Industrial Manufacturing Case Studies

1. Industrial Manufacturing Case Study: Alcar Ruote

Part of a multinational holding company, Alcar Ruote designs, produces, and distributes steel wheels for the automotive aftermarket. The Swiss manufacturer relies on technology to produce top-quality products at a competitive price—and deliver them on time.

When new cars hit the market, the company needs to manufacture the right wheels to spec. But its on-premises applications couldn’t provide the real-time data it needed to accelerate order management, enhance customer service, and lower costs. Fresh data was also needed to evaluate business systems and correct any problems, including production issues.

Alcar Ruote chose Oracle Fusion Cloud Supply Chain & Manufacturing and Oracle Fusion Cloud ERP applications to manage key business processes: manufacturing, planning, order management, procurement, and financials.

Oracle Fusion Cloud Order Management, part of the Oracle Cloud SCM suite of applications, automated order-to-fill processes. Now 80% of sales orders are generated automatically, accelerating the order process and boosting customer service.

Internet of Things (IoT) technology within the Oracle platform lets Alcar Ruote analyze sensor data from shop floor devices, predict equipment failures, take corrective actions, and reduce downtime. The technology runs on Oracle Autonomous Database, which processes data in real time across multiple applications.

“Swiss quality is a sort of dogma,” says Stefano Mariani, head of IT at Alcar Ruote. “You expect top-level quality and on-time delivery.” In using technology to achieve those goals, he says, “we see Oracle as not only a vendor, but also as a partner.”

2. Industrial Manufacturing Case Study: Construction Specialties

For 75 years, Construction Specialties has made a wide range of architectural building products: doors, wall coverings, architectural louvers and screens, flooring, safety vents, and other treatments. Architects have specified the company’s products for the most sturdy, elegant structures, including the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex in Florida and One World Trade Center and the redesigned exterior of Madison Square Garden in New York.

In recent years, competitors have emerged to meet increased demand for environmentally sustainable buildings. Construction Specialties had a strong sustainability record, but it needed to get the word out to architects, interior designers, contractors, property owners, and facility managers. The company needed applications to manage the marketing and social media campaigns it created for each customer persona and to track resulting orders through their lifecycle—from marketing and online sales to production and payments.

The goal was twofold: Increase sales and enhance each customer’s end-to-end experience.

Construction Specialties chose Oracle Advertising and Customer Experience (CX) and Oracle Fusion Cloud ERP to manage orders from start to finish. The application suites integrate with others to unify digital marketing, online sales, supply chain operations, and finance. Sales staff and customers have a single place to search for, configure, and order hundreds of highly complex, engineered-to-order products.

“Our number one reason for upgrading to Oracle Cloud was to make it easier for our customers to do business with us,” says Mike Weissberg, digital marketing manager.

Construction Specialties teams now have an integrated suite of applications to view inventory, identify the best shipping options, and forecast lead times. Once quotes are approved and entered into the system, it automatically triggers events such as picking inventory, procuring parts, and scheduling production. As it processes orders, the application suite generates invoices.

“The cloud has completely taken away all of the maintenance and custom-coding requirements that were bogging us down,” says Arthur Cosma, enterprise automation manager.

3. Industrial Manufacturing Case Study: Precision Group

Precision Group operates two manufacturing companies: Precision Dies & Tools and Precision Plastic Products. The latter makes plastic packaging for multinational companies, including Unilever and Procter & Gamble. Many customers partner with Precision on key R&D projects.

Founded in 1984 in the United Arab Emirates, Precision requires cost-effective procurement of office equipment and supplies, capital equipment, and other goods and services. But its enterprise resource planning (ERP) application, which dated back 25 years, lacked automation and integration. Tasks such as vendor evaluation were completely manual. Managers had no visibility across procurement workflows.

Precision implemented Oracle Fusion Cloud Procurement in part to accelerate the process of qualifying suppliers on their financial stability and ability to deliver quality goods and services on time. Precision’s procurement is now 100% digital; paper purchase orders are a thing of the past. The company generates POs directly from requisitions—without manual intervention—and automatically applies negotiated pricing and terms from supplier agreements.

As a result, Precision reduced purchase order approval times by 40%. Self-service procurement features let employees shop for products and services much faster, including on mobile devices. Requisitions go to managers for approval automatically, reducing approval times by days. Overall, transactions are processed nearly two times faster than before.

4. Industrial Manufacturing Case Study: ArcelorMittal

ArcelorMittal is the world’s leading steel and mining company, with primary manufacturing facilities in 16 countries and an industrial presence in 60. Formed when India’s Mittal Steel merged with Luxembourg’s Arcelor, ArcelorMittal is based in Luxembourg City and produces steel for numerous industries, including automotive, construction, mining, household appliances, and packaging.

In competing for talent globally, the company faced stiff challenges. Its recruitment teams were decentralized, using different applications and practices, making it difficult to coordinate talent searches, especially for specialized jobs. That lack of standardization also led to overreliance on costly staffing agencies and prevented ArcelorMittal from creating the consistent branding needed to attract top talent.

ArcelorMittal turned to Oracle Fusion Cloud Recruiting, part of the Oracle Cloud HCM suite of applications, to standardize the process of staffing jobs globally, including positions as varied as factory worker, logistics coordinator, sales executive, and mining specialist.

Oracle Recruiting has helped land talent for hard-to-fill high-tech jobs. In Poland, home to many high-tech companies and startups, ArcelorMittal received 1,400 applications in only eight weeks after launching Oracle Recruiting. Previously, HR teams often received just one or two applications per job opening in key markets.

Company recruiters have visibility into all recruitment activities, including requisitions, to avoid duplication. Standardized reports across a range of metrics help ArcelorMittal continually improve its recruitment strategies.

Metrics such as time to hire, number of applicants, and applicant-to-interview ratios per geography or job type inform when and how ArcelorMittal should use staffing agencies.

The unified recruitment system lets HR teams in different locations working on similar types of jobs exchange candidate information. Teams can also pool external advertising resources.

A single branded ArcelorMittal careers site lists every open position and makes it easy for people to apply and track the status of their applications. Delivering such a smooth application experience helps present the company as a desirable place to work.