Whatever progress India has been able to make in the services sector, no one
could deny that nation building would not happen without the growth of the core
sector. This includes industries like steel, coal, heavy engineering, aluminum
and other heavy minerals. Unfortunately, this sector has not traditionally shown
high inclination towards IT-the fact that most companies here are large PSUs
might have contributed to this. However, off late, this picture is undergoing a
total makeover-many of the so-called Indian navratnas are today's heaviest
IT users.
In the past, many PSUs have flinched from extensive automation, not only
because of bureaucratic red-tapism, but also because of pressures from the
militant trade unions. This is borne out by the fact that organizations in the
private sector, like Tata Steel, have been enthusiastic users of IT for a long
time. Tata Steel has, in fact, made pioneering strides in IT usage. Here, a
corporate knowledge management solution based on Lotus Notes, generates some
3000 hits per day and has contributed upwards of Rs 15 crore in savings/ value
for the company. It has also won the award for the Most Admired Knowledge
Enterprise in Asia. An operations research-based solution, developed in-house,
for optimizing trimming and slitting operations reduced wastage by 3% and
reduced cycle time for planning from 52 man-days to 3 man-days. It was one of
the first in the world to use data-mining technology to production processes
resulting in improvement in product quality.
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Hindalco is a specimen site for Oracle; SAIL and Coal India are cited
examples of reverse auctions through private exchanges. Not only have these
exchanges reduced inventory and planning time, in strict RoI measures, they have
brought in tremendous savings. And even the trade unions have been assuaged, as
automation has not led to extensive job losses. However, this might change as IT
usage increases further-in future, the core sector players have to balance
between IT adoption and retrenchment. In the IMRB study, core sector also scored
high on IT benefits aspects like impact on ROI, productivity and cost reduction.
The current application landscape in any manufacturing company involves
enterprise applications such as ERP, SCM, CRM, SRM, and PDM; plant level
execution systems for shop floor automation; HR functions, quality management
systems, WIP tracking systems, job scheduling applications; plant maintenance;
and plant automation and controls for tracking and monitoring of various
processes and equipment performances. The key to a successful IT strategy in
these core sector organizations is a robust Knowledge Management infrastructure
coupled with Business Intelligence and management philosophy as well as
enterprise wide application integrating across functions. The benefits: a
healthy business process management approach coupled with integration of supply
chain partners across core activities.