Tekni-Plex meet GDSN deadlines with LANSA Data Sync Direct
Tekni-Plex, Inc., headquartered in Somerville, New Jersey, USA, is a group of companies that produce a diverse range of products, including garden hoses, egg cartons, food and pharmaceutical packaging and a range of other plastic, PVC, rubber and silicone products. Tekni-Plex has implemented LANSA Data Sync Direct for its Colorite Waterworks and Swan garden hose divisions to synchronize product information with retail customers such as Wal*Mart, Home Depot, Target, Sears and ACE hardware. The solution integrates with Friedman's ERP system.
Martin Weintraub, VP of information technology at Tekni-Plex, says, "LANSA's ease of use and short learning curve is important to me. From a project point of view, I was very satisfied. My people seemed to pick up LANSA Data Sync Direct very easily. And LANSA always responded quickly to any questions that we had. And when my people are happy, I am happy. I would recommend the LANSA product."
"LANSA always responded quickly to any questions that we had. And when my people are happy, I am happy"
The Challenge
The GTIN Manager pulls in relevant product
information from the ERP system and allows
review and maintenance of GTIN attributes
Tekni-Plex has over 20 companies in its group, all using the holding's IT Services, central iSeries and the Friedman ERP system. Like many others in the hardline industry, several companies in the Tekni-Plex group were pushed by their retail customers to publish their products on the Global Registry. Tekni-Plex's garden hose companies, Colorite Waterworks and Swan, were the first companies in the group having to meet these compliancy requirements.
Tekni-Plex does millions of dollars in garden hose business every year and Colorite Waterworks is one of the largest companies in the group. The main customers for the garden hoses are Ace Hardware, Home Depot, Sears, Target and Wal*Mart. Several of these retailers came to Tekni-Plex with the requirement to synchronize products to the Global Registry by a certain date. Wal*Mart, requesting compliancy by the end of 2003, was the first retailer Tekni-Plex had to get ready for.
And so the search for a solution began.
Robert Griswold, technical manager at Tekni-Plex, explains, "Some of the retailers provided a browser-based means to maintain Global Trade Identification Number (GTIN) information as a first step in meeting compliancy. We soon realized that, with the amount data we were trying to keep in sync, it was going to be a losing battle. We have a large number of products to assign GTINs to and some retailers require over 100 attributes for each GTIN. As an added complexity, we had only about 10 of the required product attributes in our Friedman system."
"We really needed an automated solution to bridge our database with the global registry. We briefly considered a solution from our EDI solution provider that would allow us to update the Global Registry. But it didn't really provide the online real-time turnkey solution we were looking for. UCCnet had at that point only one certified solution for the iSeries, and bless, that happened to be the LANSA Data Sync Direct product. So we found LANSA and brought it in."
"We really needed an automated solution to bridge our database with the global registry"
The Solution
The GLN Manager provides for
management of trading partner details
As a first step in the project, which took only six weeks from the very start to the first successful test to Wal*Mart, Tekni-Plex staff received a few days training by LANSA in general Global Data Synchronization Network (GDSN) concepts and LANSA Data Sync Direct product specifics. This made it very easy for IT, marketing and production staff to communicate.
In a second step, Tekni-Plex had to cleanse its data and complement its item information with the required additional attributes.
Christine Henderson, GDSN & UCCnet project leader at Tekni-Plex, explains, "We could only pull very few pieces of information from our Friedman database. In UCCnet, you need product information at every level of packaging, including at the consumer unit level. We don't sell consumer units and didn't keep data at that level. Also, we couldn't match our part numbers to GTINs, because we have separate part numbers for each level of packaging."
"We used spreadsheets to collect the product information and started with a small group of 15 items that we sell to Wal*Mart. The marketing people filled in one spreadsheet with sales related attributes and the production people filled in another spreadsheet with a different set of attributes. Then we keyed the spreadsheet data into the LANSA Data Sync system and tested to Wal*Mart. It didn't take long before we were able to get everything through. From that first implementation we worked our way through the item groups for the other retailers."
"We needed to call on LANSA again a year later when one of our retailers asked to receive data in the new schema environment. LANSA gave us a short training on the upgraded schema attributes and also helped us with the conversion. The upgrade, including training, conversion and first successful test to the Global Registry, took about one week, and again everything went smooth. We now have over 150 attributes in the schema environment," says Henderson.
"LANSA also introduced a few other products, that made our eyes pop out," adds Griswold. "Business users, mostly in the sales area, use the LANSA Client query tool for ‘What if' analysis and other sales reporting. LANSA Client was easy to pick up and within about two days of training most of the users were up and running."
"LANSA also introduced a few other products, that made our eyes pop out"
The Benefits
Tekni-Plex's garden hose companies, Colorite
Waterworks and Swan, were the first
companies in the group to implement
LANSA Data Sync Direct
"The LANSA Data Sync Direct Administration module has a pleasant interface and getting around is easy enough," says Henderson. "We have tabs for the Worklist Manager, the GTIN Manager, the Global Location Number (GLN) Manager, the Item Manager and the Query Manager."
"Managing the GDSN process is easy. The LANSA Worklist Manager notifies ‘subscribed' users of specific events, such as product updates in Friedman. The GTIN Manager pulls in relevant product information from Friedman and allows review and maintenance of GTIN attributes. The Item Manager links to items in Friedman and the GLN Manager provides for management of trading partner details. The Query Manager enables real-time query access to UCCnet or other certified data pools."
Debbie Lonergan, marketing manager at Colorite, concludes, "Our implementation is ahead of the retailers, and I cannot yet quantify the benefits until more retailers are ready to accept our data. But we anticipate better accuracy in ordering and invoicing, as these processes build further on the GTIN information. Fewer errors mean fewer fines from the retailers. We also waste less time on correcting mistakes and looking up information. And last but not last, we should be able to go to market quicker with new products."
"Fewer errors mean fewer fines from the retailers. We also waste less time on correcting mistakes and looking up information"
Company and System Information
- Tekni-Plex, Inc., headquartered in Somerville, New Jersey, USA, is a global, diversified manufacturer of packaging, products, and materials for the healthcare, consumer, and food packaging industries. The company has built a leadership position in its core markets and focuses on vertically integrated production of highly specialized products.
- For more information, visit: www.tekni-plex.com
LANSA UCCnet Direct was renamed LANSA Data Sync Direct in January 2004- The LANSA Data Sync Direct solution integrates with Tekni-Plex's Friedman ERP solution.
- The LANSA Data Sync Direct solution integrates with Tekni-Plex’s Friedman ERP solution.
- LANSA Data Sync Direct is a turnkey, scalable business solution used by more than 300 businesses to comply with retailer requests for data synchronization. The solution may be implemented in a hosted or behind-the-firewall configuration on Windows, IBM iSeries or i5 Systems and Linux. LANSA Data Sync Direct is certified by 1SYNC™ and also conforms to the latest EAN.UCC XML schema version.
- 1SYNC is a company established from the consolidation of Transora and UCCnet that provides item registry and data synchronization for electronic commerce.
- Find out more about LANSA's GDSN Solution