Abstract
How to satisfy customer’s demand in the capital-intensive foundry industry has always been a key objective of the foundry company, and it involves a series of integration efforts from customer demand planning to foundry capacity planning to meet this objective. Foundry industry has been developed for over 20 years, and the competition is becoming fiercer in recent years due to China’s rapid growth in this industry. The improvement in cost and profit structure has been critical in such competitive environment, and it relies on a comprehensive supply chain management (SCM) system to integrate key business processes and enhance a company’s competitiveness. The characteristics of the foundry industry—including rapid-changing market, short product life cycle, uncertain demand, frequent order-changes, complex manufacturing processes, and so on— have made the implementation of SCM system more complex and difficult. Many companies have failed in their endeavor to deploy the SCM system due to the above characteristics. However, the case company in this study has successfully delivered the SCM system with great results through understanding of the distinctive foundry characteristics as well as business requirements and developing a customized project management model to effectively integrate internal and external resources for system implementation. This thesis illustrates the implementation process, management model and practical challenges regarding the deployment of SCM system at the case company, and then comes up with the key success factors. In-depth investigation from the perspectives of project management and system development has been conducted in the industrial settings, and the research areas include team management, process-oriented development, change management as well as practical key issues and their corresponding solutions. The reference model of this thesis will benefit those who want to understand or promote the SCM system.