Having assembled a seasoned team of technologists, each with more than five years of extensive project experience in multiple sectors of the manufacturing industry, The Henson Group, Inc. (THG) launched a dedicated Manufacturing Services Practice that provides highly customized IT solutions based on the latest Microsoft technology.

THG's APPROACH
Within many organizations, manufacturing is the area that employs the most capital, people and materials, yet receives the least attention in the boardroom. THG helps manufacturing companies gain a competitive advantage by responding quickly to new and changing demands. Designing integrated manufacturing applications, THG makes information transparent from the shop floor to the back office.

The manufacturing industry is entering a new era, where networks and information provide more competitive advantages than traditional manufacturing processes, and where flexibility means more than efficiency.

This latest step in the technological evolution of the manufacturing industry is being driven by need for faster systems to support increasing business demands and the increasing importance of intangible assets.

THG's expert manufacturing IT consultants can help your company address all of these issues, no matter how broadly or narrowly your supply chain extends.

THG'S SERVICES
THG expert consultants deploy custom solutions based on Microsoft technologies to address opportunities for enhancing manufacturing and unlocking value within organizations. Our manufacturing practice focuses delivering solutions that address the following areas:

Product Planning
THG implements solutions that utilize product forecasts to project a company's long-term needs for materials and capacity. These solutions simulate sales scenarios to provide the most reliable picture of gross demand, input forecasting schedule data into master scheduling processes, generate detailed delivery plans taking short-term available production capacity into account, inform purchaser when inventory drops below a certain level, suggest rescheduling to production manager if delivery of raw material is delayed, and postpone linked purchase and production orders when a sales delivery date is extended

THG's custom Product Planning solutions also update delivery information to customer based on "What If" calculations, ensure the right level of safety stock and service at multiple warehouses, and purchase for one warehouse and have system generate transfers between warehouses. These solutions also have the ability to take seasonal deviation into account, have system maintain safety stock based on historical data and service levels, search for vendors by lowest price (or fastest lead time), and handle vendor lead times in both working days and calendar days

Product Ordering
THG's solutions simplify and streamline the process of ordering, planning and producing customized products, helping our clients to win more orders and increase customer loyalty.

A main advantage deploying standardized solutions is that there is less room for error because employees choose variables from predefined values, reducing redundant data entry. This also updates Bills of Material when any manufactured article is changed and ultimately increases Cooperation Between Sales, Production, and Purchasing.

That is because Production team can see when orders are registered, Sales team can check production status per order, Salespeople receive immediate item configuration based on customer input, and Customers and Vendors can submit multiple orders, monitor the production status, and view expected date of delivery, all via the Web while viewing information in the language and currency of their choice.

Production Optimization
THG's production focus involves implementing solutions that allow manufacturing companies to handle the material flow from suppliers, through production, to customers, plan and execute routes, operations, and rough capacity planning, and perform operation management and detailed production scheduling.

This is accomplished by delivering solutions that perform job monitoring, report in schedule plans of individual work centers, automatically select work center with shortest lead time. THG's experience also includes deploying systems that track operations that require the same setup back-to-back and reduce setup time and tighten control with sequence and bottleneck scheduling.

Shop Floor Control
THG has assisted manufacturing companies by connecting real-time shop floor information to enterprise application such as supply chain planning systems. In linking these systems, manufacturers improve quality and root cause analysis, enable real-time lot tracking, allow for predictive maintenance using real-time triggers from manufacturing equipment, enable better recall management. This helps THG's clients to streamline production and minimize inventory-carrying costs, as well as manage personnel, material, and data processing more effectively.

RFID Implementation Services
The retail, consumer packaged-goods, defense, and pharmaceuticals industry have all embraced Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology. Meanwhile, Wal-Mart Stores Inc.'s and the Department of Defense's mandates are driving spending on RFID technology for the U.S. retail supply chain from $91.5 million in 2003 to nearly $1.3 billion in 2008, according to industry analysts.

THG provides a wide range of RFID technology consulting services that enable our clients to plan strategies to absorb the costs of multi-million dollar RFID implementations. This includes providing strategic advice as suppliers outfit warehouses and distribution centers at a cost of about $100,000 to $200,000 per facility, equipped with multiple RFID readers, software and systems integration.

Additional Capabilities
o Configuring system process optimization and integration
o Plant systems architecture
o Enterprise resource planning implementations
o Customer relationship management deployment
o Integrating e-Commerce solutions (B2B, B2C)
o Manufacturing execution systems
o Application development and support
o Network design and implementation
o Change management procedures
o Electronic performance support systems development