One of our many company visits was to Eliane, a company dedicated to manufacturing and commercializing ceramic coatings for the home and foreign markets. They are a family owned company that was founded in 1960 and has since become the largest ceramic exporter in Brazil. Their products can be found at more than 15 thousand sales points in over 85 countries. During our visit we toured their administrative headquarters including their product showroom, museum, IT department and one of the 6 factories in Brazil where their tiles are made.
Upon arrival the grandson of the company’s founder greeted us. He welcomed us and gave us a brief introduction to the company and its background. We then toured the showroom, which featured a variety of the tiles Eliane produces. Because Eliane caters to so many different markets, they produce a diverse product line to appeal to many different tastes in style and materials. For example, they produce everything from tiles with embedded Swarovski crystals, tiles with heat-retaining technology, and tiles made with recycled materials. We then visited the company museum, showcasing items owned by the companies’ founder and an assortment of tiles Elaine has produced but are now out of production.
Our next stop was the factory, where we first saw one of the computer terminals. Every department at Elian uses the same internally developed telnet-based text menu system. This allows employees to access the system from anywhere to view and modify orders, and allows and restricts access to different parts of the system appropriately to different employees. After learning a bit about the computer system, we toured the factory and saw how tiles are made from start to finish.
We were still curious about Elaine’s use of IT so our next stop was the IT department. We toured the server room and then had the opportunity to talk with a few members of the IT department. The employees we talked to were mainly tasked with maintaining the internally developed system that is currently in use and they shared some of their experiences with us. Looking forward, the company plans to upgrade their system and their main goal is to transition to industry standard software. They recently brought in external consultants who examined their practices and recommended Oracle. The company has since purchased the software and is planning on bringing in contractors to help the IT department with the upgrade to Oracle.
Our group covered a lot of ground in our short time at Elaine and we learned quite a bit about a company where manufacturing processes and IT are both important aspects of business.