Harley Davidson Erp It Study
Justin Hazlett
BUSN 6610
Harley Davidson Case
February 12, 2012
Since Harley Davison Motor Company started in 1903, they have been successfully “taking the work out of bicycling” better than any other motorcycle manufacturing company. They have experienced great success recently with growing numbers in their percentage of motorcycles shipped, up 14 percent from 1997, and their target market size, up 13.8 percent from 1997. Their brand has also grown so strong over the years that customers are willing to wait up to two years for a motorcycle. The problems that Harley Davison is faced with are how to improve their existing purchasing process, how to integrate their existing procurement methods together, and how to develop longer term relationships with suppliers. Since these issues are enterprise wide, they are looking into software that will allow them to manage their supply chain more efficiently and be more functional than their current system. First, they went through the process of forming a project team of experts from each of the procurement organizations. They called this team the Supplier Information Link or SiL’K for short. The team then mapped the purchasing processes of the company and surveyed the stakeholders to see where most of their time was spent on procurement activities. The team was quite shocked when they found that their purchasing personnel was spending up to 85% of their time on non-strategic activities including reviewing inventory and data entry. The team had established an SMS goal of having personnel spending at least 70% of their time on supplier management activities, so there was a great deal of room for improvement in this area. They were then able to map out where they would like the company to be after the new enterprise software was implemented. From that point, the team developed a Request for Quote (RFQ) to send out to potential software suppliers to see how they could meet Harley Davidson’s needs. This brought them to
BUSN 6610
Harley Davidson Case
February 12, 2012
Since Harley Davison Motor Company started in 1903, they have been successfully “taking the work out of bicycling” better than any other motorcycle manufacturing company. They have experienced great success recently with growing numbers in their percentage of motorcycles shipped, up 14 percent from 1997, and their target market size, up 13.8 percent from 1997. Their brand has also grown so strong over the years that customers are willing to wait up to two years for a motorcycle. The problems that Harley Davison is faced with are how to improve their existing purchasing process, how to integrate their existing procurement methods together, and how to develop longer term relationships with suppliers. Since these issues are enterprise wide, they are looking into software that will allow them to manage their supply chain more efficiently and be more functional than their current system. First, they went through the process of forming a project team of experts from each of the procurement organizations. They called this team the Supplier Information Link or SiL’K for short. The team then mapped the purchasing processes of the company and surveyed the stakeholders to see where most of their time was spent on procurement activities. The team was quite shocked when they found that their purchasing personnel was spending up to 85% of their time on non-strategic activities including reviewing inventory and data entry. The team had established an SMS goal of having personnel spending at least 70% of their time on supplier management activities, so there was a great deal of room for improvement in this area. They were then able to map out where they would like the company to be after the new enterprise software was implemented. From that point, the team developed a Request for Quote (RFQ) to send out to potential software suppliers to see how they could meet Harley Davidson’s needs. This brought them to