Western Data Systems' ERP Software Now Managing 40% of Boeing's St. Louis Production

Western Data Systems (WDS) announced that Boeing Military Aircraft and Missile Systems has now moved all St. Louis interdivisional manufacturing to its new Integrated Manufacturing Control System (IMACS), a comprehensive production management system based on CompassENTERPRISE Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software from Western Data Systems (WDS).

WDS (Calabasas, CA) provides application software and services to the global commercial and military aerospace & defense industry. WDS serves the operational management needs of original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) as well as maintenance, repair, and overhaul (MRO) facilities in industry and government.

Representing about 30% of the work done in Boeing's 20,000 employee St. Louis manufacturing facility, interdivisional production includes major structural components of the C-17 Globemaster, such as the nose cone, cargo ramp, cargo door, main landing gear pod, and engine pylon assemblies. It also includes numerous fabricated parts for Boeing military helicopters and commercial aircraft. St. Louis interdivisional production supplies Boeing aircraft assembly plants in Long Beach, CA; Mesa, AZ; and Seattle.

Approximately 40% of Boeing's St. Louis manufacturing work is now managed by the WDS-based IMACS system, with approximately 1,700 people interacting directly with the system on a daily basis. In addition to the interdivisional work, this includes the AV-8B Harrier and T-45 Goshawk military aircraft programs.

Boeing also uses CompassENTERPRISE to manage production of the Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM), a program recognized by the United States Department of Defense as a model program for acquisition reform and lean manufacturing. F-15 Eagle, F/A-18 E&F Super Hornet, and remaining missile programs will all be moved to the new system by the end of 1999.

IMACS replaces dozens of legacy systems with the single CompassENTERPRISE commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) application set utilizing the Oracle RDBMS, Windows PCs and Hewlett-Packard application and database servers.

The specialized WDS Material Requirements Planning (MRP) processor at the heart of IMACS provides complete re-planning for more than 600,000 parts, 1.3 million BOM records and 500,000 orders in less than four hours. Additionally, more than 35 million costed transaction records are generated to provide complete cost tracking throughout the manufacturing process.