This term undoubtedly identifies one of the prime roles taken on by Information Technology to meet the challenges that businesses are faced with every day, to improve their organisational processes in an increasingly complex and competitive economic system.

More and more textile companies are abandoning the traditional IT models and turning to Integrated Information Systems for solutions.

This trend, which was originally adopted only by the high-profile multinational companies, is now spreading to smaller concerns, as the strategic role played by information, as a prime resource for the business decision-making process, assumes ever greater importance.

High quality, prompt decision-making, effective communication between the various parts of an organisation and first-rate management of information resources are the essential corporate tools for rapid, effective reaction to the challenges of an open market, demanding constant innovation and imposing increasingly cut-throat competition.

Installing an ERP system brings with it a series of potential performance benefits, but, at the same time, it requires a notable commitment of resources and has a significant effect on operations. A system that has such far-reaching effects, demands the concerted, well-coordinated action of all the professionals involved, to guarantee its full and smooth integration into the organisational structure, keeping to the programmed time-frame and budget. In other words, any company that chooses to set such a project in motion, needs to make a thorough preliminary study of the conditions required in order to guarantee its successful outcome.

An information management system in the textile environment has to integrate a database for some of the most complex applications in the whole of industry. All this can be summarised in one word ERP.

In our case, integration reaches extreme levels of complexity because so many modules have to be managed, from production control systems, to progress checking, work scheduling, order confirmation, management control, price calculation, data collection from retail outlets, raw material needs, manufacturing costs, optical image management, document filing and all the other administrative tasks, including cash flow and stock control. This mountain of data has to be processed correctly and in real time.

Each department a the company consists of a team of diverse people and each of these people have to make their contribution to constructing a global archive that everyone else can access and use for their individual purposes. In order for the whole to function, naturally all of its parts, or procedures, have to make up single, stand-alone modules, that may or may not be included, according to the needs of the customer. All of the PROTEX modules are interconnected, allowing all the information in the global database to be constantly reused, an enormous advantage in itself.

The system, with the exception of schedules and individual component bases, does not have point of departure and arrival, but rather can be seen as a circle of data which can be entered at any point, as dictated by the logic of the production set-up of the company using its functions.

Of course, any sound procedure starts with a clear and precise logic, therefore for each article produced, there will be initial entries, under components and raw material, of the following information:

• commercial information
• general technical data
• materials requirement
• manufacturing goal and phase 3 affinity
• technical manufacturing data (times and methods)
• standard costs
• pricing
• image

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