Enkay has proven experience in implementing practical BizTalk solutions for the manufacturing industry. The scenarios below highlight some of the manufacturing integration solutions implemented by our team.
Problem:
A large Texas based manufacturer of Oil and Gas equipment was selling flow control valves worldwide. However, some of the components used in the valve could be used in a way that violated United States Department of Commerce or Department of State legislation. So for every order that was ready to be processed by the manufacturer for their international customer, they had to check to see if the order could be shipped to the country based on the parts used in the order and the country’s status. This process had to be automated as the manufacturer shipped hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of valves every day, and manual checks would have been time consuming and error prone. Any violation of government rules would have resulted in fines (up to $50,000) per order shipped plus additional claims.
Solution:
Enkay implemented a Microsoft BizTalk Server solution that used orchestrations to pull each customer order from SAP using BizTalk SAP adapter, transformed the SAP schema to an external agency (Management Dynamics) schema, and routed this order to the external agency using secure SOAP services. Once Management Dynamics received the order, they would automatically scan their databases to ensure the order did not violate any legislation, and if the order was non compliant, they would provide additional documentation that would be required to make the order more compliant. If the order was compliant, it would be approved and a response would contain reasons for approval.
Problem:
A large Midwestern steel manufacturer needed a way to connect their customer order system with their steel manufacturing plant, which used to run 24×7. Changing the assembly line at the plant to manufacture a new variety of steel required them to stop the assembly line and change the input feed, which was a time consuming process. By using the customer order system, they wanted to more accurately forecast demand and reduce down time due to stopping and changing the assembly line for different orders.
Solution:
We installed and designed a Microsoft Host Integration Server (HIS) solution to connect to their IBM mainframe based order management system. In addition, we used BizTalk Server orchestrations and MSMQ adapter to connect to Microsoft Windows workstations on the plant floor for sending and receiving orders that had been optimized based on what was currently being built on the shop floor. This allowed the steel manufacturing plant to run more often, optimizing steel production and reducing down time due to variations in customer orders. The IBM order system was used to prioritize orders and then these orders were sent to the plant floor so line changes were minimized and
