Managing ever-changing and complex manufacturing processes across seven group companies was becoming a challenge for Turbo Energy Limited. TEL’s collection of disparate systems, linked to an aging bespoke solution, was no longer able to meet the challenge of responding adeptly to both customer and supplier demands. A fully integrated system based on Microsoft® Business Solutions Axapta® has enabled TEL to work in a new and highly responsive manner.
Overview
Country: India
Industry: Manufacturing
Customer Profile
Turbo Energy Limited was incorporated in 1982 in technical and financial collaboration with Aktiengesellschaft Kuhnle, Kopp & Kausch, Germany (presently 3K Warner Turbo systems); an internationally renowned manufacturers of turbochargers.
TEL turbochargers are fitted as original equipment for Ashok Leyland, Simpson, TELCO, BEML and KOEL engines for industrial and automotive applications.
Business Situation
TEL was facing a strong need for an integrated enterprise-wide business solution that would complement their operations and allow them to forecast market needs better.
Solution
An integrated Microsoft® Business Solutions Axapta® system was integral to achieving improved performance and efficiency together with the streamlined operations TEL needed to support their business operations smoothly.
Benifits
- Improved & efficient forecasting
- Greater accuracy of reporting
- Improved integration across group companies
- Real-time visibility of data
- Reduced data inaccuracies
Situation
With a growing customer base, the challenge that TEL faced was to do an efficient forecast of business. Moreover, TEL wanted to increase its production of 19,000 turbochargers every month to 40,000 turbochargers every month. This meant that the intra-company, inter-company, company-vendor, etc., transactions would go up by more than 100%.
The sheer scale of operations at TEL placed huge demands on its IT systems. The company had extensive processes to meet customer demands; but most of the raw material was being imported from abroad. Given the situation, forecasting orders was very critical to manage a healthy inventory. This unpredictable flow of orders and hence timely deliveries meant accuracy of real-time information, accessible anywhere in the business, was absolutely critical.
Solution
TEL’s existing system contained two key weaknesses that were hampering its ability to fully realize operational potential. Firstly, using an aging UNIX system meant that customer and technical support was a scarce resource – which in turn led to slow and expensive development costs whenever TEL sought to evolve the system.
Secondly, while TEL referred to a generic 'system', in reality it was a multitude of smaller systems driving the accounts and separate databases undertaking other tasks such as job costing, purchasing, order bookings and inventory management.
As TEL’s IT systems are central to its ability to maintain excellent customer and supplier relationships, the company began its search for a fully integrated system, finally settling on Microsoft® Business Solutions Axapta®. This fulfilled all its requirements, and provided the assurance it needed for forecasting & business continuity. TEL also chose Sundaram Infotech, our implementation partner from India, to handle the end-to-end ERP implementation and also train power users. TEL’s IT system is now much more robust and streamlined with Microsoft Axapta at its heart.
In addition, the power users at TEL also upgraded their knowledge on the new system simultaneously. This was important because the project was on a tight schedule from start to completion. So, there was a need for the system and the users to take off from Day one.
Challenges Faced
- 7 Companies; with potential for more entities within the next financial year
- Multi-location operations
- Each company possesses varied products & business processes
- Inter & Intra company transactions
- Sub-contracting
- Discrete & continuous manufacturing
- Varied export-import policies
- Country-specific statutory requirements
- Two-level financial consolidation
- Migration from legacy bespoke system (Ingres, FoxPro)
Overall Benefits
Today, TEL has achieved much greater integration, accuracy and visibility of information across every area of its business. Substantial time savings have been achieved through removal of unnecessary duplication of data entry and there is now a much greater sense of confidence in TEL’s ability to respond to customer demands.
Moreover, TEL is now able to proactively forecast orders and maintain a thin inventory and also makes recommendations and suggestions to its group entities & suppliers. Thus, further improving customer and supplier relationships and ensuring consistent customer service levels. Although return on investment was not a priority, the company has been positively rewarded in this area too
TEL’s power users have also been trained in parallel and there is very little dependency on the implementation partner for operations.
Project Team
ERP implementation projects, unlike typical software development projects, are best managed when the implementation team works closely with the key users of the customer. The project team, in other words, needs to be an ideal combination of functional experts, technical experts, key users & senior management.
TEL was successfully implemented by such a team of professionals, who represented the customer & the implementation partner, and worked as one team to achieve the common goal.
Given below is a pictorial representation of the project team…
For More Information
For more information about Sundaram Infotech’s Enterprise Solutions products and services, call +91-44-28604066, or visit www.sundaraminfotech.in
Contact Information
901-906, Raheja Towers
177, Anna Salai,
Chennai – 600002
India
http://www.sundaraminfotech.in
E-mail: info@sundaraminfotech.in
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