Asian Paints : Gattu Goes Hi-tech

It all began in 1999-2000. Asian Paints, one of the largest paint
manufacturing company in India embarked on a mission to automate its processes
and systems which later funded the companys growth spree through the new
millennium. Today, the company has one of the most mature IT footprints
supporting its operations in twenty countries, and managing thirty
paint-manufacturing facilities that serve consumers in more than sixty-five
countries.

Challenges

A big IT challenge that the company was faced with recently was the
implementation of the Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) platform. According to
Manish Choksi, CIO, Asian Paints, the company has essentially been involved in
formulation management. The solution to manage these formulations was developed
a long time ago and was built on the Foxpro platform which was getting outdated.
Though the IT team had a large centralized pool of information through ERP and
SCM solutions on a new platform, the core R&D informationhow the products
should be manufacturedwas still on the legacy platform.

Manish Choksi, CIO, Asian Paints

The PLM platform was aimed at eliminating the manual interface required to document all the product information and transfer it from the legacy platform to the new one Deployed best of breed technologies which was a combination of the SAP PLM suite, Optiva, and ASD Software

Processes were ISO compliant but to a certain extent were manual in nature,
which meant data on formulations had to be transmitted physically by taking
several copies of the printouts as per the ISO records and then transmitted to
the plants. The problem lay in the fact that there was no capture of information
on how the formula was developed; there was no documentation on what processes
went into approving formulae; and post approval that formulation had to be
transferred manually which was time consuming and led to higher expenses. When
the product information was transmitted to the other IT systems, there was a
manual interface which took into account all the information being transferred.
So, there was a need to eliminate the manual interface and completely automate
the process.

Choksi took a holistic look at the challenge around the management of
formulations and processes in the development arena. The team then went on a
search for a process for the right PLM platform and partnered with some large
vendors such as SAP and specialist companies in the space such as Optiva (Inforink)
and ASD Software, etc, to integrate the processes and software.

Success Beckons

The effort was to go in for best of breed solutions as they provided a
holistic vision and covered every pain point effectively. The PLM solution was
implemented 14-15 months ago and succeeded in delivering on all parameters that
were outlined at the beginning of the project such as quicker time to market of
the formulations, cost savings, reduction in paper consumption, streamlining all
processes onto a single platform and embedding information on formulae into
other solutions such as the ERP and SCM. On the whole, the project provided
end-to-end access and visibility to product information.

After the success of the PLM platform, Choksi and his team are in the process
of deploying a Master Data Management (MDM) platform from SAP Netweaver which is
all set to go live shortly. The platform will work in integration with the PLM
suite.

Going forward, the company plans to adopt a two-pronged strategyone is to
re-haul its existing supply chain and distribution system to achieve customer
intimacy and the other to develop high manufacturing capacities for future
growth. Over the next decade, the company plans to set-up a state-of-the-art
manufacturing facility in Rohtak, Haryana with four times the capacity of its
existing plants.

Priya Kekre

priyak@cybermedia.co.in