Dana Corporation Automotive EDI and Release Accounting using Oracle 11i

Dana Corporation is a global leader in the design, engineering, and manufacture of value-added products and systems for automotive, commercial, and off-highway vehicle manufacturers and their related aftermarkets. The company employs more than 60,000 people worldwide. Founded in 1904 and based in Toledo, Ohio, Dana operates hundreds of technology, manufacturing, and customer service facilities in 30 countries. The company reported 2002 sales of $9.5 billion.

Dana Commercial Vehicle Systems Division designs, manufactures, and markets front-steer, rear-drive, trailer, and auxiliary axles; driveshafts; steering shafts; brakes; suspensions; and related systems, modules, and services for the commercial vehicle market. Major components and modules are marketed under the Spicer® brand name. The Division’s six North America based manufacturing and assembly facilities serve most of the heavy truck OEMs, such as Ford, General Motors, Paccar, Freightliner, Mack, Oshkosh, International, Volvo, Crane, and Workhorse.

Dana Corporation is an OAUG member and has been an active participant of Oracle’s Automotive Customer Advisory Board since its inception. In addition, Dana participated in Oracle Automotive’s 10.7 Controlled Production/Beta testing program. Oracle Automotive and Radley CARaS were the precursors of what is Oracle Release Management today.

Productivity Challenge

Their new Oracle Application modules lacked the means to accurately convert existing Oracle Automotive setups into equivalent 11i setups.

From a Release Management perspective, Dana’s goal is to upgrade Oracle Application 10.7 supplier and customer base EDI solution to Oracle 11.5.8 while minimizing the impact to current business processes and existing key/critical Oracle Application customizations.

Dana’s existing 10.7 solution includes Oracle Automotive and the Radley CARaS application software. The latter provides EDI translation, communication, automotive release accounting, and CUM management as a stand-alone software or as an integration suite for ERP software (in Dana’s case, Oracle Applications).

Oracle Applications release 11i, introduces two new application modules: Oracle Release Management, and the Trading Partner Architecture ToolKit. Oracle Release Management provides release accounting and CUM management functionality (similar to what is provided by Radley CARaS). The Trading Partner Architecture ToolKit provides mechanisms to embed custom code into standard Release Management code which enables trading partner specific processing (functionality that is native to Radley CARaS trading partner modules).

The Radley Solution

An EDI Solution that is integrated with Oracle 11i.

Dana Corporation has been using Oracle Applications to manage its financial and manufacturing requirements since 1995. In January 2003, Dana began implementing the Oracle 11i manufacturing and distribution suite of products. Use of Oracle’s Release Management Module, eCommerce from Radley Corporation, and services from Radley’s Automotive Consulting Group, enable Dana to meet the unique and demanding requirements of their customers. “It was a logical decision to continue our partnership with Radley. They understand our business and our EDI requirements,” adds Mr. Davis.

Radley's eCommerce solution provides the communications, translation and mapping functionality required to retrieve the EDI data transmitted by Dana’s trading partners and map it into the Oracle Applications e-Commerce Gateway transaction sets. Using a scheduling utility (UNIX crontab), Radley's eCommerce solution automatically retrieves the data for each customer without human intervention, typically during off-peak hours. Radley's eCommerce solution translates the data, generates an interface file and automatically submits a concurrent request to process the inbound transaction. The data is validated based upon predefined business rules established within the Oracle’s Release Management module.

Productivity Results

Improvements in the shipping department, ease in managing their trading partner processing.

An inbound material release (830) typically contains several weeks’ worth of requirements. A predefined amount of these requirements are used to update the forecasting module within Oracle. Firm requirements are then used to populate the Order Management module and define the manufacturing and shipping requirements for the coming week(s). The daily shipment (862) or production sequence (866) schedules received from a customer refines the shipping requirements to meet each customer’s daily production requirements.

The ability to manage the differences in trading partner processing is provided by Oracle’s Trading Partner Architecture Toolkit. But the key to success is a thorough understanding of each trading partner’s data formats and mapping them appropriately. This is where Radley’s extensive automotive experience added significant value to the software tools we have discussed. For example, each trading partner has different requirements for the turn-around data required for outbound EDI documents sent. Oracle Applications accommodates a significant amount of this data using pre-defined database table columns. Where these columns for a data element do not exist, specialized flex fields, as well as standard Oracle Applications Flex Fields, are used to store the data until is it needed for outbound transmission.

Once the scheduled orders have been executed through the manufacturing process, shipping execution begins. Shipments are staged, confirmed, loaded, and the delivery vehicle pulls away from loading dock. Then comes the last step of the shipping process which is "closing the Trip" in the Oracle Shipping Execution module. At this point, an interface file (DSNO) is generated and Radley’s Outbound Automation sends it to Radley's eCommerce solution. After ASN compliance validation, the outbound document is generated (which includes detailed shipping data extracted from the Shipping Execution module and the previously mentioned turn-around data stored in flex fields) and transmitted to the trading partner. Oracle Applications then updates the appropriate sales order lines, inventory, and updates the cumulative per part shipment (CUM) quantity within the Release Management Module. All that is left is for accounts receivable to invoice the customer shipment and the business cycle completes.