The manufacturing sector in India employs 40 million workers, comprising a significant 12 per cent of the country's total labor force. As per the government's National Common Minimum Program, the manufacturing sector has been identified as a key focus area.
To achieve this goal, the Government of India has set up National Manufacturing Competitiveness Council (NMCC), to suggest ways to ensure that the Indian Manufacturing industries are globally competitive. Among other recommendations, information and communication technology intervention and absorption amidst manufacturing clusters (concentration of enterprises in a particular location, facing common opportunities and threats) have emerged as key highlights of the NMCC report.
Most organizations are missing out on their greatest opportunity to create tangible business value through technology, according to a new white paper published by Sapient, a business innovator, and the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. With the average Global 2000 Company allocating 75 percent of its annual operational technology budget annually toward existing applications, executives can no longer afford to write these investments off as untouchable costs. In the paper, “Missing Millions: Unlocking Strategic IT Value,” Sapient and the Kellogg School present the Application Investment Management (AIM) framework as a tool to help businesses measure the value of their existing IT portfolios and identify new areas for value creation.
“In a survey of 179 Fortune 1000 firms 44 percent did not have applications and infrastructure well documented,” says Mark Jeffery, associate professor of technology at the Kellogg School of Management. “There is a tremendous opportunity to unlock business value from the IT application portfolio.”
IT plays an integral role right from product development to testing and finally to shipping the end product. In the past, companies were not IT savvy as they were more inclined towards manufacturing and distribution. However, with increasing competition from MNC companies, the need for IT has gone up in a big way.
An ERP system is a must-have application for the manufacturing industry, as it helps them track production and inventory levels. An ERP system becomes crucial to ensure that none of the standard operating procedures go wrong.
With an increased focus on exporting to the US and other developed countries, companies need to comply with various regulations peculiar to those countries to which they are exporting. An electronic document submission to the regulatory authority in different countries is only possible through an ERP system with built-in checks to ensure compliance.
Another advantage of using an ERP system is that quality results are immediately made available to the dispatch department, and the drugs are then promptly shipped out. Also, invoices entered by the dispatch department into the system bring in transparency. However, companies have to be extremely careful while going for an ERP implementation. They should go for a completely configurable solution with the business processes already written and is based on industry experience.
MANUFACTURER REQUIREMENTS
The term 'extended enterprise' represents the concept that a company is made up not just of its employees, its board members, and executives, but also its business partners, its suppliers, and even its customers. This extended enterprise can only be successful if all of the component groups and individuals have the information they need in order to do business effectively.
In such a scenario, the manufacturer has to make information accessible in a transparent way, whenever, wherever and on whatever device it is required. This calls for a very complicated back-end infrastructure.
Access to information not only plays a vital role in growing businesses but also in reducing the complexity. Many organizations have implemented a patchwork of technologies as a tactical approach to access. But what is required is a strategic approach to access, something that complements and satisfies growing user demand, propel business plans and provides ongoing IT agility that today's enterprise require
Access is the core to every business. In order to optimize security, non-complexity and cost effectiveness, every company should have a strategic access plan. Moreover, this kind of information access may actually be critical to many factors including branch office expansion, mergers and acquisitions, increasing employee mobility, and streamlining supply chains."
Few companies have a comprehensive access strategy. A broad access strategy consists of elements such as end point security, traffic security and management, admission and access control, application delivery services, real-time collaboration and operations support system.
Putting a Web-based solution in place provides limited access through a browser-enabled client device, though it doesn't solve the problem of complexity or outsource it to a third party. Another way is to create an access infrastructure for your corporate based on business needs, which includes all the components and provides inter-operability and flexibility.
BENFITS FROM IT
There are various benefits that can accrue to a manufacturing company investing in IT—right from shorter design cycles to a more streamlined manufacturing processes. IT provides designers and engineers the capabilities to help bring better products more quickly to market, and to more easily transition from 2D to 3D design. The new approaches enabled by IT will allow design engineers to analyze and validate designs as they work. The improved 3D Sketch capabilities will help designers obtain more precise shapes in fewer steps, with real-time solving as users drag to reshape the concept.
This can in turn help the manufacturer quicken the process of new and more innovative product releases, maximize productivity gains and meet the tight deadlines specified by customers. In addition to this it can also seamlessly communicate with global customers and suppliers. But the best part is that it can access to information can help the manufacturer identify new business opportunities.
In addition to these quality improvements there are various other side benefits including reduced spare parts inventory, track and manage your installed base, schedule and plan spare parts and field management and enhance project management capabilities.
Companies can gain a better understanding of the value, cost and dependencies across the entire applications portfolio by identifying areas of over- and under-investment. This can help a company focus investments on applications and initiatives that support strategic business goals, reallocate non-essential operational spending to new development to fuel innovation and efficiency, enhance IT-business alignment on an ongoing basis and evaluate enterprise technology for regulatory compliance.
Standardization of a manufacturing company’s IT systems through aggregation of discrete global projects is a strategically important decision which will help the company reap the benefits of economies of scale.
A well-integrated system will help manufacturers streamline their transactions across their manufacturing facilities and regional offices to meet the growing demands and requirements of a global customer.
Thus there can be no doubt that the manufacturer is likely to see an exponential increase in performance and help companies unlock millions in lost savings.
STEPS BY IT VENDORS
Microsoft India recently collaborated with NMCC for the launch of a competitiveness enhancement program for small and medium enterprises (SME) in the Indian manufacturing sector. Microsoft and NMCC propose to partner together to create knowledge networks amidst identified clusters across India to facilitate backward and forward linkages, key essentials for the manufacturing sector. The networks will additionally enhance access to markets; improve skills through relevant and focused training and provide for relevant and customized solutions for the manufacturing sector. This would energise NMCC's efforts to establish a sustainable growth path for the small-medium enterprises in India.
Microsoft and NMCC will work together to provide a framework for knowledge networks, which will help create a self sustaining eco system of knowledge creation and sharing with the industry associations. Towards this Microsoft will partner with polytechnics and training institutes to create centers of excellence and partner with local academic institutes located in the regions to provide R&D support. Further, Microsoft will engage with Independent Software Vendors and the developer community to incubate customized IT applications for these clusters.
The initiative by Microsoft and NMCC to facilitate the creation of knowledge networks is expected to enhance competitiveness and provide a major impetus to India's economic growth.
The NMCC will be the overall coordinator of the initiative for information and communication technology adoption, partnerships within and outside the cluster with relevant organizations and management of assets such as internet portals set up as part of the initiative at the national level.
Satyam Computer Services, and Miebach Logistics Group, an international consultancy firm has collaborated to offer one-stop-shop supply chain solutions. Miebach assists clients in developing world-class supply chain strategies and solutions, and through this alliance hopes to offer strategy, process, engineering and technology to customers in Asia/ Pacific across industry sectors.
Sapient has developed the AIM Framework using insights from more than 25 business application planning and IT strategy engagements with its Global 2000 clients. Practices put forth in the framework can help companies create competitive advantages.
Being able to integrate PLM (product lifecycle management) with other enterprise-wide processes is now seen as a critical factor for success. It can help manufacturers optimize the sharing of information and data related to product and material amongst all enterprise teams involved in product development.
IBM has announced that it has enhanced its PLM Express portfolio, created specifically for mid-sized manufacturers, with two new offerings: PLM Express for Business Integration and for Machining. These new, easy-to-implement and affordable solutions are said to provide mid-sized manufacturers with benefits only available to larger companies until now.
This will help them start their On-Demand journey by increasing both horizontal integration between ERP and PLM processes, and vertical integration between design and manufacturing.
PLM Express for Business Integration is designed to automate business processes and enhance the bottom line by bridging the divide between product development and production. The efficient and effective integration of key enterprise applications will help improve decision making, product quality, revenue, profit margin and time-to-market.
PLM Express for Machining enables midsize companies to accelerate their time to market and lower the cost of product development by improving the integration between initial concept design and manufacturing, ensuring the manufacturability of a product much earlier in the development process. It is tailored to the needs of the numerical control (NC) machining user who needs to prepare machine tools to 'cut the parts' that have been designed usually by another company. It provides fast and secure data transfer between manufacturers and their customers and automated programming of machine tools based on design geometry. It also offers a secure database for centralized access to design and manufacturing documents and to previous projects.
CASE STUDIES
Maruti Udyog
Maruti Udyog's website is rich in content and was also experiencing a surge in Web traffic after the launch of their new car `Swift'. So it tied up with Akamai Technologies, a leading global service provider for accelerating web content and business processes online, to avail of Web Site Content Delivery services to enhance the performance of Maruti Udyog's websites.
With Akamai, Maruti's customers experience industry-leading website performance across India. Maruti has a total of 16 websites. The websites have a lot of information about organization, products and sales support related business like true value, Maruti Insurance, Maruti Finance and Driving Training School. The websites also have information about prices, dealers, product details, driving tips, traffic rules, true value car inventory etc.
Akamai will provide Maruti with Content Delivery Networking services, which means Maruti can now outsource their Web infrastructure needs on an on-demand basis to handle the surge in online traffic and enhance website performance without worrying about scalability.
By being on Akamai's global platform, Maruti is saving on additional infrastructure costs while knowing that their website is even faster as their content will now be delivered from Akamai's over 15,000 distributed servers across 69 countries.
Akamai enables companies to take advantage of a high-quality, reliable content delivery service to support brand, e-business, and marketing investments. Customers can leverage Akamai to deliver superior user experience, reach worldwide audiences, and launch new communication initiatives via the Web.
Bharat Gears
Bharat Gears, one of the leading automotive components manufacturers in the country adopted the Ramco Enterprise Series, a state-of-the-art web architecture and ERP solution delivered using cutting-edge technology. Bharat Gears will by implementing the Discrete Manufacturing suite comprising of Financials, Manufacturing, Inventory, Purchase, Sales and Human Resource Management System at the manufacturing facilities and zonal offices.
Bharat Gears is looking at this as a major business initiative, which shall enable the company to sustain its edge in the market and reiterate its position as a leading gear manufacturer in India. Bharat Gears realized that to meet future business challenges it was necessary to keep pace with the fast changing IT environment.
The productivity tools, which come as part of the ERP package will give Bharat Gears the power to adapt the product to changing business needs in the future.
The first phase of implementation would cover Bharat Gear’s manufacturing facility at Mumbra near Mumbai. The second phase of implementation would cover rollout at its Faridabad Plant and four of its zonal offices. Bharat Gears also plans to implement Ramco’s solution for corporate performance management. The complete solution would be delivered on Microsoft platform and the project is expected to be completed by the end of this fiscal.
GlaxoSmithKline
Pharma major GlaxoSmithKline implemented ‘Factory Model’, an innovative delivery methodology developed by Wipro Technologies, the global IT services division of Wipro. Implementing this solution has helped the pharmaceutical to improve its sourcing efficiencies through strategic offshore factories initiatives.
The 'Factory Model' enables organizations manage globally distributed functions or services efficiently, through a combination of virtual shared services organization, process standardization and re-use. It also enables leveraging specialized knowledge and learning gained from architecting solutions for a few business functions and applying it across the enterprise. The 'Factory Model' has evolved from Wipro's Innovation council and called so because of its resemblance to the manufacturing assembly line where efficiencies and quality improvements are driven through standardization of processes.
Factory Model greatly reduces the amount of process overhead and non value-adding work in offshoring. It is also expected to change GSK’s outsourcing strategy in a significant manner. Based on the success of this model last year, this model is being replicated across GSK for a number of other IT streams going forward."
Valvoline Cummins
At Valvoline Cummins Satyam will implement SAP R/3, which includes finance & accounts and localization, costing and controlling, sales & distribution, materials management and production planning modules.
Quanta Computer
Quanta Computer, one of the largest computer makers in the world, selected Cisco Systems’ end-to-end solutions for its new intelligent research and development (R&D) complex. Quanta expects productivity gains through network and business process transformation enabled by a business-focused architectural approach and Cisco Lifecycle Services.
Cisco has proven experience and marketplace expertise at driving productivity through integrating business processes, applications and networked infrastructure. The Quanta project is Cisco's first large-scale intelligent building in the Asia Pacific region. By harnessing the power of the network, Cisco created the intelligent building of the future, the benchmark for future R&D facilities within Quanta and its affiliated companies. The intelligent building not only features optimized building performance, but also supports the creation of sophisticated services and enables operational efficiencies throughout the entire building.
The new complex was built with the goal of attracting top talent
worldwide, and the company required that it must provide a technologically advanced environment, characterized by enhanced productivity, a flexible work setting, an innovative and collaborative environment, and network security.
Converging IT and building services can meet all these requirements. Cisco’s advanced technologies including wireless, IP telephony, storage, optical, storage area networking and security power the business-focused architectural approach.
To help ensure customer success, Cisco, Quanta and partners IBM and PCCW followed a lifecycle services approach, a proven deployment methodology that aligns Quanta's business and technical requirements through all six phases of a network lifecycle. The six phases are: prepare, plan, design, implement, operate and optimize.
The lifecycle services process not only ensures smooth transition from one phase to another regardless of which partner is delivering the services, but also enables transfer of necessary technology skills to customers for network support.
In the earliest phases of preparation and planning, Cisco helped Quanta establish its business architecture through an ROI study. Cisco also collaborated with Quanta to create a technology vision, supported by a high-level conceptual design and an architecture diagram. These laid a solid foundation for the subsequent design and implementation phases and for the execution and implementation, which followed.
BHEL
Cisco Systems has been chosen as the infrastructure provider for Bharat Heavy Electricals Limited (BHEL) campus wide connectivity project in Trichy. BHEL has invested nearly Rs 5 crore in the project, encompassing the company's 2908-acre campus. The solution provided by Cisco is a comprehensive integrated network based on a 10Gig backbone. It includes five core switches, seven distribution switches and a total of 152 edge switches deployed throughout the campus.
This project is particularly significant as it is said to be the single largest switching order within the manufacturing vertical in the Asia Pacific region.
Upcoming Trends
There’s a huge market for 3D mechanical design software in India and is already realizing strong growth in the region. In India, companies across verticals including the likes of ABB India, Asahi India Glass, BEL, Dantal Hydraulics, Hindustan National Glass, Integral Coach Factory, L&T, Laxmi Precision Screws, Makino, Voltas, National Aerospace Laboratories, Swaraj Mazda and Thermax have already gone in for such solutions.
There is a rising trend towards design outsourcing, considered to be the next big wave in ITES, as an area of opportunity. Recent studies and analysis by NASSCOM have identified the field of outsourcing in engineering design services to be between $7 billion and $12 billion. According to NASSCOM, India, with its high engineering base can emerge as the destination for high value manufacturing design.
Another trend that is becoming visible is the increasing acceptance of thin clients in Indian manufacturing units.
Thin clients, hard disk less systems connected to a central server, are becoming a viable solution for many businesses. With security concerns and time to deployment becoming critical issues for today's enterprise. Companies around the world have realized the need for more reliable, secure, and affordable computing models - and have increasingly turned to thin client technology as the solution for delivering their crucial enterprise information."
Thin clients are more cost effective, eliminates security problems plaguing PCs and virtually immune to PC viruses. Moreover, they are server-based architectures minus floppies, CDs or HDDs and don't need backups.
The Asian market for thin clients is dominated by India, with sales figures up by 47 percent this year, against 25 percent in the U.S. and 39 percent in Europe. Innovative new software enables thin clients to provide all of the functionality of a PC at much lower cost. These products enable enterprises to gain control of their desktops, stream software on-demand, and integrate mainframe, midrange, UNIX and Linux applications with Windows environments and the Web.
The Indian market for thin clients is expected to double next year. They will be increasingly adopted in the next few years because of tremendous benefits to enterprises deploying server-based computing.
Conclusion
As companies build IT capabilities, their infrastructures can become overwhelming, with systems silos and cross-organizational processes. Without the right visibility into their operational technology spending, those making investment decisions favor a ‘do no harm’ policy, maintaining and extending applications regardless of the value they produce.
One of the challenges is to drive more efficiencies into operating costs and reallocate those savings to invest in new capabilities.
The new IT reality is that organizations cannot simply maintain existing systems and expect growth, but must prioritize a new model that emphasizes both agility and efficiency, is secure, consolidates access into a central location for more efficient management and effective control.
As IT operating costs have steadily increased companies need to find cost effective ways of managing and deploying applications that adapt to support business change and growth, while adjusting to thousands of dynamically changing access scenarios.
But success is not merely about implementation. Manufacturers need to focus on creation of values by aligning business needs with technological solutions and maintaining this alignment as business conditions evolve. This project demonstrates how such success is achievable."
However, the benefit of automating processes is that you need not worry about human errors; hence it saves time and wastage.
To achieve this goal, the Government of India has set up National Manufacturing Competitiveness Council (NMCC), to suggest ways to ensure that the Indian Manufacturing industries are globally competitive. Among other recommendations, information and communication technology intervention and absorption amidst manufacturing clusters (concentration of enterprises in a particular location, facing common opportunities and threats) have emerged as key highlights of the NMCC report.
Most organizations are missing out on their greatest opportunity to create tangible business value through technology, according to a new white paper published by Sapient, a business innovator, and the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. With the average Global 2000 Company allocating 75 percent of its annual operational technology budget annually toward existing applications, executives can no longer afford to write these investments off as untouchable costs. In the paper, “Missing Millions: Unlocking Strategic IT Value,” Sapient and the Kellogg School present the Application Investment Management (AIM) framework as a tool to help businesses measure the value of their existing IT portfolios and identify new areas for value creation.
“In a survey of 179 Fortune 1000 firms 44 percent did not have applications and infrastructure well documented,” says Mark Jeffery, associate professor of technology at the Kellogg School of Management. “There is a tremendous opportunity to unlock business value from the IT application portfolio.”
IT plays an integral role right from product development to testing and finally to shipping the end product. In the past, companies were not IT savvy as they were more inclined towards manufacturing and distribution. However, with increasing competition from MNC companies, the need for IT has gone up in a big way.
An ERP system is a must-have application for the manufacturing industry, as it helps them track production and inventory levels. An ERP system becomes crucial to ensure that none of the standard operating procedures go wrong.
With an increased focus on exporting to the US and other developed countries, companies need to comply with various regulations peculiar to those countries to which they are exporting. An electronic document submission to the regulatory authority in different countries is only possible through an ERP system with built-in checks to ensure compliance.
Another advantage of using an ERP system is that quality results are immediately made available to the dispatch department, and the drugs are then promptly shipped out. Also, invoices entered by the dispatch department into the system bring in transparency. However, companies have to be extremely careful while going for an ERP implementation. They should go for a completely configurable solution with the business processes already written and is based on industry experience.
MANUFACTURER REQUIREMENTS
The term 'extended enterprise' represents the concept that a company is made up not just of its employees, its board members, and executives, but also its business partners, its suppliers, and even its customers. This extended enterprise can only be successful if all of the component groups and individuals have the information they need in order to do business effectively.
In such a scenario, the manufacturer has to make information accessible in a transparent way, whenever, wherever and on whatever device it is required. This calls for a very complicated back-end infrastructure.
Access to information not only plays a vital role in growing businesses but also in reducing the complexity. Many organizations have implemented a patchwork of technologies as a tactical approach to access. But what is required is a strategic approach to access, something that complements and satisfies growing user demand, propel business plans and provides ongoing IT agility that today's enterprise require
Access is the core to every business. In order to optimize security, non-complexity and cost effectiveness, every company should have a strategic access plan. Moreover, this kind of information access may actually be critical to many factors including branch office expansion, mergers and acquisitions, increasing employee mobility, and streamlining supply chains."
Few companies have a comprehensive access strategy. A broad access strategy consists of elements such as end point security, traffic security and management, admission and access control, application delivery services, real-time collaboration and operations support system.
Putting a Web-based solution in place provides limited access through a browser-enabled client device, though it doesn't solve the problem of complexity or outsource it to a third party. Another way is to create an access infrastructure for your corporate based on business needs, which includes all the components and provides inter-operability and flexibility.
BENFITS FROM IT
There are various benefits that can accrue to a manufacturing company investing in IT—right from shorter design cycles to a more streamlined manufacturing processes. IT provides designers and engineers the capabilities to help bring better products more quickly to market, and to more easily transition from 2D to 3D design. The new approaches enabled by IT will allow design engineers to analyze and validate designs as they work. The improved 3D Sketch capabilities will help designers obtain more precise shapes in fewer steps, with real-time solving as users drag to reshape the concept.
This can in turn help the manufacturer quicken the process of new and more innovative product releases, maximize productivity gains and meet the tight deadlines specified by customers. In addition to this it can also seamlessly communicate with global customers and suppliers. But the best part is that it can access to information can help the manufacturer identify new business opportunities.
In addition to these quality improvements there are various other side benefits including reduced spare parts inventory, track and manage your installed base, schedule and plan spare parts and field management and enhance project management capabilities.
Companies can gain a better understanding of the value, cost and dependencies across the entire applications portfolio by identifying areas of over- and under-investment. This can help a company focus investments on applications and initiatives that support strategic business goals, reallocate non-essential operational spending to new development to fuel innovation and efficiency, enhance IT-business alignment on an ongoing basis and evaluate enterprise technology for regulatory compliance.
Standardization of a manufacturing company’s IT systems through aggregation of discrete global projects is a strategically important decision which will help the company reap the benefits of economies of scale.
A well-integrated system will help manufacturers streamline their transactions across their manufacturing facilities and regional offices to meet the growing demands and requirements of a global customer.
Thus there can be no doubt that the manufacturer is likely to see an exponential increase in performance and help companies unlock millions in lost savings.
STEPS BY IT VENDORS
Microsoft India recently collaborated with NMCC for the launch of a competitiveness enhancement program for small and medium enterprises (SME) in the Indian manufacturing sector. Microsoft and NMCC propose to partner together to create knowledge networks amidst identified clusters across India to facilitate backward and forward linkages, key essentials for the manufacturing sector. The networks will additionally enhance access to markets; improve skills through relevant and focused training and provide for relevant and customized solutions for the manufacturing sector. This would energise NMCC's efforts to establish a sustainable growth path for the small-medium enterprises in India.
Microsoft and NMCC will work together to provide a framework for knowledge networks, which will help create a self sustaining eco system of knowledge creation and sharing with the industry associations. Towards this Microsoft will partner with polytechnics and training institutes to create centers of excellence and partner with local academic institutes located in the regions to provide R&D support. Further, Microsoft will engage with Independent Software Vendors and the developer community to incubate customized IT applications for these clusters.
The initiative by Microsoft and NMCC to facilitate the creation of knowledge networks is expected to enhance competitiveness and provide a major impetus to India's economic growth.
The NMCC will be the overall coordinator of the initiative for information and communication technology adoption, partnerships within and outside the cluster with relevant organizations and management of assets such as internet portals set up as part of the initiative at the national level.
Satyam Computer Services, and Miebach Logistics Group, an international consultancy firm has collaborated to offer one-stop-shop supply chain solutions. Miebach assists clients in developing world-class supply chain strategies and solutions, and through this alliance hopes to offer strategy, process, engineering and technology to customers in Asia/ Pacific across industry sectors.
Sapient has developed the AIM Framework using insights from more than 25 business application planning and IT strategy engagements with its Global 2000 clients. Practices put forth in the framework can help companies create competitive advantages.
Being able to integrate PLM (product lifecycle management) with other enterprise-wide processes is now seen as a critical factor for success. It can help manufacturers optimize the sharing of information and data related to product and material amongst all enterprise teams involved in product development.
IBM has announced that it has enhanced its PLM Express portfolio, created specifically for mid-sized manufacturers, with two new offerings: PLM Express for Business Integration and for Machining. These new, easy-to-implement and affordable solutions are said to provide mid-sized manufacturers with benefits only available to larger companies until now.
This will help them start their On-Demand journey by increasing both horizontal integration between ERP and PLM processes, and vertical integration between design and manufacturing.
PLM Express for Business Integration is designed to automate business processes and enhance the bottom line by bridging the divide between product development and production. The efficient and effective integration of key enterprise applications will help improve decision making, product quality, revenue, profit margin and time-to-market.
PLM Express for Machining enables midsize companies to accelerate their time to market and lower the cost of product development by improving the integration between initial concept design and manufacturing, ensuring the manufacturability of a product much earlier in the development process. It is tailored to the needs of the numerical control (NC) machining user who needs to prepare machine tools to 'cut the parts' that have been designed usually by another company. It provides fast and secure data transfer between manufacturers and their customers and automated programming of machine tools based on design geometry. It also offers a secure database for centralized access to design and manufacturing documents and to previous projects.
CASE STUDIES
Maruti Udyog
Maruti Udyog's website is rich in content and was also experiencing a surge in Web traffic after the launch of their new car `Swift'. So it tied up with Akamai Technologies, a leading global service provider for accelerating web content and business processes online, to avail of Web Site Content Delivery services to enhance the performance of Maruti Udyog's websites.
With Akamai, Maruti's customers experience industry-leading website performance across India. Maruti has a total of 16 websites. The websites have a lot of information about organization, products and sales support related business like true value, Maruti Insurance, Maruti Finance and Driving Training School. The websites also have information about prices, dealers, product details, driving tips, traffic rules, true value car inventory etc.
Akamai will provide Maruti with Content Delivery Networking services, which means Maruti can now outsource their Web infrastructure needs on an on-demand basis to handle the surge in online traffic and enhance website performance without worrying about scalability.
By being on Akamai's global platform, Maruti is saving on additional infrastructure costs while knowing that their website is even faster as their content will now be delivered from Akamai's over 15,000 distributed servers across 69 countries.
Akamai enables companies to take advantage of a high-quality, reliable content delivery service to support brand, e-business, and marketing investments. Customers can leverage Akamai to deliver superior user experience, reach worldwide audiences, and launch new communication initiatives via the Web.
Bharat Gears
Bharat Gears, one of the leading automotive components manufacturers in the country adopted the Ramco Enterprise Series, a state-of-the-art web architecture and ERP solution delivered using cutting-edge technology. Bharat Gears will by implementing the Discrete Manufacturing suite comprising of Financials, Manufacturing, Inventory, Purchase, Sales and Human Resource Management System at the manufacturing facilities and zonal offices.
Bharat Gears is looking at this as a major business initiative, which shall enable the company to sustain its edge in the market and reiterate its position as a leading gear manufacturer in India. Bharat Gears realized that to meet future business challenges it was necessary to keep pace with the fast changing IT environment.
The productivity tools, which come as part of the ERP package will give Bharat Gears the power to adapt the product to changing business needs in the future.
The first phase of implementation would cover Bharat Gear’s manufacturing facility at Mumbra near Mumbai. The second phase of implementation would cover rollout at its Faridabad Plant and four of its zonal offices. Bharat Gears also plans to implement Ramco’s solution for corporate performance management. The complete solution would be delivered on Microsoft platform and the project is expected to be completed by the end of this fiscal.
GlaxoSmithKline
Pharma major GlaxoSmithKline implemented ‘Factory Model’, an innovative delivery methodology developed by Wipro Technologies, the global IT services division of Wipro. Implementing this solution has helped the pharmaceutical to improve its sourcing efficiencies through strategic offshore factories initiatives.
The 'Factory Model' enables organizations manage globally distributed functions or services efficiently, through a combination of virtual shared services organization, process standardization and re-use. It also enables leveraging specialized knowledge and learning gained from architecting solutions for a few business functions and applying it across the enterprise. The 'Factory Model' has evolved from Wipro's Innovation council and called so because of its resemblance to the manufacturing assembly line where efficiencies and quality improvements are driven through standardization of processes.
Factory Model greatly reduces the amount of process overhead and non value-adding work in offshoring. It is also expected to change GSK’s outsourcing strategy in a significant manner. Based on the success of this model last year, this model is being replicated across GSK for a number of other IT streams going forward."
Valvoline Cummins
At Valvoline Cummins Satyam will implement SAP R/3, which includes finance & accounts and localization, costing and controlling, sales & distribution, materials management and production planning modules.
Quanta Computer
Quanta Computer, one of the largest computer makers in the world, selected Cisco Systems’ end-to-end solutions for its new intelligent research and development (R&D) complex. Quanta expects productivity gains through network and business process transformation enabled by a business-focused architectural approach and Cisco Lifecycle Services.
Cisco has proven experience and marketplace expertise at driving productivity through integrating business processes, applications and networked infrastructure. The Quanta project is Cisco's first large-scale intelligent building in the Asia Pacific region. By harnessing the power of the network, Cisco created the intelligent building of the future, the benchmark for future R&D facilities within Quanta and its affiliated companies. The intelligent building not only features optimized building performance, but also supports the creation of sophisticated services and enables operational efficiencies throughout the entire building.
The new complex was built with the goal of attracting top talent
worldwide, and the company required that it must provide a technologically advanced environment, characterized by enhanced productivity, a flexible work setting, an innovative and collaborative environment, and network security.
Converging IT and building services can meet all these requirements. Cisco’s advanced technologies including wireless, IP telephony, storage, optical, storage area networking and security power the business-focused architectural approach.
To help ensure customer success, Cisco, Quanta and partners IBM and PCCW followed a lifecycle services approach, a proven deployment methodology that aligns Quanta's business and technical requirements through all six phases of a network lifecycle. The six phases are: prepare, plan, design, implement, operate and optimize.
The lifecycle services process not only ensures smooth transition from one phase to another regardless of which partner is delivering the services, but also enables transfer of necessary technology skills to customers for network support.
In the earliest phases of preparation and planning, Cisco helped Quanta establish its business architecture through an ROI study. Cisco also collaborated with Quanta to create a technology vision, supported by a high-level conceptual design and an architecture diagram. These laid a solid foundation for the subsequent design and implementation phases and for the execution and implementation, which followed.
BHEL
Cisco Systems has been chosen as the infrastructure provider for Bharat Heavy Electricals Limited (BHEL) campus wide connectivity project in Trichy. BHEL has invested nearly Rs 5 crore in the project, encompassing the company's 2908-acre campus. The solution provided by Cisco is a comprehensive integrated network based on a 10Gig backbone. It includes five core switches, seven distribution switches and a total of 152 edge switches deployed throughout the campus.
This project is particularly significant as it is said to be the single largest switching order within the manufacturing vertical in the Asia Pacific region.
Upcoming Trends
There’s a huge market for 3D mechanical design software in India and is already realizing strong growth in the region. In India, companies across verticals including the likes of ABB India, Asahi India Glass, BEL, Dantal Hydraulics, Hindustan National Glass, Integral Coach Factory, L&T, Laxmi Precision Screws, Makino, Voltas, National Aerospace Laboratories, Swaraj Mazda and Thermax have already gone in for such solutions.
There is a rising trend towards design outsourcing, considered to be the next big wave in ITES, as an area of opportunity. Recent studies and analysis by NASSCOM have identified the field of outsourcing in engineering design services to be between $7 billion and $12 billion. According to NASSCOM, India, with its high engineering base can emerge as the destination for high value manufacturing design.
Another trend that is becoming visible is the increasing acceptance of thin clients in Indian manufacturing units.
Thin clients, hard disk less systems connected to a central server, are becoming a viable solution for many businesses. With security concerns and time to deployment becoming critical issues for today's enterprise. Companies around the world have realized the need for more reliable, secure, and affordable computing models - and have increasingly turned to thin client technology as the solution for delivering their crucial enterprise information."
Thin clients are more cost effective, eliminates security problems plaguing PCs and virtually immune to PC viruses. Moreover, they are server-based architectures minus floppies, CDs or HDDs and don't need backups.
The Asian market for thin clients is dominated by India, with sales figures up by 47 percent this year, against 25 percent in the U.S. and 39 percent in Europe. Innovative new software enables thin clients to provide all of the functionality of a PC at much lower cost. These products enable enterprises to gain control of their desktops, stream software on-demand, and integrate mainframe, midrange, UNIX and Linux applications with Windows environments and the Web.
The Indian market for thin clients is expected to double next year. They will be increasingly adopted in the next few years because of tremendous benefits to enterprises deploying server-based computing.
Conclusion
As companies build IT capabilities, their infrastructures can become overwhelming, with systems silos and cross-organizational processes. Without the right visibility into their operational technology spending, those making investment decisions favor a ‘do no harm’ policy, maintaining and extending applications regardless of the value they produce.
One of the challenges is to drive more efficiencies into operating costs and reallocate those savings to invest in new capabilities.
The new IT reality is that organizations cannot simply maintain existing systems and expect growth, but must prioritize a new model that emphasizes both agility and efficiency, is secure, consolidates access into a central location for more efficient management and effective control.
As IT operating costs have steadily increased companies need to find cost effective ways of managing and deploying applications that adapt to support business change and growth, while adjusting to thousands of dynamically changing access scenarios.
But success is not merely about implementation. Manufacturers need to focus on creation of values by aligning business needs with technological solutions and maintaining this alignment as business conditions evolve. This project demonstrates how such success is achievable."
However, the benefit of automating processes is that you need not worry about human errors; hence it saves time and wastage.
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