Case study based on interview with Christopher Caddick IT manager in Trafford Distribution Centre Author: Krzysztof Bazan
Submitted 02/03/2010
What is the Adidas? What are the information systems used by the company? What are the systems used for? What is a history of systems implementation within the company and why they were brought in? Are there any further plans for information systems in the Adidas UK and Adidas UK area north. Adidas is a German-based sports apparel manufacturer and part of the Adidas Group, which consists of Reebok sportswear company, Rockport and TaylorMade - adidas golf company (TMAG). Adidas is a global leader in the sporting goods industry, is headquartered in Herzogenaurach, Germany, with 33,000 employees worldwide [1]. Besides sports footwear, the company also produces other products such as bags, shirts, watches, eyewear and other sports and clothing related goods. The company is the largest sportswear manufacturer in Europe and the second biggest sportswear manufacturer in the world [2], after its U.S. rival Nike. Till 1999 Adidas company has in Europe eighty five warehouses that cooperated with forty five warehouse control systems and fifty six warehouse management systems. The company used three main sale systems which were Adispace, Adirace, WMS. Because of such a big variety of systems there were problems of information exchange between systems. The big step in unifying the information system was to introduce in 1999 one common sale system for sale in Europe. The company decided for SAP R/3 based on ORACLE database and further solutions AFS (apparel footwear solution), and mySAP CRM (customer relationship management). In the South America and Africa the company still uses Adispace system. The main reasons for introducing SAP in Adidas in Europe were European Union Legal Legislations and need of improving security of stock flow. Any new legal legislations are easier to perform for one system then
References: [1] “Our Game plan Annual Report 2008” http://www.adidasgroup.com/en/investorrelations/reports/annualreports.aspx [2]"Adidas, Deutsche Telekom, Infineon: German Equity Preview". Bloomberg L.P.. 16 January 2008. [3] “Consumer product companies run SAP” www.sap.com/industries/consumer/pdf/CSBook_Consumer_Products.pdf - 2005-03-09 [4] “TaylorMade Golf History”. Mike Camunas http://www.golflink.com/about_5029_taylormade-golf-history.html 4