IBM > Case Studies > A manufacturer deploys business rules in an hour rather than a week

A manufacturer deploys business rules in an hour rather than a week

Customer Company Size

Large Corporate

Country

Worldwide

Product

IBM Operational Decision Management

Tech Stack

COBOL-based applications
ERP system

Implementation Scale

Enterprise-wide Deployment

Impact Metrics

Productivity Improvements
Digital Expertise

Technology Category

Application Infrastructure & Middleware - API Integration & Management

Applicable Industries

Automotive

Applicable Functions

Discrete Manufacturing
Business Operation

Use Cases

Manufacturing System Automation

Services

System Integration
Training

About The Customer

The company in the case study is a manufacturer of commercial trucks, buses, recreational vehicles (RVs), defense vehicles and engines. In addition to manufacturing, the company also provides aftermarket support and financing services. The company has a global presence with operations worldwide. As part of its IT strategy, the company wanted to make fundamental changes. It aimed to replace silos with enterprise-wide applications and create a greater alignment between business requirements and the IT department. The company's core ERP system relied on numerous COBOL-based applications for processing, which were challenging and time-consuming to change.

The Challenge

The organization wanted to make fundamental changes to its IT strategy. It sought to replace silos with enterprisewide applications and create greater alignment between business requirements and the IT department. As part of this transformation, the company needed to change the way it handled business rules. Its core ERP system relied on numerous COBOL-based applications for processing. Making changes to these applications could be tricky; they were poorly documented and the company had a shrinking pool of resources available to manage them. The organization began looking for a more flexible, responsive business rules solution that would enable it to get new and updated business rules to production quickly.

The Solution

The business considered solutions from multiple vendors before deciding to engage IBM to perform a Quick Win Pilot using IBM® Operational Decision Management software. IBM did codevelopment with the company and then helped them size their environment because it’s a centralized decision-making environment where all the manufacturing applications — not only financial applications but warranty applications, engineering applications or sales applications — can coexist in one central location so that they can leverage the environment itself. And IBM laid out the training plan for them. With Operational Decision Management software, users can divide business rules into services, which then integrate with the organization’s service-oriented architecture (SOA), facilitating reuse. Users can search for rules, modify them and reuse them. Further, if necessary, users can revert to previous versions of the rule and access a complete history of the changes other users have made to it.

Operational Impact

Users can push business rule changes to production systems in an hour versus a week
The solution integrates with the company’s service-oriented architecture (SOA), facilitating rule reuse
Users can search for rules, modify them and reuse them
If necessary, users can revert to previous versions of the rule and access a complete history of the changes other users have made to it

Quantitative Benefit