Fisher & Paykel Appliances(MIS100 2009)

By CIO staff | Friday, July 24 2009

2008 ranking:56

Senior IS executive: Andrew Cooke, vice president information technology
Reports to: CFO
Size of IS shop: 55

PCs: 1890
Mobile PCs: 300
Terminals: 229
Hand-held devices: 280
Total screens: 2699

Industry: Manufacturing
PC environment: Dell; Toshiba; Apple; Windows 95, 98, NT, 2000, XP
Server environment: Dell; HP, iSeries; Sun; Windows NT, 2000, 2003
DBMS: DB2, Oracle, SQL, Ingres
Address: 78 Springs Rd, East Tamaki, Auckland
Website: www.fp.co.nz
Key IS projects this year: Software and server virtualisation.

Fisher & Paykel has turnover in excess of NZ$1 billion and employs close to 4000 people worldwide. Nearly 1500 of these people are employed locally.

The company is listed on the New Zealand and Australian stock exchanges and has manufacturing and distribution operations located in New Zealand, Italy, US, Mexico and Thailand as well as distribution operations in Australia, Singapore, UK and reland
The international expansion of Fisher & Paykel that has occurred over the past few years has changed the nature of the business. The US is now the largest revenue generator for the group and it now has two production facilities in that region. Australia and New Zealand continue to be important markets and form the base for the company’s business.

Longer term, the growth in Europe, the UK and Ireland will become more important. Tracking the business across different time zones and cultures presents difficulties. Knitting local customs and practices together with the way the company wants to do its business also creates other challenges.

In March, Fisher and Paykel became the first company in New Zealand to sign up to the Government-subsidised nine-day working fortnight scheme with around 350 staff initially taking part. Fisher and Paykel CEO and managing director John Bongard told the New Zealand Herald the situation was in line with the recent decline of global demand, combined with entering a traditional off-peak manufacturing winter season.
Andrew Cooke, vice president information technology, heads an internal ICT team of 55. He says key ICT projects for 2009 include continuing the implementation of software and server virtualisation technologies to assist with business continuity and disaster recovery strategies.