Owens-Corning Success Story 
HP's consulting solutions for Owens-Corning

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Meeting business needs with the open software environment approach 
For Owens-Corning Fiberglas Corporation, the Toledo, Ohio-based world
leader in fiberglass manufacturing, restructuring operations has helped
offset declining product sales volume and prices. Through aggressive
cost-cutting and organizational streamlining, the company, which
generated $2.8 billion in sales in 1991, continues to improve its
productivity and gain market share. Facilitating these changes is the
company's recent shift to open, distributed computing. Offering
dramatic cost savings, open systems will more importantly transform the
company's information systems into a competitive weapon for strategic
planning, opening vast new business opportunities. The HP Open Software
Environment (OSE) Software Architecture workshop helped Owens-Corning
take the important first steps toward open systems. Just 1 year later,
Owens-Corning, in partnership with HP, delivered its first
object-oriented client/server application operating on a UNIX(R)
platform, a goal the company had struggled with for 5 years.
   Owens-Corning primarily manufactures insulation, roofing, and
reinforcement materials in its 54 plants worldwide. A decade of market
fluctuations in the construction and industrial markets and a 1986
recapitalization to avoid a hostile takeover led to a complete
restructuring of operations. Says Bill Whitten, specialist for
technology assessment and planning, "As we began divesting ourselves of
various business units and downsizing others, we ran into incredible
difficulties getting our mainframe-based systems to adapt."
Owens-Corning trimmed one of its distribution operations by 75 percent,
but its customer support system was still geared to a large operation.
Paring it down cost the company substantial time and money. 
Owens-Corning could no longer afford information systems that, in
effect, limit its business options.
   Continues Whitten, "We made the decision to migrate to open systems
5 years ago. And for 5 years we saw almost no progress. Like many
companies, we run a pretty lean operation. We have had our
mainframe-based information systems for nearly 30 years, and most of
our work up to now had focused on extending our existing application
portfolio. This means we had relatively little opportunity to develop
new systems. We knew we wanted to move to open systems, but we didn't
know where to start."

"We had tremendous support from HP's consultants in actually
implementing this system. But above that, the HP OSE Software
Architecture workshop identified all the work that had to be done, so
we have had very few surprises along the way."

Bill Whitten
Senior Specialist for Technology Assessment and Planning

Leveraging expertise
Lacking sufficient resources, experience, and time, Owens-Corning
looked outside for help. After talking with several companies,
Owens-Corning chose to work with HP because of its reputation for
system independence and expertise in nonproprietary systems.
   By tapping into HP's experience in building open systems, its
consulting methodologies, and its global support resources,
Owens-Corning ensured that the new system design would address the
company's evolving business needs. Says Whitten, "After just a few
meetings with HP's consultants, it became clear we were both singing
out of the same hymnal, so we signed up for the HP OSE Software
Architecture workshop to complete our thinking about open systems and,
more importantly, develop a plan on how to get there."

Planning for success
Working with Owens-Corning information technology planners, HP's OSE
consultants assessed the company's current and future information
technology needs in the interactive 2-day workshop. Together the team
drafted a customized open systems architecture that enables
Owens-Corning to more easily scale and change its information systems
as business and customer needs dictate. The team also developed a
migration plan, which protected the company's past investments in a
mixed computing environment of HP 3000 systems, HP 9000 systems, IBM
mainframes, and IBM PCs. The plan also maximizes the value of future
investments. At the end of the workshop, the team had a comprehensive
open systems implementation plan for migrating to a client/server,
object-oriented software development and distributed computing
environment. This detailed, 2-year plan identified the specific tasks
and potential pitfalls for Owens-Corning as it implements its new
information systems architecture.
   Says Whitten, "What really appealed to us about the HP OSE Software
Architecture workshop was that it was customized for us, so we could
concentrate on the parts of open systems and the migration to open
systems that we felt weakest in. Our questions drove the program, and
HP's experienced consultants raised other important issues we hadn't
even considered. When we left the workshop, we had a clear idea of what
we had to do."

Enhancing return on investment
Following HP's implementation guidelines, Owens-Corning is now working
with software vendors to adapt their technologies to this distributed,
open architecture. In the long run, this multiyear conversion project
is expected to reduce hardware and maintenance costs by 30 to 40
percent. Says Whitten, "Where we believe the real payoff will come is
in a major reduction in application maintenance. Right now about 65
percent of our so-called applications development budget is devoted to
just keeping our systems running, translating to about $10 million per
year. We believe that once we replace our current portfolio, we should
be able to drive that to near zero. For the first time, we'll be able
to apply consistent, rational management and administration strategies
across applications. This will improve our application quality
dramatically and expedite the delivery of information systems to
address business needs."
   With increased system reliability, Owens-Corning is now building
strategic applications, placing greater emphasis on customer service
and more integrated support of its global operations.
   Concludes Whitten, "We had tremendous support from HP's consultants
in actually implementing this system. But above that, the HP OSE
Software Architecture workshop identified all the work that had to be
done, so we have had very few surprises along the way. And that's
remarkable considering that neither we, nor any of our other partners,
had any experience outside of large multiple virtual storage (MVS)
mainframe installations. On our own, we would have fallen into a lot of
traps that the workshop and the planning meetings helped us avoid."

HP's added value
Owens-Corning used the HP OSE Software Architecture workshop to devise
its framework for developing an open systems architecture, along with
specific design guides, guidelines for selecting products and
standards, and guidelines for incorporating new technologies. HP's
consultants worked with Owens-Corning to steer the implementation
process and provide technical advice as it was needed, enabling the
company to quickly gear up its information systems organization. The
workshop enabled Owens-Corning to break the logjam that had stalled its
progress for 5 years and delivered a valid blueprint for future product
deliverables that promise tremendous cost savings for the company. To
find out how the HP OSE Software Architecture workshop and HP's
consulting services can help you implement cost-effective open systems,
contact your nearest Hewlett-Packard representative today.

UNIX is a registered trademark of UNIX System Laboratories Inc. in the
USA and other countries.

Technical information in this document is subject to change without
notice.

(c) Hewlett-Packard Co. 1992

Printed with soy-based ink.

Printed in USA 07/92
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