Case Study: FormFactor
FormFactor, Inc. was founded in 1993 with the vision of revolutionizing semiconductor test and electronic system packaging and assembly. FormFactor's MicrospringTM contact technology solves fundamental problems limiting the performance and manufacturability of electronic products. The Microspring contact enables semiconductor and system manufacturers to reduce the cost of test and to produce high performance systems at a lower cost. FormFactor Microspring contact interconnect solutions are used in semiconductor wafer test, Chip Scale Packaging (CSP's), and chip sockets. In just four years, FormFactor's vision has gathered over $20 million in funding and an impressive list of customers in the electronics industry.
Challenge
Oracle Applications 11i is in place with all the functional modules implemented. Information is abundant. But it is still a great task to answer management questions - "What are the sales across the periods?", "Revenues compared to the last year?", "Backlogs status?", "Product wise demand?", "Who's the best customer in terms of placing the orders?", "Who's the best customer in terms of revenues?", "Which sales person is efficient across seasons?", "Forecast vs. Actual achievements?", etc. It is still a big list of unanswered puzzles.
FormFactor wanted to implement state-of-art Oracle e-Business Intelligence on the top of Oracle Applications 11i. Oracle Enterprise Data Warehouse has been the choice to allow their Middle and Top management instant workbook access to all their supply chain and receivables logistics. Menlo Technologies's mission was to implement warehousing architecture and customize the reporting by providing much more flexibility in dimensional representation of FormFactor's facts.
Solution
Menlo Technologies followed well-designed project plan to implement and customize Oracle Enterprise Data Warehousing module in accordance with Oracle Warehouse builder and Oracle Discoverer in CRP, UAT and Production environments of existing Oracle Applications. Defined source and target systems to build star schema architecture and mapped key & descriptive flexfields and user defined dimension entities into a warehouse builder, which were then reflected in Discoverer workbooks.
Developed multidimensional Discoverer workbooks to present FormFactor's operational logic in deriving Bookings, Backlogs, Net sales and Forecasts, and provided flexibility in viewing the data across Time, Region, Product, Order, and Customer Dimensions. The reports are also deployed on the Web, so that management has access to the latest information from anywhere in the world.
Value
By streamlining, automating, and integrating the Oracle Applications data and processes into EDW, FormFactor has been able to derive accurate Bookings and Revenue information across periods in the desired sort and dimensions. The data source and report definitions are accurate, and because they tie closely with out-of-the-box Oracle ERP, this executive information system requires fewer staff to maintain and support and has shortened the time required on the mechanics of delivering information to its analysts and top management.
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