has gone so well and that we are now able to offer improved service levels to our customers whilst managing our business in a more efficient and cost effective way is testimony to the key role played by Allman Horrocks Consulting."
Bob Bolam, Managing Director, Swindon Pressings Ltd.

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