KIRIN Beverage Corporation

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Improving Distribution Services with a Web-based Supply and Demand System

This example is a translation of an article that originally appeared on Fujitsu's Japanese Web site.

KIRIN Beverage Corporation Web-enabled a supply and demand system that had been managed by mainframe computers.
By building up an environment where multi-dimension data analysis can be performed on a Web browser, they tried to focus on implementing more flexible information exploitation.
They adopted Fujitsu's "Symfoware Server Enterprise Edition (*)" to support the new system.
Quick information exploitation is a great aid to analyzing results for warehouse and transportation plans, which has a significant impact on improving business logistics efficiency.

Using IT to Achieve Speedier Management

KIRIN Beverage produced the hit products "Namacha", "Kikicha", "Gogo-no-Kocha" and "Supli" in rapid-fire succession.

The primary goal of introducing a DWH was to improve productivity. All employees have free access to the DWH, from which they can retrieve information as and when required.
Employees can also analyze the data using tools of their choice to investigate sales trends and sales activities at agencies.

In explaining the purpose of systematization, Mr. Kouzo Tanimoto, the Information System Group Manager, says: "We used to have to submit a formal request form to the System Division whenever we needed data stored in the host computer, which increased the amount of time it took to receive data. Having a DWH saves labor and time and promotes the use of information."

Web Browsers Make Supply and Demand Data Quickly Available

KIRIN Beverage started to run a new supply and demand system that facilitates Web-based multi-dimension data analysis as an IT exploitation strategy in April, 2001.

Mr. Takeno explains the background of building up this new system:
"When we wanted to see information on supply and demand, we did not have any way, other than utilizing query screens on terminals for the mission-critical system. In a recent diversification of products, we know we have more than 40 manufacturing consigned companies and also have growing number of suppliers of materials and resources. We figured out we would not be able to exploit the necessary information in a timely fashion if we made a queries from a mission-critical system terminal as needed. Then, we thought we should build a new Web-based system."

In the new supply and demand system, data in the mission-critical system is sent to the high-performance and high-reliable RDB engine Symfoware Server running on Fujitsu's UNIX server GP7000F and is analyzed by OLAP tool PowerPlay provided by Cognos Incorporated.

Importance of Data Affinity Means Symfoware Server is Chosen

Mr. Nobuhiro Takamura, the chief of the Information System Group of the Information System Department explains why the combination of PowerPlay and Symfoware has been selected: "We adopted this combination without question because Fujitsu's mainframes are used for the core system for logistics and the affinity of PowerPlay with Symfoware is secure due to their partnership with Cognos Incorporated."Partnership with Cognos Incorporated(PRESS RELEASE)

Moreover, Symfoware Server segments and makes parallel queries for a large-scale database and is able to build up a fast and huge data warehouse in the matter of minutes, so you can copy the whole core database for utilization. You can use the latest data for analysis as daily new data is updated in the database very quickly. These benefits were taken into consideration.

Naturally, they considered other RDBMS products as well before they made their choice.
The performance and reliability of other RDBMS products were almost competitive but were NOT cost-effective. So they selected Symfoware Server.

Using Symfoware Server as a core engine, the new supply and demand system takes care of thousands of transactions every day, but the system has totally been free from problems, working quite stably since its implementation.
"Quick response weighed heavily when Web-enabling the system, and Symfoware Server has been as fast as we expected.
"We're satisfied with its performance and reliability," said Mr. Takamura as he evaluated Symfoware Server.

An Information Base for Distribution Tasks Including Implementation in SCM

Users had to write SQL statements by themselves to fetch data from the system.
This meant that users who did not have such skills were not able to analyze data.
This problem was solved when the new supply and demand system started to run.
"Users are pleased with its free methods of making analysis as they want," says Mr. Takeno.

Along with the Web-based supply and demand system, they can handle not only inventory and transfer information of products but new data including disposal and container information.
"Divisions that are responsible for logistics are creating warehouse or transportation plans based on this data, but they say it has been greatly facilitated. In addition, the new system is expected to produce significant effects in order to carry out thorough quality control," says Mr. Takamura.
On the basis of this success, KIRIN Beverage plans to apply the data accumulated in Symfoware Server to systems other than the new supply and demand system.

"We are thinking about implementing Symfoware database as a core for the ongoing SCM system. We would like to exploit the database in a variety of systems as comprehensive data infrastructure for the logistics system in the future," hopes Mr. Takeno.
It will also include the exploitation of the accumulated data in Symfoware for Sales Support System (SFA) as one of the items to discuss in the future.
Symfoware Server is greatly expected to realize a system environment that supports KIRIN Beverage's growing beverage business.

Company Overview

KIRIN Beverage Corporation
Established: April, 1963
Capital: 8,416 million yen (as of end of 2000)
Number of employees: 2,629 (as of December 31, 1999)
Sales amount: 276.246 billion yen (actual result of 2000)
URL: http://www.beverage.co.jp/
Overview of operations:Manufacturing and distributing soft drinks as one of the promising companies in the KIRIN BEER Group. Developing hit products in rapid-fire succession in the category of drinks, including tea drinks like Japanese tea, oolong tea, black tea, and soft drinks like coffee, juice, and sports drinks.