Timken and Cincom: sharing many decades of success

Cincom products• MANTIS ®• SUPRA ® Server PDMPast• Original installation in the 1970's(TOTAL ® )• MANTIS installation in the 1980’s• Upgrade to SUPRA PDM early 1990’sPresent• Timken's Shop Floor, Order Entry,Order Management and ShippingsystemsFuture• Will continue using Cincom’sdevelopment tools and integrationcapabilities where they fit withTimken’s evolving architecture.Profile in success: TimkenTimken and Cincom:sharing many decades ofsuccess“We’ve had a long, successful history with Cincom,and MANTIS and SUPRA have been excellentproducts for us to use. Over the years, we havesuccessfully built a number of applications that havelasted on their platforms a lot longer than we everexpected them to. And we’ve been able to continueto maintain them and get value from them.”– R. Scott WhiteDirector, Information Technologies and OperationsThe Timken CompanyCanton, Ohio USA

Client backgroundThe Timken Company is a leading global manufacturer ofhighly engineered bearings and alloy steels, and a providerof related products and services with operations in 27countries. The company applies its knowledge of frictionmanagement and power transmission to innovative solutionsfor customers that improve their performance. The companyreported record sales of $4.5 billion in 2004 and employedapproximately 26,000 at the year-end.A partnership beginsIn the early 70’s, Timken wanted a platform that would enable thecompany to move quickly into developing online applications,and still leverage its existing batch data. At that time, databasetechnology was becoming the mainstay in the industry. “That’sabout the time I started at Timken,” comments R. Scott White,Director, Information Technologies and Operations. “We hadtraditionally been a smaller shop, on an IBM mainframe, butstarting to grow larger. We needed a database managementsystem to take us to that next step of advancing ourmanufacturing, order management, scheduling, and inventorymanagement systems. Cincom had a good reputation for theirTOTAL database and its hierarchical, networked model, andthat’s what attracted Timken to Cincom and the IBM mainframeplatform at the time.” That original implementation has sinceevolved to the SUPRA PDM product suite, Cincom’s hierarchical,interactive database management system.According to Andrea Dorsey, Section Manager, DataManagement Department, “SUPRA has always been very easy tomanage from the standpoint of reliability and recoverability.”Dorsey went on to say, “Also, with a recent acquisition, weadded a lot more MANTIS programs in engineering and theother business areas that require both a DB2 and SUPRAinterface. MANTIS is an extremely easy language to learn, sowithin a couple of days, programmers can usually be trained andbe up to speed. New applications can be developed very quicklyand easily maintained.”Many of Timken’s applications have user interfaces written inMANTIS. For example, a shop floor data collection applicationwas installed in six months in four departments in one ofTimken’s roller plants. That application is still very stable andvirtually problem-free. MANTIS also integrates into Timken’s MRPsystem and feeds the “Cost of Production” and “Payroll”systems.Timken also implemented a shop floor data collectionapplication for its Winchester, Kentucky plant. This involvedintegrating a MANTIS application with another shop floor datacollection package. The MANTIS integration effort was minimal,requiring only a two-month implementation.World-class support and responsiveeducation services“Typically when we’ve called for support, it has always been thesame set of people that we’ve talked to,” comments Dorsey. “Itreally means a lot when you deal with a company that has peoplewith such long employment histories. We have always had verygood support from Cincom, both from the standpoint of theknowledgeable Cincom people and for quickly getting problemsresolved.” Quickly was how Cincom responded when some ofthe Timken programmers needed to be trained. CincomEducation put a customized four-day, on-site training coursetogether in a very short time. Rollie Goodall, Manager, ITManufacturing and Quality Systems, explains further, “Seven ofour employees, most of whom had never used MANTIS, left theclasses feeling that it was extremely beneficial, saying it wasexactly what they needed. Cincom was very responsive to ourneeds, both in content and timing. I asked for somethingrelatively quickly, and as usual, Cincom came through.”Cincom, the Quadrant Logo, MANTIS, SUPRA and TOTAL are registeredtrademarks of Cincom Systems, Inc. All other trademarks belong to theirrespective companies.© 2006 Cincom Systems, Inc.FORM AD050928-1 03/06Printed in U.S.A.All Rights ReservedWorld Headquarters • Cincinnati, OH USA • US 1-800-2CINCOMFax 1-513-612-2000 • International 1-513-612-2769E-mail info@cincom.com • http://www.cincom.com“Just think of it, here we are, two Ohiobasedcompanies in different industries atdifferent ends of the state, watching eachother grow, prosper and mature together formore than 33 years.”– R. Scott WhiteDirector, Information Technologies and OperationsThe Timken Company