Finance and Accounting

Finance and Accounting

Currently Riordan Manufacturing is having a challenging time trying to gather all the data that generates from its Finance and Accounting departments. All of the plant locations have different kinds of Finance and accounting systems, which may be the main reason Riordan Manufacturing has a hard time maintaining the data received. The company’s three operating locations each have their own Finance and Accounting systems. The plant in Pontiac, Michigan and the plant in Albany, Georgia feed data to the corporate headquarters in San Jose, California. Riordan Manufacturing also has a joint venture in Hangzhou, China. Although there is no mention of China’s data output on the company’s Intranet site, the company has facilities there that manufactures plastic fan parts. There should be data coming from that headquarters must there but the status of the Finance and Accounting system used in China is currently unknown.

Corporate headquarters currently has a license for an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system that is fully integrated and Windows based. It is designed specifically for plastics processing and assembly manufacturers. The ERP software has a financial management application included, along with manufacturing and distribution applications. The license the San Jose location has is from proprietary software, so it does not include the source code. Because the software does not come with a source code there is no way to modify the software for customization purposes.

When Riordan Manufacturing acquired the plant Michigan, the facility’s Financial and Accounting system was not taken into consideration. The Michigan location has a vendor developed application and the accompanying source code that was purchased some time ago, that runs on an old Legacy system. The vendor that Michigan purchased the software from is no longer in business. The application runs on a pair of Digital Equipment Corporation Alpha microprocessors, a company that is no longer in business. According to the company’s Intranet site, the program is run with VMS operating system, VAX4000 workstations, and programmed in C.

The Georgia location purchased different software and application source code that is vendor developed. The software includes applications for the financial and manufacturing functions process. The software is running on a pair of AS400’s, which have since been renamed twice. Judging from the name of the microprocessors, it seems they have not been replaced since the 1990’s. The Windows based workstations uses the UNIX operating system and is programmed in RPG400.

Presently, the data being received by corporate headquarters needs to be either re-entered or redirected to the proper account codes. It takes them anywhere from fifteen to twenty days into the month to close the General Ledger, Income Statement, and Balance Sheet from the previous month. Internal and external audits are needed every month, and are costly and labor intensive. Because of this situation with the Finance and Accounting departments, corporate headquarters is having a hard time keeping in compliance with government regulations.

Riordan Manufacturing is in dire need of a new sub-system for their Finance and Accounting departments for all of their plant locations, including China. The company needs all of the data output that comes from the different facilities to be compatible and integrate seamlessly with the ERP system that corporate already has. The software should have applications that enable each of Riordan Manufacturing’s Finance and Accounting departments to report the data from 1) General Ledger, 2) Accounts Payable, 3) Accounts Receivable, 4) Order Entry, 5) Procurement, 6) Sales and Purchasing History, 7) Invoicing and Shipping, 8) Payroll, and 9) Financial Reporting. The implementation of this system must be smooth, and cannot cause a disturbance with Riordan Manufacturing’s customers. Special care should be taken so that billing and invoicing isn’t affected by this change, to ensure customer satisfaction.

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