Alcan Aluminum

Alcan Aluminum: Deploying InSite to Optimize Returns on Existing Assets
In January 2000, Alcan Aluminum selected InSite as the collaborative manufacturing solution for its North American Sheet Products Division. The deployment goal was to improve profitability and facilitate the optimization of current assets.

Optimizing Returns Through Collaborative Manufacturing
The deployment of InSite was aimed at optimizing returns from existing assets such as equipment, systems, people and technology. "Our directive under Alcan's earnings improvement program is to use commercially available technology to improve shareholder returns," said Dave Sacco, director of information technology, Alcan.
According to Mike DeAlba, automation leader for Alcan's Sheet Products Group, the business need for InSite is supported by very specific manufacturing goals. "With InSite in place," says DeAlba, "we expect to see a reduction in customer returns, increases in our recovery and productivity rates and vastly improved visibility into our inventory and ordering positions."

InSite as the Hub of a Collaborative Manufacturing Solution
With worldwide sales of $9 billion annually, Alcan is a global leader in the production and marketing of aluminum products. InSite will be used by Alcan to track work-in-process inventory and detailed product flow at the factory level, connecting plant floor operations to Alcan's Oracle ERP and Rockwell Software RSView32 HMI (human-machine interface) applications.

Initial Plant Deployment Serves as CME Showcase
The initial deployment of InSite was at Alcan's Warren, Ohio Aluminum Sheet Fabrication plant, one of seven production sites operated in North America by Alcan's Sheet Products Group.

The Warren plant is part of Alcan's integrated supply chain that brings aluminum products to the marketplace, producing sheet metal for use in the manufacture of aluminum cans and automotive products. "Deployment of InSite at Warren represents a major upgrade to that facility's systems," says DeAlba.

Warren Plant Manager Mervyn Bell concurs. "With InSite we are creating an integrated shop-floor-to-top floor manufacturing environment that will increase visibility into our inventory and ordering positions, and will serve as a showcase for all our other plants. The anticipated increases in productivity, together with the tighter controls we will have over product quality, will enable us to run the plant more efficiently and profitably while simultaneously increasing overall customer satisfaction."

Component-Based Solution Provides Flexibility and Extensibility
"Our selection criteria was carefully specified in the architectural definition we created for this project," says Alcan's Sacco. "Camstar's InSite was clearly the best choice for satisfying our requirements."

Alcan's decision makers wanted a solution with an adaptive architecture that would enable Alcan to support future manufacturing and business processes. Sacco concludes, "We like InSite's component-based architecture, which gives us the ability to easily add our own functionality and integrate with our other plant and enterprise systems."

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