About Inteva
Inteva is a supplier of engineered systems, components, and parts for automotive companies around the world. Headquartered in Troy, Michigan, Inteva provides exceptional products and competitive services that are held to the highest standards, with rejected parts per million measuring in the single digits. Focusing on Closure Systems, Interior Systems, Motors, and Electronics, they have more than 100 customers worldwide, including most of the world’s leading global and regional automakers. With over 8,000 employees, their innovative technology, processes, and services ensure that their customers get the best value with their final product.
Inteva is dedicated to quality and goes above and beyond to achieve it. So when it came to upgrading their Quality Management System to meet ISO and IATF requirements, they wanted to ensure that their new system could not only handle their existing business, but also streamline the process for their employees and supply chain. Inteva saw this need as an opportunity to further build upon their successful application of Plex Smart Manufacturing Platform™ and approached Revolution Group to help. The Revolution Group Consulting Team worked with Inteva to design business processes and customize the Plex® application to display and update information across the company, giving them the flexibility they needed with their system.
The Challenges
In upgrading their Quality Management System, Inteva wanted to become compliant with the International Standard for Automotive Quality Management Systems 16949. Unfortunately, this seemed distinctly difficult to achieve. There is a particular clause in this standard that requires the organization in question to have criteria and a documented process to evaluate their supplier’s performance on a variety of indicators, including:
- Does the product conform to requirements?
- Customer Disruptions
- Delivery Performance
- The Occurrence of Premium Freight
Inteva needed a way to easily access these key performance indicators company-wide, with updates applied in real-time. They wanted to create a global scorecard to rate their suppliers and track required supplier documentation, audit status, budget, and more, all under a single parent code. However, they were unsure if their existing enterprise resource planning software would be able to handle what they needed. They explored several options, including augmenting their ERP technology and investing in niche technology applications.
“After we reviewed the software providers listed, we did not like the fact our suppliers would have to log into PLEX® for things like Problem Cases and Cost Recoveries but then another IT provider for a supplier portal to view their scorecard and required documentation. Also, we knew that the implementation timeline would be long and difficult in interfacing PLEX® with an outside IT provider. So we brainstormed with our internal IT department to discuss how we can obtain the robust functionality other IT providers showed but keep out the existing PLEX® system. Our IT department recommended Revolution Group to see what could be done within PLEX®.”
-Mark Fishwick, Global Process Manager at Inteva Products LLC
To meet and overcome these unique challenges, Inteva turned to Revolution Group, a manufacturing technology consulting company based in Columbus, Ohio. Revolution Group informed Inteva that the best user experience and most cost-effective strategy was to customize their existing Plex Smart Manufacturing Platform™. Plex® is an incredibly flexible system and can handle a variety of tasks with the right modules in place. The experts at Revolution Group were able to apply their manufacturing expertise to develop data sources and customized screens to show, manipulate, and update information inside of Plex® to give Inteva the capability they needed.
“We learned there is a whole industry of software providers that “bolt” on to ERP systems with their own supplier portals to do scorecards, document management, and even eRFQ systems.”
-Mark Fishwick, Global Process Manager at Inteva Products LLC
Revolution Group’s Plex® experts worked hand in hand with Inteva’s team to determine exactly what they needed out of their Plex® system to meet their industry qualifications and company needs. Revolution Group’s Consulting team then leveraged Plex Smart Manufacturing Platform™ to achieve those goals, ultimately bringing significant savings to Inteva through improved supply chain management and technology cost avoidance.
Working Together
The first step towards realizing Inteva’s goal was for Revolution Group to meet the team and learn more about their requirements. Revolution Group spent time learning all about Inteva’s supply chain, systems, and shortcomings before developing a comprehensive plan to upgrade their existing Plex® system with VisionPlex® customizable screens.
“We met with the Manufacturing ERP Consulting team at Revolution Group…. We told them we needed a scorecard to measure the IATF 16949 requirements of how on time a supplier is to our schedules, measure the number of and response time to our problem cases as well as decrement supplier scorecards.
In addition to the scorecard, we needed an application to show suppliers status of required documentation... annual spend by supplier location, supplier status (i.e. Approved or Preferred), show audits performed with scores, dates, and open issues, and organize this data so that all of a supplier’s locations are shown on one screen and linked with a parent code. This would fulfill the business need we had that everyone internally within Inteva would be able to know the status of a supplier in one screen and allow the supply base to view this same screen to know what Inteva required in terms of performance.
This was not standard functionality within PLEX® but Revolution Group believed with the use of VisionPlex® screens all of our requirements could be met.”
-Mark Fishwick, Global Process Manager at Inteva Products LLC
Once the initial discovery had been completed, Revolution Group’s experts went to work. They developed custom applications on the Plex Smart Manufacturing Platform™ that leveraged data already being collected and tracked at Inteva plants and supply chains across the globe to creating a solution on the Platform to ensure a seamless user experience and eliminate complicating factors common to integrating technologies.
The Right Match, With Outstanding Results
Revolution Group was able to modify Inteva’s Plex Smart Manufacturing Platform™ to establish a comprehensive supplier scorecard and a universally accessible Quality Management application. With Revolution Group’s assistance, Inteva had a customized application capable of pulling information from around the company in real-time, ensuring that every department had the most up to date information when they needed it.
“Revolution Group was the only service that could get us the best of both worlds in using our existing Plex® ERP system but meeting our bold business requirements.
What I like most about the Revolution Group is they don’t just take your requirements and try to meet those needs. They understand the business challenge and then brainstorm with you to present solutions we did not even think of.”
-Mark Fishwick, Global Process Manager at Inteva Products LLC
Revolution Group helped transform Inteva’s Plex Smart Manufacturing Platform™ to make it easier than ever to share information and keep up to date. It helped Inteva revolutionize the way they handle their supply base in terms of quality and on-time shipping and keep track of all their supplier’s information. Since launching their scorecard, feedback from Inteva’s supply base has been overwhelmingly positive. The consistency standards applied to suppliers ensures stable results and allows Inteva to meet IATF Standards with their quality management system.
About Revolution Group
Revolution Group is a top-rated, award-winning technology services provider based in Columbus, Ohio. Revolution Group can solve your business bottlenecks by gaining insight into your day-to-day business processes and providing your company with solutions that will streamline those processes. Revolution Group allows organizations to discover their full potential and then take the appropriate actions based on those discoveries. Not only does Revolution Group provide their customers with managed IT services, they also provide Salesforce consulting and implementation services, and ERP Manufacturing services.
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