WebFOCUS Cures Ailing Monitoring System

Julius Zorn Uses BI to Identify and Fix Weak Spots in Order Processing Procedures

Established in 1912 in the Bavarian town of Aichach, Julius Zorn, Ltd. (Juzo) manufactures surgical stockings, bandages, and other therapeutic support accessories. The family-owned business has grown to include more than 400 employees worldwide, with local branches in the U.S. and the UK, as well as an academy for the healthcare equipment trade.

To meet the constantly evolving needs of the healthcare industry, Juzo depends on an information system built with Information Builders WebFOCUS business intelligence (BI) platform. The system provides more than 100 users with the information they need – via a Web browser – to make viable business decisions. This readily available intelligence helps keep the company ahead of its competition.

High-Quality Products, First-Class Service

Juzo's success strategy is based on three factors – high-quality products, first-class personalized customer service, and strict adherence to delivery dates. All of Juzo's products comply with the industry's quality standards and are subject to constant testing by research institutes.

"There are strict regulations for the healthcare market, such as the medical product law," says Jürgen Schabel, head of information management at Juzo. "Deficiencies or failures in regards to product quality are, therefore, not acceptable to us."

Juzo's trained service staff features highly specialized individuals who are assigned – based on their field of expertise – to specific customers, enabling the company to personalize communication and optimize support. These same high standards also apply to Juzo's dedication to meeting delivery dates. Juzo realizes that each of their customers is dependent on their products for therapeutic reasons and cannot accept long wait times.

With this in mind, smooth and efficient processes are essential. This is particularly important in the case of custom-made bandages, or compression clothing, which must be delivered quickly and reliably. Juzo cannot afford a shortage of resources or other weak spots within its order processing procedures.

"To ensure smooth operation and adherence to delivery dates, we must be able to oversee data flow throughout the entire production cycle, from consulting and order acceptance through product delivery," explains Schabel. "Process-relevant information, which is accumulated during each phase, has to be available at the push of a button, at any time."

Identifying and Fixing Problems

Juzo's new system provides the company with these advanced capabilities, but that wasn't always the case. "Sometimes, for example, problems with the office printer resulted in a task or two not being processed properly," admits Schabel. "Previously, new orders were first collected and printed before they were submitted to the production department. Therefore, there were situations where an order was delayed or, even worse, was never carried out at all."

To quickly identify such failures, Juzo deployed a universal monitoring system, which extracts all process-relevant data from the global enterprise IT environment and makes it available through comprehensive reporting. To properly build this type of operational BI system, the requirements of each department had to be determined and analyzed, and then summarized in a specification sheet.

A Solid Case for WebFOCUS

Finally, after a few test runs and modifications, WebFOCUS was put into action. For the past eight years, Juzo has been using WebFOCUS to improve control over the production chain, optimize quality, and enhance all deadline-related processes within the company – including order processing, production, logistics, merchandise planning, and master data maintenance. Thanks to operational BI, even printer failures no longer pose a risk to this cohesive process chain.

"There were numerous [reasons] for the use of WebFOCUS. A key one was the ability to output reports in highly diverse formats," explains Schabel. To further process the reports generated by WebFOCUS, Juzo employees must be able to access them in HTML and PDF formats, as well as Excel and Word files.

WebFOCUS is a comprehensive, fully integrated enterprise business intelligence platform. It allows different user groups across an enterprise to easily access the information they need. It can read data from more than 300 different source types, including relational database systems such as DB2, Informix, Oracle, and MS SQL Server, as well as VSAM files on a mainframe. Furthermore, WebFOCUS offers interfaces for all standard software systems like SAP R/3, Siebel, and PeopleSoft, while processing data in diverse formats such as ASP, JSP, Javaâ„¢, JavaScript, HTML, and XML. Its Web-based architecture also enables easy integration with enterprise portals, providing customized access to information for different user groups inside a company. Additionally, WebFOCUS reports can be generated on a scheduled or even-driven basis.

Additionally, WebFOCUS' ease of deployment was a big plus. Because it is Web-based, it is not necessary to install software on each client. The application can be quickly and conveniently accessed on demand from any workstation with a browser. This feature also delivers great portability – a clear advantage for the various branches within Juzo.

"When selecting business intelligence software, we also made sure that we had access to the programming code, so that we can integrate the application with other solutions that we developed on our own," says Schabel. "This leaves us with unlimited possibilities for future enhancements."

Versatile Operation

The implementation of WebFOCUS was gradual and included all departments tasked with quality assurance operations. Today, almost every department of Juzo – from sales and customer care to purchasing and production – has access to more than 340 different reports and statistics generated by WebFOCUS. More than 100 users access WebFOCUS via Internet Explorer, and retrieve more than 200,000 reports each year.

The application of operational business intelligence at Juzo is very diverse. Customer service uses sales statistics for products – and the evaluation of relationships between products and customers – to proactively improve loyalty. Ranking lists for open items help management, accounting, and sales agents to take specific action regarding outstanding payments. Automatic production reports help to optimize production planning.

Relevant production data is directly extracted from orders scanned during operational data collection, giving employees vital information about the flow rate at each manufacturing station, production duration, and reasons for possible delays. In addition, these reports document how much was produced, and how often specific tasks were carried out.

WebFOCUS retrieves the data needed for the reports from an Oracle database, which runs on a separate Windows server. Required information includes customer-oriented data, such as addresses, contacts, or contracts, as well as current information about incoming orders, existing orders, available personnel, stock, and delivery times.

Data access is conducted in two tiers, so that the underlying operational systems are not overly affected. WebFOCUS sorts out the desired data from the Oracle database and index-optimizes it within a few seconds. It is then written into its own cache memory. From there, data is transformed into various reports using ReportCaster, a WebFOCUS component. ReportCaster automatically distributes the reports to the appropriate sales staff member.

"Development and maintenance of a BI platform is not a one-time project, but a continuous process," says Schabel. "We are always working to optimize our applications."

High Return on Investment

Over time, WebFOCUS has more than paid for itself. Optimization of production and organizational structures has cut the number of customer complaints by more than half, and supply availability has significantly improved over the past few years. WebFOCUS has also decreased the number of late deliveries from more than 400 per day to between 30 and 40 daily.

"There are multiple reasons behind these results," affirms Schabel. "For one, we have acquired new machines that are more reliable and conform better to industry standards. However, without the ability to identify our weak spots and optimize our operational processes, we would never have accomplished the precise delivery times that we offer our customers today."

Improved Time to Market

Not only did the delivery reliability for customizations increase significantly, the time to market is also much shorter for serial products thanks to optimized resource distribution. Juzo's well-engineered operational business intelligence solution is not only helpful for identifying weak spots, it allows the company to concentrate on its operational processes while empowering Juzo to exploit its potential for future growth and profitability.