About Ajinomoto Foods North America:
Ajinomoto Foods North America, a subsidiary of Ajinomoto Co. Japan, is a leading manufacturer in the frozen foods industry. With nine factories in the U.S. and its corporate office in California, Ajinomoto has an annual revenue of $1B and over 3,000 employees. Ajinomoto’s brands can be found in grocery stores, foodservice and in restaurants. Ajinomoto has a rich history of diverse ethnic brands, which have become household favorites all across America, including Jose Ole and Ling Ling.
Challenge:
At Ajinomoto, Oracle JD Edwards ERP is the hub that their business applications evolve around. They use JDE to support HR, supply chain, manufacturing, shop floor, infrastructure, and cyber security and others. Ajinomoto had recently completed two point-to-point integrations. They were working on their third integration, into a computerized maintenance management system, Maintenance Connection, which was by far their most complex and involved project.
With all of these integrations on top of each other, Ajinomoto was looking for a company that would help solve their problems:
- High error rates: Ajinomoto’s use of a flat file integration methodology was causing performance problems, leading to high error rates since they didn’t have a way to monitor or validate the data entered into JD Edwards.
- Staff frustration with multiple systems: The maintenance and finance teams had their preferred systems and Ajinomoto needed to give them a seamless way to work with JDE and Maintenance Connection.
- Lack of a standardized integration method: Ajinomoto needed to keep the business processes they had intact, requiring integration across all systems. For example, finance users pay the invoice associated with a PO from JDE, but that information needed to be reflected in Maintenance Connection for the maintenance teams.
Customer Quote:
We needed our business processes to work together seamlessly across systems, and with Magic Software’s JDE specific expertise, along with its scalability and support, Magic checked all of those boxes. We knew Orchestrator had a lot of capabilities, but now we realize we couldn’t have done it without Magic xpi.
Mark Gallrein, Director Business Analyst Information Technology, Ajinomoto Foods North America
Solution:
The combination of Magic xpi and Orchestrator allowed Ajinomoto to automate their asset management system and enable better data quality and visibility. Now with vendor and asset data, Ajinomoto uses Orchestrator to create the API that Magic xpi communicates with. Magic xpi then transforms the data and kicks off validation routines that are incorporated into the integration process for error handling and data validation before sending data to Maintenance Connection. Maintenance Connection then sends back Assets, Purchase Orders, and Inventory data with any changes or updates that then goes through more validation routines before processing the data in JDE.
Ajinomoto selected Magic xpi for its:
- JD Edwards Expertise – Based on extensive experience, Magic was able to anticipate common issues and solve problems before they caused any delays.
- Speed – with only one resource from Magic, Ajinomoto was able to deliver this complex project on a substantially shorter timeline compared to past projects.
- Scalability – works not just for JDE and Maintenance Connect, but it also works for JDE and other systems, and for any other non-JDE systems they may need in the future.
Ajinomoto is now focused on completing a vertical lift system integration with the Stanley Vidmar solution for a total of four different applications connected together, and are continuing to evaluate new integrations.
Results:
- Reduction of errors and validation of orders – saving 50% in reprocessing time
- Project development timeline from requirement gathering to implementation was completed in 4-6 weeks, from start to finish
- Magic xpi automated real-time integrations between JDE and multiple systems
- Reduced manual integration development that previously was significantly error prone
- Gained visibility by leveraging Magic xpi’s built in monitoring capabilities together with Orchestrator
