Manufacturing

ERP brings visibility into Madras Cements' business

Ramco's e.Applications (ERP) helped Madras Cements streamline its information flow. It has resulted in efficient capacity planning and utilisation and helped eliminate wastage

MCL had several 'islands' of systems (its own legacy applications) running across its three manufacturing plants and its corporate office in Chennai. In order to gain a competitive advantage, it had begun investing in computerising its payroll, finance, inventory, and invoicing systems in 1985. However over time every plant had its own systems, platforms, and processes. Due to a lack of integration and different reporting formats across plants, reports got delayed and accounts did not tally. The flow of information to the corporate office was not on time. Key information such as financial and production details were not uniformly available and there was a mismatch of information generated by production plants sent to the corporate office. This resulted in unnecessary delays in preparing a monthly accounts report.
Shopping for software inhouse
Once the management decided to go in for an ERP system, the first choice was Ramco Systems' e.Applications. C V C Rao, general manager-Information Technology, Madras Cements, says, “Packages from other ERP vendors were not seriously considered as the top management felt that choosing a package from our own group company would ensure smoother implementation and better servicing. In case of any problem we would be able to fix it faster since the software is supplied by a group company.” It was also felt that implementing Ramco e.Applications would ensure smoother integration with other Ramco applications such as the real time system and open cost mining system used by MCL. e.Applications had a suite of Web-enabled products for the cement vertical. This version offered continuous process productions suite, productivity tools and reporting formats.
A phased implementation
The first phase of the implementation was undertaken in November 1999 and was completed in about eight months. The major task was to map existing processes across nine functional modules such as-finance, sales, logistics, CPP (Continuous Process Production), ore management systems, maintenance, customisations for sales and logistics and HR, and to create a standard set of 'to be' processes, and then test them. The team consisted of people from the plant and the corporate office. It took a month per module to map the existing processes and convert them into 'to be' processes. There were a few customisation problems. Rao explains, “Some of the processes within the ERP system had to be shrunk to handle the huge volume of invoices (six lakh per annum) being generated by MCL's plants.” This was followed by a comprehensive training programme, which covered the basic overview of ERP as well as details about the impact of ERP on each of the nine e.Applications modules.
Advantage e.Applications
The implementation has streamlined transactions systems across plants. It has helped MCL develop an in-house MIS (Management Information System), which helps the management get information from its plants on a daily basis.
There was a substantial improvement in capacity utilisation across the organisation. For instance, it was found that some costly mining equipment was under utilised.
After comprehensive analysis of mines, equipment and shift (labour) performance, 60 percent of heavy equipment has been withdrawn from operations due to poor performance and underutilisation. The number of shifts has been reduced from three to two and by continuous monitoring, production and processes have been synchronised.