5 Tips for a Manufacturing JD Edwards BI Project

Oracle's JD Edwards ERP is recognized as one of the leading ERPs for Manufacturing companies. While JDE delivers great information on its own, combining it with Oracle Business Intelligence (BI) can really enhance the insights you get from your production data.

I have worked on lots of BI projects over the years, and during that time I have come up with the following tips which should help you when planning a BI project.

1: OBJECTIVES

First, formulate the objectives and determine who the stakeholders are. You can approach the implementation of Business Intelligence for manufacturing from a number of perspectives. For example:

1. You may wish to gain more insight into the transition from production to your sales and inventory strategy.
2. You may also want to know whether you are producing in accordance with your internal goals and in line with agreements made with sales.
3. You may want to use BI as part of an operational excellence programme, to support the analysis of yields and wastage.
4. You may want to know whether your production processes meet the internal quality standards.

Whatever the motivation, formulate the objectives with as much detail as possible and come up with a medium-term implementation plan.

2: DETERMINE INFRASTRUCTURE

The choice of the BI infrastructure is less important for the users, but highly relevant for your IT department. For example, you may choose an on-premise solution, in which you conduct all of the administration yourself. An in-house BI infrastructure has the major advantage of flexibility and control over your own BI environment.

BI Cloud Services is an option that has become popular recently. The benefit of this option is that you can take advantage of proven BI solutions and you don't have to work out everything yourself.

Clearly, both choices are accounted for differently, one coming from CAPEX (on-premise) and one from OPEX (Cloud).

3: INFORMATION REQUIREMENTS

Next, define the level of detail you need in the information - this is a question for the stakeholders. In doing so, consider the form in which the desired information is available. You can assess the quality of the information sources based on the quality of the data.

4: REPORTS

The next step is to choose the desired reporting or analysis environment. Your production dashboards should be easy to interpret. This may be obvious, but  it is worth repeating - the top-5 characteristics of successful BI reports are: SMART (Specific, Measureable, Acceptable, Realistic and Time-specific).

5: DESIGN A DATA MODEL

The data model and the nature of the production reports generated by BI naturally depend on the nature of your production processes. If you produce to customer orders, then the production reports will be organised differently than in the process industry.

The design of the data model can be tailored to the individual company by using a Legacy BI solution. The benefit of a BI Cloud Services solution, on the other hand, is that you can utilize existing data models.

Once you have completed the steps above, you will have a solid foundation for a successful implementation.
So let's get to work! In the next blog, we'll look at some examples of Oracle BI in a manufacturing environment.

You may also find useful:

Data Driven Manufacturing - JD Edwards & Oracle Business Intelligence

JD Edwards - Reporting & Analytics

JD Edwards & Oracle BI help Denkavit improve animal health and nutrition