Ride along with Triumph on its journey to ERP modernization

CASE STUDY

For over a century, Triumph's passion and innovation have shaped the evolution of the motorcycle, creating the UK’s largest motorcycle manufacturer and a loved global brand. By embracing change and the new thinking it delivers, Triumph has modernized operations and revitalized its legendary brand, using the advanced functionality of Infor® LN and PTC Windchill. Never standing still, it continues to push and evolve, building iconic motorcycles that celebrate their past while embracing the future through bold design, original styling, purposeful engineering, and a genuine passion for the ride.

Triumph has partnered with Infor to embrace world-class business solutions. Stretching from the UK to Brazil, Thailand, and India, Triumph has brought its manufacturing, component, and assembly capabilities up to cutting-edge standards with a total ERP overhaul.

Triumph hits the road

Triumph motorcycles first began gaining recognition and sales nearly a century ago, when legendary actors and global icons such as Marlon Brando and Steven McQueen could be seen riding Triumph motorcycles in feature films. But today’s highly volatile business landscape is a far cry from the simpler era of the 1950s and ‘60s. Now, real-world business efficiency and stellar accomplishments give brands time in the spotlight too, in addition to silver screen product placements.

Triumph knew that optimizing its complete manufacturing processes, from shop floor scheduling to board room strategies, was important for growth. With the help of Infor solutions, built especially for complex, discrete manufacturing, Triumph set out to perform a complete digital upgrade.

Triumph’s road to modernization started with a strategic review that led the company toward a new range of modern classic bikes. At the same time, Triumph also identified the need for an overhaul of its engineering, manufacturing, and supply chain business processes.

“Over the years we've ended up with approximately 160 to 170 different systems that were serving various purposes within the business, our aim was to simplify our systems landscape to end up with a core, end-to-end system which supports most of the operational work for the business,” says Triumph’s COO, Jamie Looker.

Triumph’s culture is one of innovation, passion, and determination, promising customers to “build your bike to your specifications.” Triumph offers a Configurator web page allowing customers to configure their ideal bike from model, color, performance, styling, comfort options, packs, and accessories. These details are fed back into the manufacturing system to create a custom order with the dealer.

To address Triumph’s current and future challenges, Looker said the key was making sure we have that agility to be able to enhance the system or develop to support our business needs of today, while also being able to support the business of the future, which is an environment that is everchanging…”

Stats:

• 35% of the bill of materials made internally
• 85% of motorcycles sold outside the UK
• 686 suppliers around the globe
• Sales in 63 countries
• Supports 700 franchise dealers

Why partner with Infor?

Triumph calls itself a cautious company and is accustomed to developing its systems internally. As such, the process of requesting and reviewing vendor proposals was challenging. Eventually, Infor was selected as the ERP vendor because of its flexibility and willingness to work to meet Triumph’s agility needs, while providing co-development support into the longer term.

One of Triumph’s strengths is its flexibility to change engineering plans, something that it did not want to jeopardize. Triumph also wanted a single vendor that was fully accountable for project success across the end-to-end needs. Infor solutions, all fully integrated, handle the full scope of the various steps, using Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) capabilities to manage the design through bill of materials, providing a clear history of every part for each bike manufactured.

Given the scale and volume of Triumph’s manufacturing, the integration is being delivered in phases. Infor and PTC Windchill are working together to ensure a smooth transition.