Bharat Bijlee Limited is one of the leading manufacturers in the electrical
engineering industry in India. A multi-product, multi-division organization, the
company operates in two business segments, Industrial Products which comprises
transformers, motors and drives; and Contracting, comprising elevators and
projects. A quick short take with R Sekar, GM-Information Systems, Bharat Bijlee
Limited.
On the recent IT decisions
In the last two years we have rolled out ERP implementation and a corporate
mailing solution using broadband. The fundamental need to implement ERP is to
streamline and integrate all the business processes and to become more
competitive. Meanwhile, other factors like competition, changing social-economic
factor, liberalization, faster communication with vendors, suppliers etc are
also the compulsions of the business to automate the manufacturing process as
well as messaging solutions. We still have a long way to go in terms of total
automation of the processes.
The inadequacy of in-house developed systems to address the twin challenges
of localization and shortened product life cycles calls for continuous design
improvement, manufacturing flexibility, efficient logistics control, and better
management of the entire supply chain has made more and more organizations going
for ERP.
On the benefits
Sales order to deliver cycle time has been reduced. Shop floor planning and
scheduling has become easier. The product configuration module has helped
organization to design non-standard motors. Payments to suppliers and
collections have improved with online MIS, on-line bill processing, and
payments.
On RoI
Process improvement is one of the measuring tools in the production line and
by and large the service sector to be measured is only in terms of services and
the time taken to provide the said service, which results in customer
satisfaction. Alternatively, IT department can take up customer satisfaction
survey on quarterly or half-yearly basis on various parameters and use it as a
measuring mechanism. The IT departments in the organization have to find some
means to measure the value of IT or else the value will be lost.
On the challenges
Storage is one area where we have difficulty planning, purchasing and
deploying. As the technology is fast changing, it is important for the
organization, to migrate the entire existing data backup into new storage
technology and, in addition, checking the backup, protecting from natural
calamites etc. are major area of concern. Moreover, implementing perfect data
protection strategy in terms of speed, simplicity, continuity, flexibility,
manageability and performance are the critical issues and hence deployment of
storage technology for the organization is a big concern area.