Company/Time frame: MWV(WestRock), Richmond, VA October 2015 – December 2016
Position: Project Manager
Project description:
MWV’s BPCS system was originally implemented in 1996. No vendor upgrades had been applied since and there has been numerous custom modifications and interfaces developed. Many of the custom modifications and the maintenance associated with them would no longer be needed if the system was upgraded to the latest version called LX from Infor. Also some additional functionality in LX would be very advantage to the user community to improve efficiency and reduce cost by as much as 10%. Plus the system was running on an older AS400 running an operating system that is no longer supported by IBM.
Challenge: A new AS400 had to be purchased and configured. Tape drives had to be purchased that were compatible with both the old and new AS400. All the custom modifications that were still needed has to be retro fitted to work with the latest AS400 operating system and with the LX code. All the data from the old system had to be migrated to the new system. And finally, enterprise asset management (EAM) system had to be converted to the new version of the system and configures to support the RF devices used in the plants.
Action: We developed detailed plans, reviewed current business requirements to those offered by LX, the new product from Infor and then determined what customization that would still be needed.
Result: The project was within two months of being completed, when WestRock cancelled the project due to the merge of Rock Ten and MWV.
As a result, extensive shut-down plans were developed and executed to backup everything that had been done for possible future use.