Textile Manufacturer Becomes “Part of the Fabric” of Their Supply and Demand Chains
Customer Company Size
Large Corporate
Region
- America
Country
- United States
Product
- EXTOL Business Integrator
- EXTOL Business Collaborator
- Home Grown ERP System
- Home Grown WMS System
Tech Stack
- EDI
- CSV
- XLS
- TXT
Implementation Scale
- Enterprise-wide Deployment
Impact Metrics
- Productivity Improvements
- Cost Savings
- Customer Satisfaction
Technology Category
- Application Infrastructure & Middleware - Data Exchange & Integration
- Application Infrastructure & Middleware - Middleware, SDKs & Libraries
Applicable Functions
- Logistics & Transportation
- Procurement
- Warehouse & Inventory Management
Use Cases
- Supply Chain Visibility
- Inventory Management
- Demand Planning & Forecasting
Services
- System Integration
- Software Design & Engineering Services
About The Customer
Mount Vernon Mills, Inc. is a diversified manufacturer of textile and related products for the apparel, industrial, institutional and commercial markets. They are headquartered in Mauldin, South Carolina and have approximately 3,600 employees. The enterprise is comprised of seven integrated divisions, operate 14 production facilities in the U.S., and provide distribution services to customers in Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean. Their customers include big names such as Wrangler and Lee. Many of their suppliers are small businesses and family-owned providers of raw materials such as cotton, or finishing services.
The Challenge
Mount Vernon Mills (MVM) is a diversified manufacturer of textile and related products for various markets. They have a central philosophy of doing whatever it takes to satisfy the customer, which includes end-to-end automation of the exchange of complex business processes and transaction data. However, they faced challenges with their legacy EDI system which had become extremely expensive in terms of labor for the custom code needed to both use and maintain the software system. They also had to deal with 'Swivel Chair Integration', a time-consuming and error-prone process of manually transferring data from one application to another.
The Solution
MVM adopted the EXTOL Business Integrator (EBI), which enables their existing team to manage complex integration of both non-EDI formats, such as spreadsheets, flat files and XML, in addition to standard EDI formats. This solution allowed them to integrate disparate systems, respond rapidly to market and customer requirements and eliminate inefficiencies in their order to cash cycles. With EBI, XLS or CSV file data from suppliers is automatically integrated with MVM’s back-end systems, no different than a traditional X12 EDI transaction. They also automated 9 non-EDI trading partners, with whom they exchange approximately 215 messages per month, in the form of CSV, XLS or TXT files containing order, consignment, shipment and invoice data.
Operational Impact
Quantitative Benefit
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