This production environment proved too large and complex to easily track the movement of parts and inventory in real time as these events were taking place. Without up to the minute data, the efficiencies from enterprise resource planning software are very limited. To make matters worse, the recent economic downturn hit HHI especially hard, as world trading and shipping plummeted. orders for new ships in 2009 plunged to 7.9 tons measurement of vessel size), down from million cGT the previous economic Heavy was looking for new ways to expenses and production.