SAP  Atateks Power Project

One of the most important necessities of today’s world, that is the drive to reach and to use the right information rapidly, leads us to consider information technology investment as a part of corporate management strategy. In other words, an IT investment is not only to get some reports faster or easier, but also unique synergy that is generated in the long run. Thus, in a competetive economy, the organisation can differentiate itself by using information that is enabled by the IT system.

Before deciding on the investment, we covered a long way in the analysing period. In this time we made SWOT analysis; that is we listed our strenghts in the sector together with the opportunities we can come across and found out our weaknesses in parallel with the threats we may face in the near future. Then we organized polls with our key users about the system we choose, and supported our views with statistical data.  This gave a broad approach about the corporate lust for a new IT investment. Then came the closer diagnosis to the ERP alternatives. We compared our results with the ERP solutions.  After that we surpassed a smooth examination about the benchmarking in our textile and apparel sector. At last we decided on SAP and kicked off with the consulting firm.

Before realizing the investment,  we prepared a  “Critical Performance Indicators” list. We organized top management workshops and categorized our needs in five parts.

I. Operational Factors

i) Cost Reduction : Labour costs, inventory costs and administrative expenses reduction
ii) Cycle Time Reduction : Measurable cycle time reductions in customer, supplier and employee support activities
iii) Productivity Improvement : Products produced per employee, customer served per employee
iv) Quality Improvement : Error rate reduction, duplicates reduction, accuracy rate
v) Customer Service Improvement : Ease of customer data access and customer inquiries

II. Managerial Factors

i) Better Resource Management : Better asset, inventory, production and workforce management
ii) Better Decision Making : Improved strategic, operational and customer decisions
iii) Better Performance Control : Financial and manufacturing performance and overall efficiency management

III. Strategic  Factors

i) Support current and future business growth plan : Transaction volume, processing capasity, new markets, new business products and services
ii) Support business alliance : Efficient consolidation of newly acquired businesses
iii) Build Business Innovation : Enabling new market strategy, building new process chain, creating new businesses
iv) Build Cost Leadership : Economies of scale through streamlined processes or shared services
v) Generate Product Differentation : Provide customized products and services and lean production with make-to-order capabilities
vi) Enable E-business : Attracting new or getting closer to customers through the web integration capabilitiy

IV. Organizational Factors

i) Facilitate Business Learning : Learned by entire workforce, shorten learning time, broaden employees’ skills
ii) Empowerment : More value added responsibility, more pro-active users in problem  solving, greater employee involvement in management
iii) Support business organizational changes : Structure changes,  process changes
iv) Changed culture with common vision : Consistent visions across different levels of organizations

V. IT Factors

i) Increased Business Flexibility : Rapid response to internal  and external changes at lower cost
ii) Increased IT capacity in infrastructure : Standardized platform, database performance and integritiy
iii) Rapid adaptation to development : Extendable to external parties, range  of applications, comparable  with different systems

Atateks’ POWER Project is based upon Business Suite of SAP,  together with Retail Solution and industrial add on solution AFS (Apparel  and Footwear Solution).

Business Suite is the largest and newest solution package of SAP,  integrated to Netweaver technology.  Business Suite comprices, ERP (Enterprice Resource Planning), SCM (Supply Chain Management), CRM (Customer Relationship Management),  SRM (Supplier Relationship Management) and PLM (Product Life Cycle Management). Although the main focus of Atateks, which has been using ERP system for five years, is the realization of ERP standards, other solution packages are also perferred for the future needs  and integrity.

The adaptation of AFS,  business solution of SAP for textile,  apparel  and footwear industiries, was enhanced at the beginning of the project. So Atateks became an AFS using company, just like Adidas,  Nike, Reebok, Levis,  Benetton and so on. With the vertical organizational chart,  Atateks which produced a streamlined process from the POY industry (partly oriented yarn) plant till seamless textile,  constructed AFS as a backbone of ERP instead of standized use of R/III and achieved the colur/size variant capability of the system. Thus, the project became the first use of AFS  in Turkey

Beside the AFS implimentation,  SAP was also used to monitor all the activities of “Morera”  Atateks’ seamless brand in the sector. Both retail, wholesale and export sales of  together with domestic and international  shops of Morera were engaged in SAP Retail and becamel live in June 2005.

To sum up, SAP Retail  and AFS started simultaneously and SAP Retail experience gave good recommendations about ongoing AFS project. This  synergy  enabled us optimum resource allocation in manpower,  effort and time.  Project included POS-SAP integration  in Retail,  FI (financials), MM (material  management),  PP (production and planning), SD (sales  and distribution), CO (Cost accounting with PCA-CCA and PC), WM (warehouse management), CM (cash management), QM (quality management) and AA (asset management) as a whole.