IT plays a dual role in auto sector

CAIRO: India is number 2 in the world in two-wheeler market, No 1 in three-wheeler market, No 2 in the small car segment and No 5 in the commercial vehicles segment.

IT has played a crucial role in the country gaining this ascendancy in the global auto scenario and has an even greater role in sustaining this advantage and fueling further growth for the automotive sector in a highly price sensitive and competitive market like India.

That there exists a symbiotic relationship between the two was brought out during a presentation by Probir Mitra, CIO, Tata Motors.

According to Mitra, IT has a dual role to play in the smooth functioning of the auto sector-it is not only the business applications that are dependent on IT, the core processes of an automobile vendor, starting from concept design of a car to complete vehicle integration real-time, too rests on it.

“Unlike other enterprises in the manufacturing sector, for automotive companies, unless the integrated change between engineering and IT is managed, there can be huge problems,” says Mitra.

And it is only through innovative deployment of automation, that this integrated change can be managed.

On the engineering front, IT plays a significant role in helping make small improvements consistently with special focus on processes and products-Toyota in US presents an ideal example; not only did it gain market share for 10 consecutive years till 2005, it also came out with 17 new models in 2004.

IT has helped not only in every step from requirement and planning to the post-launch phase of a vehicle, it also influenced other areas like customer services, telematics including fleet management, vehicle health tracking and vehicle positioning as well as vehicle financing, aggregate reconditioning business and usage based insurance.

The enterprise processes on the engineering side involves a spate of technologies ranging from CAD/CAM, PLM to prototype testing, simulation and crash testing. “The technology evolution cycle would span from rudimentary 2D, 3D to CAE, Digital Mock Up (DMU), PLM, KBE (Knowledge Based Engineering) to Digital Manufacturing,” informs Mitra.

Digital Manufacturing, barely starting off in India, reduces cost of process planning-“while cost of reducing mistakes if manufacturing is done physically is huge, the impact can be drastically negated if done virtually.”

As an aside, Mitra also asserted that contrary to popular perception, PLM has much to offer and is just not a case of old PDM wine in a new bottle. Not to forget, he also delineated IT's importance in developing different business applications-these could range from ERP, CRM, procurement, SCM to DMS.

Specifically citing Tata Motors example, he informed about the adoption of SAP ERP to Siebel for procurement in the organization.