Baan's ERP boost for Elgi

Asia's leading manufacturer of air compressors went in for a complete ERP implementation using Baan's solution. Elgi picked Baan based on the ERP major's strength in handling discrete manufacturing as well as the superior after-sales support module

After looking at other solutions, Elgi felt that discrete manufacturing was handled best by Baan, says Arathi Varadaraj

In 1997, Elgi decided to implement an ERP system. It chose Baan. “Baan gave us a special price. We looked at SAP and other solutions and concluded that discrete manufacturing was handled best by Baan,” says Arathi Varadaraj, vice president organisation development, Elgi.
“Elgi went in for a complete ERP implementation, including stock control, planning, accounting and sales and purchase,” says Gopal Madnani, country manager, Baan India. Initially three modules were installed-manufacturing, finance and distribution (purchasing, inventory, sales and stock management). There was one consultant per module.
A pilot was undertaken. “The pilot showed us what kind of data can be made available to end-users from the existing data store,” says Varadaraj.
Challenges
Business process documentation and reengineering was a hurdle. Earlier the company had an in-house system in Ingres that suffered from disconnection. The company had to clean up existing data to make it ERP friendly. In an ERP system, the composition and the process of making a product have to be entered into the system to take advantage of features such as Availability to Promise (ATP) and planning.
Localisation was a critical area. “We had to stumble our way through that,” says Varadaraj. “It was one of the shortest implementation cycles, we used Baan out-of-the-box as much as possible,” she adds. Change management was complex, as Elgi had to manage the shift from paper-based systems to ERP.
The implementation
Baan's goal is to transfer ownership of the implementation to the customer. The company starts by putting some product lines in the system, and gets it to a point where it is acceptable and trains the users. “The initial implementation was one-fourth the size that it is today,” says Madnani. Most of the subsequent work has been undertaken by Elgi, which has extended the system. In 1998, the system started off with 16 users. Today there are 125.