|
Chemicals Industry
Challenges Addressed
The ROSS suite of solutions from Ross
Systems and our specialized consulting services are designed to
address the unique challenges you face in the chemicals industries.
These include:
Recall Protection/Risk Management/Regulatory
Compliance
The market continues to demand new, better , and safer products
from chemicals manufacturers. Faced with evolving, yet specific
programs and procedures from regulatory agencies including the U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Occupational Safety and Health
Administration (OSHA) and the Food & Drug Administration and
international counterparts, the present-day threats and potential
costs associated with recalls have never been higher.
As companies seek to increase their control
and in turn, minimize the risks, they discover that many varied
activities, both within an outside the organization, must be considered.
Operations up and down the supply chain must all be addressed. The
resulting challenges then become magnified How do you minimize
the risks while keeping your operational costs down to maximize
profits and enable growth?
|
ROSS helps you monitor,
track and control critical resources including activities
and materials across manufacturing and distribution
processes. Capabilities in the areas of end-to-end traceability
provide flexibility to follow complete histories and
audit trails, forward and backward, from raw material
purchases through production and product shipment. Specification
management and change management also provides the control
and predictability to detect and address variability
early in your process. Integrated quality tests and
results validation help you identify potential issues,
so you can quickly determine the underlying cause, make
the necessary corrections and provide supporting documentation
to ensure good manufacturing practices (GMP).Also see
Formulation and process control.
|
|
Formulation and process control
Recipe formulation and process control are primary concerns in automated,
capital-intensive chemical manufacturing operations. Consistency
and quality in end-products depend on the effective handling of
variables in the ingredients, such as potency, grade, moisture content
and shelf-life, throughout their continuously changing chemical
and physical treatments. For most chemical manufacturers, this variability
creates significant challenges for process specifications. These
dynamics trigger delays and incremental costs, consequently impacting
customer satisfaction especially if quality is not maintained within
strict tolerances.
|
Raw materials and active ingredients
vary in potency, grade and pH among other characteristics.
The ability to dynamically adjust recipes based on material
characteristics allows you to produce product with consistent
quality and maximize material utilization, with the
accuracy required for chemicals manufacturers. Additionally,
the creation of new recipes can be streamlined with
same-as-except capabilities used to copy similar recipes
and limit changes to exceptions. Integrated quality
tests and results validation minimize material and labor
waste, as well as regulatory non-compliance risks. Also
see Recall Protection/Risk Management/Regulatory
|
|
Quality Management
Chemicals manufacturers are expected to implement quality standards
among other good manufacturing practices (GMP). Ensuring that quality
guidelines are not only followed, but also are consistently achieved
is problematic for many companies. The ability to manage, capture
and track quality information across the production process and
supply chain is fundamental to this effort. More important, however,
is to be able to recognize and take action on early warning indicators
for out-of-spec issues.
|
With ROSS, you can address
all of these requirements. Because ROSS is designed
with quality control (QC) and quality assurance (QA)
as in integral part of the process quality can be planned
and managed just like any other process. This enables
you predefine and measure customer quality specifications
among other attributes at critical steps in the process.
You can exact control over all materials and products
(co/by/end) throughout the process and be more diligent
in batch scaling, date code tracking, shelf-life expiration
dating lot tracing and yield optimization among other
capabilities. ROSS also tracks lot characteristics
and quality control tests with full authoring capabilities
to generate MSDS documentation. At the time of shipment,
you can be confident that your products meet internal,
regulatory or customer quality tolerances and expectations.
|
|
Increased costs and reduced margins
Growing cost containment pressures and reduced margins revenue pressures
compel chemicals companies to streamline production and distribution
operations. Wringing costs out of these processes must be balanced
with customer satisfaction levels. With visibility across all areas
of the organization from finance to manufacturing and across the
supply chain, companies can begin to fully understand and address
how certain practices impact margins and bottom-line profitability.
|
ROSS enable you to have
the benefit of comprehensive management your processes
including order-to-cash, manufacturing, inventory, planning,
maintenance, and procure-to-pay processes. Real-time
financial analysis of such key issues as quality, regulations,
customer satisfaction, performance and profitability
by customer, product, or location are standard in ROSS.
Company-wide visibility speeds the flow of goods, eliminates
waste due to costly shelf-life expirations and returns,
and gains the efficiency necessary to meet product demand
while keeping costs at a minimum. Powerful what if
scenarios enable you optimize production sequencing,
minimize clean downs and changeovers, maximize throughput
and minimize labor costs. In addition, support for actual
costing exposes all material and operation costs, including
indirect costs or value resulting from co-products and
by-products so you can better understand how margins
are affected and to what degree. With this information,
you can make more informed decisions and quickly determine
where to focus resources to maximize gains.
|
|
Satisfying Customer Needs and Demands
Retaining existing customers and winning new ones is becoming increasingly
more complex. Learning their needs, understanding their preferences,
and anticipating what they might need next are the only ways to
strengthen relationships and build the customer base. Customer relationship
management (CRM) is a business strategy that leverages people, process
and software in an organized way to help chemicals manufacturers
manage the complete customer lifecycle from selection to retention.
With a carefully planned CRM strategy, management, sales, marketing,
customer service, and even partners and clients should be able to
share information such as customer purchases or needs and matches
for product or service offerings.
|
ROSS empowers you manage
interactions throughout the customer lifecycle. With
a common tool and centralized information repository
across applications that touch your customers (i.e.
sales, marketing, support) with your operational systems
(financial, inventory, supply chain), you can focus
on taking care of your customers. Link your selling
chain to your supply chain. Build the loyalty of existing
customers. Make it easer to attract new ones.
|
|
Increasing Competition Up and Downstream
The intensity and diversity of competition in the chemicals industries
is increasing substantially. The growing trend toward business alliances
among chemical companies including mergers and divestitures, partnerships
and other cooperative ventures, constantly reshapes the landscape.
Ongoing reorganization undermines traditional sales channels and
increases pressure for cost cutting measures. As the battle for
market share intensifies, the proliferation of new products and
shrinking product lifecycles make it more difficult maintain the
level of profitability required to invest in new product development.
|
ROSS enables chemicals manufacturers
to optimize product portfolios based upon product performance
to customer expectations, sales trends and forecasts,
and production costs. From custom blenders to high volume
refiners, sustained competitive advantage is gained
by offering a well-balanced set of quality products
that meet customers and regulatory requirements coupled
with increased operational efficiencies (See Increased
costs and reduced margins) and the ability to embrace
and leverage opportunities for business change. All
of these areas are critical for to compete effectively
and continually grow your business as market demands
evolve.
|
|
Globalization/localization
New and emerging global markets offer tremendous growth opportunities
for manufacturers. To capitalize on free and open trade and offshore
production, companies must be able to manage more complex distribution
channels and supply chains, integrate fragmented operations and
track information and product flow worldwide. Customers, sales offices,
distribution centers, laboratories, plants and suppliers are often
geographically dispersed and consequently more culturally diverse.
The ability to effectively address localized customer requirements
on a global basis is no simple task.
|
ROSS provides support for
global business requirements across financials and manufacturing
to supply chain and customer relationship management
applications. With these solutions, chemicals manufactures
are able to optimize the management of distributed internal
and external operations, suppliers, distributors, transportation
providers and customers in local languages, currencies,
accounting practices and standards. ROSS supports
18 languages.
|
|
|
