IT is business within business: Elsaasser

The company's India center employs 20 percent of the company's worldwide IT workforce does pretty significant support of the company's engineering systems. In an interview with Pragati Simlote of CyberMedia News, Elsaasser talks about the use of IT in the Timken and India's contribution in the overall IT processes at the company.

Tell us something about Timken and your operations in India?



Timken manufactures tapered roller bearings and mechanical seamless steel tubing and this year we expect to be close to a $5 billion company. We are based out of the US but operate in US, China, India and Europe. Our major product lines are bearings and steel.

Timken India Ltd, a subsidiary of The Timken Company, provides friction management solutions for a wide range of industry applications across the globe. Besides this we also have the Timken Engineering and Research — India (TER-I), which is situated in Bangalore. Our Bangalore organization has about 330 people. We do IT support and corporate shared services out of the center. Under corporate shared services, we have insourced some of Timken's services like account receivables, accounts payable, US payroll, etc. to our Indian center.

We also have a product technology group, which does application engineering and product testing and product development for the Indian market because we see India as such an important market that we need to be close to our customers.

Then we have a manufacturing technology group that does low cost bearing manufacturing process. So we are trying to design new bearing manufacturing process at a lower cost using the Indian engineering machine tools. Plus we do global manufacturing technologies also.

What is the role of TER-I in the overall functioning of the company?



Our IT organization is a global organization employing 500 people worldwide. TER-I houses 20 percent of Timken's global IT force. The facility is expected to play an important role in implementing IT for Timken. Built with an investment of around $8.5m in the facility, the facility was purpose built for the company and was inaugurated in April 2004.

Our IT associates in Bangalore are divided into two major areas. One group supports our global infrastructure —IT infrastructure, telecom, network monitoring, etc. The other group is the application group, which works with our associates around the world on building and improving various IT applications. Our associates are also working on a global SAP implementation called Project ONE, which started at the beginning of this year.

What role does IT play in any organization?



IT is like a business within business. It has three key activities: Running the key operations like telecom, network, etc., application development for project delivery and consulting with our internal customers in terms of what they want to do and how IT can do it.

Applying IT to a business problem is not always easy. Good dialogue between users and IT people is needed. We need IT people who understand business and business people who have some appreciation for IT. In Timken, we have succeeded to some extent in applying IT to business, but I think we can still do better.

Going forward, what would be TER-I's role in IT implementation at Timken?



We do pretty significant support of our engineering systems from India. We do infrastructure support, application support, web development, some support of our Timken legacy systems, etc. Going forward the IT associates in India will play an important role as they are now getting involved in SAP implementation.

We have launched a global SAP implementation called Project ONE and have bought the mySAP business suite, which uses NetWeaver technology. In the process of this global implementation, Indian associates are now learning new technologies like SAP Basis, SAP NetWeaver, etc.

What kind of skill sets do you look at while employing in India?



We look at two primary skills, as the Indian center is the primary service provider to our worldwide customers apart from Timken itself. One would be the mechanical engineering skill and the second is strong IT skills. We also look for people with project management skills.

These skill sets in India are not difficult to find. But with wage inflation and higher attrition, we need more students from universities to come and join the industry and work towards attracting and retaining them with the company.