Review of Riordan Manufacturing

Review of Riordan Manufacturing

Leonie Graham, Riccardo Zanforlin, Jason Morrow, Kevin Robinder

BSA 310

February 13, 2012

Instructor: Aviv Raveh

Finance and Accounting systems

A review of Riordan’s finance and accounting systems shows much need for improvement. As Riordan has grown by acquiring existing businesses it has done very little work to integrate the existing systems. This has resulted in a very inefficient overall system. The following is a review of these existing systems and recommendations for improvement.

Riordan currently has three locations in the United States which each have their own systems. Corporate headquarters in San Jose has a licensed ERP system specifically designed for the plastics industry. This system integrates manufacturing, distribution, and financial management applications into a single system. Although this system is very efficient for the current use, the license does not include the source code and so the company is very constrained on making updates and changes as business needs arise.

When the Michigan plant was acquired there was an F&A application system in place. This system runs on a pair of mainframe servers and was programmed in C. The application vendor is no longer in business so there is little outside support available for this system.

Likewise, the Georgia plant has an F&A system which was in place at the time \of acquisition. This system is different from the system in Michigan although the source code is again available. This system also runs on mainframes (AS400’s) and is programmed in RPG400.

Having these disparate systems causes many issues for the finance and accounting department. Although some data is easily transmitted to the corporate location, other data must be transmitted in hardcopy formats and reentered into the receiving system. This allows many additional opportunities for errors. Month end closing statements cost many man hours to complete and are often not ready until the...