VTech Goes Live with Lilly Software

With such facilities as a dormitory, library, fitness center, and tennis court, VTech Holdings Ltd.'s DongGuang, Southern China factory has been nicknamed "VTech City." It covers 200,000 m2 and employees over 20,000 people.

But the one thing missing in its injection molding facility was a strong scheduling capability that met the demands of its high capacity manufacturing operation. For that, VTech turned to Hampton, N.H.-based N/A' VISUAL Manufacturing integrated Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Manufacturing Execution System (MES) and Advanced Planning and Scheduling (APS) software system.

"The sheer size of the operation is important," says Paul Sultzbach, Lilly's VP of Asia/Pacific Operations, "But what's more important is its reach."

VTech enjoys an annual sales turnover of nearly US$700 million, with distribution networks throughout the United States, Europe and Asia Pacific. VTech is one of the largest manufacturing firms in DongGuang, the single largest electronic toy manufacturer in the U.S. market, and has developed advanced technology in designing satellite receivers and cordless telephones.

"Nearly every cordless telephone you use was produced by VTech," Sultzbach says. "Every one of those phones passed through the DongGuang injection molding operation, and it is that operation that will use VISUAL Manufacturing."

"VTech particularly liked the Manufacturing Window, which shows them everything they wanted to know," said Man Hui. Hui is Business Development Manager of JOS Technology Ltd/System-Pro Solutions Division, Lilly Software's Associate in Guangzhou, China.

VISUAL's manufacturing window shows both material and resources together in an easy graphic representation. "VTech also wanted a strong scheduling capability," Hui says. "They manufacture to high capacity, and must know when a machine is coming up idle so they can put it to work. With VISUAL, they can see that on a single window."

Hui further described the "showcase implementation" at VTech. "They went live with a minimum of training and implementation, about 19 days total over six months. They simply wanted to keep production moving, and asked us to implement around that production." VTech purchased the full suite of VISUAL Manufacturing plus bar-code equipment for online shop floor data capture.

Edited by Jim Lardear