Reynolds Metals Company

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The Customer

Reynolds Metals Company began making tin foil cigarette and candy wrappers as the U.S. Foil Company in 1919, under the leadership of Richard S. Reynolds, who was a nephew of tobacco magnate R.J. Reynolds. As aluminum's price dropped in the 1920s, Reynolds switched to making aluminum foil, then branched into mining bauxite and manufacturing aluminum siding. In 1947 Reynolds invented Reynolds Wrap aluminum foil, which revolutionized food packaging and storage, and then in 1982 Reynolds invented Reynolds Plastic Wrap.

By the millennium, Reynolds was the third largest aluminum company in the world, employing almost 30,000 people at more than 100 manufacturing plants and operations in 25 countries. In 2000, the company merged with Alcoa to become the largest aluminum company in the United States.

The Challenge

Reynolds implemented the J.D. Edwards Enterprise Resource Planning system, attempting to replace dozens of legacy systems and interfaces across five different divisions with over 6,000 users. Intelligo was asked to produce requirements documentation for the implementation's design, to produce customized end-user documentation and training materials specific to each division, and to deliver Train-the-Trainer classes to hundreds of super users who would then train the end users at the various sites.

The Solution

Intelligo took part in Reynolds' design meetings at various divisions over the course of months, and created detailed requirements documentation that showed the decisions that were made and the business processes that Reynolds planned to implement.

Intelligo then participated in Reynolds' system testing to document the transactions, capture screens specific to each Reynolds division, and customize our Content Library of work instructions. Intelligo wrote the custom end-user documentation and training materials for the Reynolds' ease of maintenance.

Intelligo also worked with key Reynolds personnel to perform extensive planning and curriculum design for the training effort, using our custom-designed spreadsheet for tracking hundreds of job roles and varying tasks at each site.

Intelligo designed an HTML solution for Reynolds to maximize the availability of the online documentation to all users across a wide variety of locations, networks, bandwidths, and browsers.

Intelligo's Value-Add

Intelligo provided critical guidance to Reynolds in identifying the best online documentation solution and the best training strategy and curriculum design for Reynolds' wide variety of users and locations. Intelligo also provided detailed project documentation for Reynolds' software design, and wrote end-user work instructions tailored to each Reynolds site's use of the software. Intelligo also taught Train-the-Trainer classes to the core team, to prepare them to teach classes to the end users.

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