Memec Offers Global Collaborative Commerce
Opportunities to Semiconductor Industry “J.D. Edwards has something that no one else has. Usually if a company is
driving toward integration, it has to
give up flexibility.With J.D. Edwards,
there is no trade-off.We get both.”
Colin Black
Vice President of Global Information Systems
and Technology
S e m i c o n d u c t o r / D i s t r i b u t i o n
Business Drivers: Comprehensive System to Manage Business Processes Memec is the world’s largest distributor of advanced semiconductors. More than 200 developers and manufacturers, in 42 countries around the world, count on Memec’s distribution channel for their original semiconductor solutions — from new product introduction, to intellectual property design, to supply chain management. In 2000, company revenues totaled more than $3.5 billion.The company attributes its success to consistent adherence to an innovative multidivisional business model and to its concentration on high growth markets such as telecommunications, industrial control, consumer devices, and computing. Growing quickly and riding the wave of the maturation of the worldwide semiconductor industry, Memec faced a double challenge: it needed a comprehensive ERP solution to manage internal business processes and to ensure that appropriate information was easily accessible to its employees in three distinct companies. Memec also needed to share that information with its customers, suppliers, and partners around the world, to integrate supply chains and facilitate collaborative commerce.
Results: Information-Sharing Available for Customers and Employees Memec chose J.D. Edwards open Enterprise Resource Planning solution and worked with J.D. Edwards to develop XPI™ (eXtended Process Integration) connectivity solutions for RosettaNet Partner Interface Processes™ (PIPS®), suitable to the semiconductor industry.The new XPI connectivity solutions provide Memec with the ability to integrate internal and external communications.They give employees, customers, partners, and suppliers 24×7 seamless access to information including sales orders, purchase orders, acknowledgements, and receipts. “We’re working in two environments, one that we control, and one that we cannot.We can affect what’s behind our own company effort, ensuring that employees in all regions can communicate easily and access what they need to do their jobs,” says Colin Black, vice president of Global Information Systems and Technology, Memec. “But we also need to do business with hundreds of other people from companies whose communications choices we do not control: XML, EDI, flat files, you name them, we have to integrate them.”
How Memec Got There: Implementing Cost-Effective Software to Create B2B Exchange “We needed the flexibility to take any type of message and manage it like an internal piece of information,” says Black. “Only J.D. Edwards offered a complete ERP solution, enhanced by the XPI component, which enables us, in a ubiquitous manner, to take advantage of all the tools together.” Once faced with a myriad of systems that made internal collaboration difficult and external communications complex, Memec now has a single information-sharing system for its own employees and for its 2,500 customers on five continents. It has also been able to launch the first private exchange capabilities for the semiconductor industry. RosettaNet PIP implementations that are already operational allow trusted partners and clients to access information as the data appears in the entire Memec supply chain.
“We wanted a cost-effective, easily implemented software solution with the tools that would allow us to build the first B2B exchange for the semiconductor industry,” says Black. “The solution had to provide complete connectivity for our own back-end business processes and had to link to multiple external systems.We chose J.D. Edwards because it was the only solution with the flexibility and connectivity to allow us to quickly build a system with all-encompassing integration.” “J.D. Edwards has something that no one else has,” Black says. “Usually if a company is driving toward integration, it has to give up flexibility. With J.D. Edwards, there is no trade-off. We get both.”
Future: Global, Seamless Collaborative Commerce Now and in the Future Over the next couple of years, J.D. Edwards software will replace Memec’s entire legacy business processes, including existing contract manufacturing and financial systems.The company’s fouryear plan includes implementing interim tasks to create, for example, operational efficiencies in order-taking and inventory supply in the short-term. Down the road, the J.D. Edwards solution gives Memec the option to extend its external communications and collaborative commerce initiatives across other platforms and with other partners and exchanges. “Everything is available to our external world and that makes it much easier to connect and do business,” Black says. “With J.D. Edwards, we have all-encompassing integration.”