ACIPCO
American Cast Iron Pipe Company uses Microsoft’s Office SharePoint Server
for intranet solution
American Cast Iron Pipe Company (ACIPCO), founded in 1905, manufactures a diversified
product line for the waterworks, capital goods and energy industries. The Corporate
headquarters and principal plant are located in Birmingham, Alabama. The products
manufactured by ACIPCO are produced and marketed worldwide through five divisions:
American Ductile Iron Pipe, American Flow Control, American Centrifugal, American
Steel Pipe, and ACIPCO International. Specifically, these products include: ductile
iron pipe and fittings; fire hydrants, valves and pumps for fire trucks; centrifugally
cast steel tubes, static castings and fabricated assemblies; electric resistance
welded steel pipe; and spiral welded steel pipe.
ACIPCO is a privately held Company and operates as a beneficial trust with both employees
and customers as beneficiaries. ACIPCO's Founder John J. Eagan developed a unique
plan of industrial cooperation under which the Company operates today. The employees
work together as a team under the guiding principle of commitment to quality and
service. This philosophy has made ACIPCO one of the top companies in America, according
to a recent article in “Fortune” magazine, “The 100 Best Companies
to Work for In America.”
ACIPCO's corporate philosophy is to respond to customer demand with premium quality
products shipped in a timely manner at a fair and competitive price. Its dedication
to meeting this goal has earned it the prestigious ISO 9000 Certification.
Overview
- County or Region: United States
- Industry: Manufacturing
- Customer Profile:
American Cast Iron Pipe Company (ACIPCO), founded in 1905, manufactures a diversified
product line for the waterworks, capital goods and energy industries.
- Business Situation:
ACIPCO’s goal was to implement a content management solution to empower business
users to create, publish, and manage content. ACIPCO evaluated many CMS solutions
and chose Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) as an intranet platform for sharing
content. ACIPCO believed the Microsoft platform would be reliable, consistent, and
easily integrated into other solutions and applications.
- Solution:
ACIPCO implemented Microsoft Office SharePoint Server to help provide an
intranet shared service environment for various departments starting with Process
Control.
- Benefits:
Reusable Components
Increased Employee Productivity
Reduced Total Cost of Ownership
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Case Study
- Situation
ACIPCO did not have a technology solution in place to facilitate publishing or management
of content on the company’s internal communication network. Information technology
(IT) staff had to edit, maintain, and add content to the intranet site manually,
which took the focus of IT off more strategic development tasks. In addition, intranet
content was built with static Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) pages that were used
and then replaced every time new content was posted to the site. This process made
timely posting of important news difficult, and having thousands of files with no
naming conventions was consuming server space and making the network almost impossible
to manage.
- Solution
ACIPCO evaluated many Content Management solutions and chose Microsoft’s Office
SharePoint Server (MOSS). The team from Innovative Architects helped implement the Microsoft
SharePoint Server solution. Office SharePoint Server provides ACIPCO with templates that
serve as the framework and starting point for pages that enable content contributors
to post information on the intranet. Once the ACIPCO IT team has coded and tested
a template, it is released into production where business users then can add content.
ACIPCO also uses the Authoring Connector, which allows knowledge workers to add
content through the familiar interface of Microsoft Word and submit the content
directly into the Office SharePoint Server workflow to be approved or declined.
- Benefits
Reusable Components
Microsoft Office SharePoint Server uses SQL Server to store reusable XML,
HTML, and image content separately from the templates used for display on the ACIPCO
intranet. By abstracting content from presentation, ACIPCO knowledge workers are
able to reuse templates with different content and easily repurpose the same content
across a variety of applications. ACIPCO developers can easily develop and focus
on reusable content-driven templates using Visual Studio.NET.
Increased Employee Productivity
Because Office SharePoint Server is part of the .NET product family, ACIPCO
developers can be very creative in modeling business requirements and then turning
those business requirements into technological realities. Using the classes and
interfaces provided and the application programming interface (API) reduces the
development process and gives developers the building blocks to design custom applications
tailored to unique business needs.
Reduced Total Cost of Ownership
ACIPCO is in the early stages of using Office SharePoint Server, so it’s
difficult to estimate direct savings in total cost of ownership. However, staff
members are reaping benefits in terms of reduced IT support and improved content
posting capabilities.
- Software and Services
• Microsoft Office
• Microsoft Office SharePoint Server
• Microsoft SQL Server
• Microsoft .Net Framework
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