Columbia Forest Products Project

Columbia Forest Products chose a single ERP package to implement across our Veneer and Plywood organization. The scope of the implementation was a full replacement of our Finance, Customer Service, Manufacturing and Materials Management systems. The legacy systems were varied for each mill with different underlying data structures. The multi-characteristic nature of our products, varying manufacturing processes, as well as multi-country aspect of our business added complexity to this project.

The implementation included extensive standardization of business processes and required a complex change management component. The Veneer and Plywood divisions had different modes of manufacturing with the Veneer mills being make-to-stock and the Plywood mills being make-to-order. The roll out involved a total of 8 mills in the U.S. and Canada with over 1000 users. The project team peaked at over 70 individuals.

To deliver this project within our aggressive timeframe and budget, we selected Zethos Consulting for their extensive project management and manufacturing industry expertise. The team from Zethos Consulting was responsible for a variety of roles from project management, leading detailed design, system test, data conversion and roll out. As part of their responsibilities, they developed many of the approaches and innovative techniques used by the project team to design, test, and convert the system. They worked tightly with our in house project managers and business leaders to successfully deliver the implementation. Zethos Consulting was also critical in generating the support of the mill and division managers for the system.

The Zethos Consulting team was impressive in their ability to work with and mentor our staff to enable them to not only deliver the initial implementation, but to take on the ongoing maintenance and support of the new system.

-Frank Leipzig, VP,Information Technology