|
The desire to provide the highest-quality
product was the driving force behind Lear's recently implemented
Quality Reporting System (QRS).
Chances are, if you're riding in an automobile
manufactured by either Ford or General Motors, you're sitting
on a seat supplied by Southfield, Mich.-based Lear Corporation.
A multi-billion dollar company, Lear produces car interiors
for the giant auto makers. One of the many reasons for Lear's
success in this fiercely competitive industry is its intelligent
use of technology.
"Keeping pace with technological innovations
that allow us to deliver a superior product and better serve
our customer base is the goal for our corporation," says
Dan Moffit, senior systems analyst at Lear. This desire to
provide the highest-quality product was the driving force
behind Lear's recently implemented Quality Reporting System
(QRS).
Technical Challenge: Remote Access, Secured
Views, and Integration
"Our president wanted the ability to present
graphical reports to our customers that showed the quality
of the seats we were producing," Moffit says. "Our solution
was QRS, which provides our president —and any other
Microsoft® Windows desktop on our LAN —with the
ability to retrieve constantly updated graphical reports
on the quality of any of our seat manufacturing facilities
worldwide."
Using the ODBC drivers and APPC engine supplied
in NetManage's RUMBA, as well as a Microsoft® Access
database and Visual Basic® tools, Lear's information
systems group developed a database on the corporate AS/400
that is updated every night from AS/400s around the world.
Collecting Meaningful Data
"The first step is to collect meaningful data
from the plants," Moffit explains. "Because each location
is knowledgeable about their own warranties, scraps, and
rejections, they input the relevant facts onto their own
AS/400. Each evening, a program is initiated that pulls the
data from the locations into an Access database sitting on
an AS/400 at corporate —this becomes the data warehouse.
The last step is simply the Visual Basic programs hitting
the Access database to run the graphical engines required
to produce the reports. Of course, from the users' perspective,
it's just a matter of hitting the right icon.
The connectivity for the QRS, as well as for
other applications throughout Lear, is all supplied by RUMBA.
Key to Lear's use of RUMBA is the APPC engine, which forms
the foundation upon which RUMBA software products are built
and provides an extremely fast, functionally rich connection
to mainframe and AS/400 systems.
Also important is NetManage's active support
of Microsoft's ODBC. "We're using NetManage's products all
over the company," Moffit says. Before selecting RUMBA, Lear
evaluated several other products. "Trying to find a product
that was stable in a Microsoft Windows environment was not
easy," he remembers. "More difficult was the fact that we
were running Windows off a LAN."
Some four years ago, Lear had decided to scrap
its existing IBM S/36 in favor of an AS/400 LAN-based distributed
data environment. NetManage was surprised; they had never
seen anyone running Windows off a LAN," Moffit says. "Initially,
we had a little problem setting it up, but NetManage was
here every day with technical support. Their technicians
are great," he says. "They worked with us until the problem
was solved. As it turned out, the problem was a driver on
the LAN; it wasn't with RUMBA at all."
Tracking Performance
"The QRS has been a major success," Moffit
says, "with the president using the reports as the basis
for a monthly quality review in all plants. QRS has vastly
improved our ability to track performance. Individual locations
are using it to measure their progress —and as a way
to proactively deal with issues before they become problems.
We've installed it at 80 plants to date. Every location wants
to have it implemented; they want to be informed."
Moreover, the QRS has become the basis of
a "Chairman's Award" for plant performance. "When we started,
there wasn't a single plant that scored higher than 50 points
out of a possible 100," Moffit says. "Today, it's 80+ and
counting."
Moffit expects NetManage's presence at Lear
to grow along with the company. Currently, both corporate
and the Ford division use RUMBA OFFICE, with the rest of
the company using RUMBA for the AS/400. "Connectivity is
the basis for computing, and I consider NetManage's connectivity
products to be second to none —the connection to the
AS/400 is superb. Connectivity comes first. The rest is just
gravy. Of course, NetManage has some very impressive gravy."
Lear
Corporation, based in Southfield, Mich., is a multibillion-dollar
manufacturing company.
The Quality Reporting
System has vastly improved Lear's ability to track performance.
"In addition to being used by the president,
individual locations are using the reporting system to
measure their progress —and as a way to proactively
deal with issues before they become problems."
"Connectivity is the basis for computing and
I consider [NetManage's] connectivity products to be second
to none—the connection to the AS/400 is superb."
—Dan Moffit, Senior Systems
Analyst, Lear Corporation
| 
