Shinsho American Corporation

Multiple Branches Handling Different Product Lines

A wholly-owned subsidiary of Shinsho Corporation of Japan and the American trading arm of Kobe Steel Group, Shinsho American is far more than just a steel trader. The firm is a multifaceted supplier of steel, raw materials, nonferrous metals, machinery and electronics. With headquarters in Chicago and five branch offices throughout the United States, Shinsho American supplies the market with high quality ferrous and nonferrous metal products as well as the development of market-specific products.

Vision: To be a truly composite company - built on business diversification, globalization, stratification and activation.

Shinsho American offers products for the automotive, office equipment and electronics' industries throughout the United States, and exports consumer goods from the United States to Japan. Each office operates independently, handling different product lines and serving customers in various industries. Headquarters provides financial and administrative support to each of its branches.

For its affiliate companies, Shinsho American operates as a sales/purchasing agent. For arms length customers, Shinsho takes title to the product and often provides value added transformation to the items.

In mid-1997, Shinso American's management recognized it required a reliable, fully-integrated enterprise-wide system to support its different operating divisions and enable it to achieve its objective of rapid growth over the next five years. Because of its broad and diverse product line and customer base, Shinsho needed to insure that the system it selected would be flexible and meet the expanding and changing needs of its customers. Additionally, Shinsho American required a system that supported its activities as a domestic supplier and as an importer and exporter.

To achieve its objectives, Shinsho American would require its IT solution to:

• cross reference sales orders to purchase orders throughout the transaction process, providing visibility into profitability by invoice, item and deal;
• provide on-line real-time access and transaction processing for branches with visibility into order, credit and inventory status throughout the global supply pipeline;
• fully support both import and export processes; and
• provide the ability to track items through multiple transformations with historical tracking and reporting.

Without any internal IT support or expertise, Shinsho American required an application that would be easy to implement, user-friendly and easy to maintain. Supplying diverse market segments required a system that had a flexible product structure and pricing support mechanism

Shinsho American's Challenge: To find a complete enterprise solution that provided visability into the global supply pipeline, with real-time transaction processing across multiple branches handling different product lines.

Finally, Shinsho American required a software provider that could quickly learn its market niche, its product requirements and supply solutions to support its aggressive and ongoing growth objectives.

A successful implementation would result if the software application allowed Shinsho American to respond quickly to its customers with accurate information and service.

Working with a major consulting firm, Shinsho American chose BSI's 3rdwave Metals Trading supply chain solution as its enterprise application. BSI's prior experience in the metals end break bulk environment demonstrated to Shinsho American that BSI had a profound understanding of the needs of their company and the challenges it faced in handling its specialized product lines.

After an intensive review of 3rdwave, Shinsho American felt that the 3rdwave solution model was easy to use and readily adaptable to its business style.

3rdwave would allow operators to process information quickly, see order statuses within the supply chain within seconds and accurately deliver the products when and where they were needed, according to their commitments.

Each department end branch within Shinsho handles different product lines - steel coils and plates, wire rods, aluminum coils, metal powders, machinery parts and components. The solution had to track inventory and provide real-time visibility - to the serial number or item identifier - throughout the supply chain. A demanding requirement of the system would be its ability to trace items back to the original item through multiple transformations. It would also have to store all data and be able to quickly retrieve the product's history, for future reference on an as required basis.

Shinsho American's Solution: Find a software provider that understood their business processes with the knowledge to covert their demanding business requirements into a highly functional, working application.

Finally, the solution had to provide complete accounting integrity at the branch and corporate levels and allow for financial reporting in Head Office's formats. Capturing and reflecting accurate costs as items moved through the supply chain and were transformed or blended through secondary and tertiary processes was a need that had to be competently addressed in the final solution.

Working with Shinsho American's management and operations team, BSI designed a comprehensive 3rdwave enterprise application that met all the company's stated and implied elements for this project.

3rdwave provides the organization with complete visibility into its business operations locally and nationally. The branches act autonomously with its vendor and customer base. Customers deal with Shinsho's product specialists at each branch to get personalized, knowledgeable service and support for its product lines. Sales and customer service representatives have direct access to customer order information through 3rdwave. Comprehensive and up-to-date customer profiles and credit information is easily accessed in real-time so that Shinsho's representatives can respond professionally and accurately to customer inquiries.

Shinsho American's branches ably manage their supply requirements directly with vendors to insure the right product is ordered and delivered according to the specific needs of the customer.

3rdwave's purchase order track and trace capabilities provide Shinsho American's buying and logistics groups with complete item status anywhere within the supply pipeline.

Most importantly, Shinsho American's branches are able to focus on managing the supply chain while receiving administrative support from Head Office in a seamless, fully-integrated and synchronized environment. Accounting and financial services are maintained by Head Office to reduce duplication of effort at the branch levels. However, Shinsho's branches have direct access to required information so that they can see that supporting activities have been executed in a timely, cost-effective manner.

3rdwave's integrated information processing capabilities across all business functions allow Shinsho American to gain real-time, validated information at all levels of their organization. Management has synchronized real-time information across multiple branches, activities and product groups and can view accurate financial information in a format that is specific to the users' requirements.

The Results: Shinsho American supports its independent branch structure - proving direct and responsive customer service and vendor contact - while cost-effectively centralizing administrative and accounting services.

With 3rdwave, Shinsho American's management have access to accurate, synchronized information - for demand planning, purchasing, global logistics, inventory/warehouse control, order management and finance - across all branches and administrative departments.

The successful implementation of 3rdwave supports Shinsho American's ability to realize its primary business objective: to allow its branches to operate independently and remain fully responsive to a diverse customer and vendor base while maintaining low cost, completely centralized administrative and financial services.

With 3rdwave Enterprise Global Sourcing's ability to provide a fully-integrated information technology platform, Shinsho American is now in a position to actively pursue growth opportunities, both domestically and internationally, with significantly increased efficiency.

Michelle Byrne, project coordinator for Shinsho American, stated:

"Due to our lack of computer systems and implementation knowledge, Shinsho American was apprehensive about undertaking a system conversion. Fortunately, the team we worked with at BSI provided us with a realistic and achievable solution. Not only were they instrumental throughout the project, but they continually lent support and advice as needed. BSI devoted extra time to familiarize themselves with our company's operations thus ensuring the success of our desired goals and objectives."