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Infor Japan K.K. has announced that Chuo Spring Co. Ltd., an automotive components manufacturer, has rolled out Infor CloudSuite Industrial, Infor’s enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution for the discrete manufacturing industry, to its base in the United States. This follows a global standards-based model approach from its successful deployment in Indonesia, and the results are faster implementation at its U.S. base, as well as improved accuracy of inventory management, which has helped transform logistics processes in the chaos caused by the pandemic.

Chuo Spring is engaged in the development, manufacturing, and sale of springs and control cables for incorporation into automobiles. With the automotive industry currently experiencing rapid transformation, the company is working to shore up its business foundations through a number of initiatives. These include leveraging technology to expand into non-automotive fields, streamlining production processes and using clean energy to achieve zero emissions.

While working to strengthen its business operations, Chuo Spring is also focused on global expansion, with 10 bases currently in five countries outside of Japan. To improve its competitiveness within Japan and abroad, the company focused on enhancing productivity by digitising its operations overseas, as it had in Japan, thereby enabling Head Office in Japan to access and process information from its overseas bases in real time.

After implementation of Infor CloudSuite Industrial at its Indonesia base in the latter half of 2019, Chuo Spring achieved real-time visualisation and improved operations from Head Office. Digitisation of shipping processes, in particular, enabled the company to reduce time spent recording sales by 76 hours per month.

Chuo Spring decided to establish a standards-based model for implementation at its Indonesia base, and to use that model to upgrade the ERP solution used at its USA base by adopting Infor CloudSuite Industrial. Following this standards-based model, it was able to roll out the Infor CloudSuite Industrial solution three months faster than it did in Indonesia, going live on an infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) platform in April 2022 for shipping, sales, procurement, warehousing and accounting operations.

Chuo Spring posted one full-time staff member from Head Office to its USA base to oversee this project—from checking requirements through to customization and training, which contributed greatly to the smooth start-up of operations.

Adoption of Infor CloudSuite Industrial by the USA base has not only enabled governance from Japan, as it did with the Indonesia base, but has also improved operational efficiencies, with the linking of electronic data interchange (EDI) data to order and shipping data resulting in savings of 50 hours per month.

It is also able to forecast stock levels based on customer orders, inventories, and demand forecasting. By delivering results amid the logistics chaos caused by the pandemic and further improving the accuracy of inventory management, this change is expected to help counter the rapidly increasing cost of labour in the United States.

Going forward, mutual adoption of initiatives between overseas subsidiaries, such as horizontal extension to the Indonesia base of this effort to improve inventory management accuracy, will lead to the increased competitiveness of overseas bases and the group as a whole.

“With its abundant functionality and achievements in the global manufacturing industry, Infor CloudSuite Industrial has been indispensable in Chuo Spring’s efforts to expand globally, and improve competitiveness for overseas bases and the group as a whole, as detailed in our medium-term management plan,” commented Kenta Koide, President of Chuo Spring Co. Ltd. “Going live at our USA base this time, after implementation at our base in Indonesia, is expected to produce and deliver synergies to, and reinforce our efforts to transform all of our overseas subsidiaries.”

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