Case Study - Tata Steel: IT Also Makes Steel

As India's largest integrated private sector steel company,
Tata Steel headquartered in Jamshedpur established in 1907 has been the pioneer
in introducing and encouraging usage of technology in the once old-fashioned
steel industry. Being one of the largest IT adopters in the Indian corporate
sector, Tata Steel was one of the first in the world to introduce data mining
technology in the production processes which resulted in a vast improvement in
the product quality. Tata Steel boasts of a document management, employee
self-service and workflow solutions, that incidentally have been developed
in-house and implemented in all the departments and also at the shop floor level
with the assistance of kiosks.

The company's IT implementation is a success story of how
technology can be used effectively for handling even administrative tasks. TISCO
was one of the early adopters of e-procurement with 3,100 suppliers transacting
business through the following system, thus resulting in a B2B integration
between Tata Steel and Tata Ryerson. Other achievements include integrating with
external processing agents and service centers for production planning and
scheduling, and real-time integration of supply chain application with
distributors.

IT Drives Biz

Like most other organizations, all IT initiatives in the company are
business driven that is "IT systems get embedded in business processes
repeatable, scalable, sustainable, measurable and transparent to the
organization," said the official spokesperson of Tata Steel.

Usage of technology is increasing in several processes in the
company including market development, order generation and fulfillment, supply
chain management and manufacturing process control.

Usage of IT has resulted in reduction in the product development
cycle time and as a result it has vastly improved the ability to commit and
fulfill customer expectation and has optimized inventory levels, logistics and
has also led to control over the credit.

The company has also used technology to increase the ability to
develop and train competencies in a short time span through e-learning. For
instance, Tata Steel boasts of 100% employee literacy and computer literacy. IT
has led to an enhancement in the ability of the organization to identify, plan,
develop and re-deploy people to facilitate organizational growth.

Innovation has been one of the distinguishing factors in the
usage of technology in the company. Tata Steel's managing director reaches out
to all company employees to communicate on company performance, strategic
initiatives and customer needs by using a combination of video conferencing and
video streaming.

Road Ahead

As one of the pioneers in introducing technology to the steel industry, Tata
Steel has big plans up lined to extend the usage of IT enabled business
intelligence (BI) tools in the processes. IT in TISCO is envisioned to support
the organization's 3 Ts: theory of constraints, quality management, and
technology. In view of the big expansion plans, the technology could find usage
in providing support implementation for the green field projects and thereafter
extend IT support even for running these plants.

Stuti Das

stutid@cybermedia.co.in