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The Company, a leading clothing company in India is part of the Aditya Birla Group. Until 2002, we were running legacy systems at the corporate office, warehouse and factory. It was a huge challenge as a CIO to integrate all the systems from the heterogeneous to homogeneous environment. So, we did a BPR and decided on an ERP solution. We found that the SAP package was a close fit as the customization required is less than 20%.
On the challenges
Our biggest challenge was putting in place a vertical solution suitable for the apparel industry. SAP had a solution for the apparel and footwear industry, but it had not been implemented anywhere in India. Despite that we took the plunge. Our implementation approach was different. At the end of each milestone completion we ensured that experts from SAP Germany carry out the quality audit of the modules. We went live in July 2002 and since then we have gone ahead and implemented solutions like advanced planning and optimization tool and the demand-planning modules. We have also put in place a business intelligence solution.
Quantifying benefits
On a daily basis, we measure the OTIF (On Time In Full), an order execution percentage. The order execution percentage pre-SAP used to be 70%, now it has reached 92%, over the last two and half years. The lead-time of production ordered to inverse the warehouse used to be 22 days and it is now 14 days. Our export receivables used to be 55 days, it has come down to 35 days. Showroom receivables used to be 10 days, it is 3 and half days now. Our inventory used to be 13.7% of net sales that has come to around 12% now.
On future plans
In the coming years, our focus is on retail. We are in the process of implementing a CRM solution. In the next two to three months, we are going to carry out a proof of concept on RFID. Madura Garments is the only apparel garment company today in India to secure a EAN certification-a bar code compliance, and that makes it easy for us to go ahead with RFID implementation.