Spinning Success

One of the oldest textile mills in the country, Arvind Mills has come a long
way. As an organization, the management has been very proactive in adopting
state-of-the-art technologies including SAP way back in 1997. It was one of the
first movers in ERP. With time, the company redeployed its ERP with a domain
specific solution that is going live soon.

Textile as a vertical has some unique processes, and hence, the company
decided to go in for a specialized ERP. Quips BM Shah, CIO at Arvind Mills, "The
ERP we were running has outlived. Moreover, the company did not have the talent
pool or reference materials to continue maintaining the system. On top of it,
the new businesses and extensions were not integrated into the ERP system, and
as such it created revenue gaps and process duplications. The resulting
operating environment was such that there were multiple softwares running,
thereby creating issues for maintenance, accounting, and commercial duplications
asking for periodic reconciliation, loss of data between units, etc."

Unique Solution

Arvind Mills did face the dilemma when it decided to enhance its enterprise apps
backbone. It already had a major ERP, so the first option was to go in for a
technical upgrade. But high costs and other inhibitors eliminated that option.
The second option was to retain and upgrade the ERP only in certain core areas,
but the company figured out that such an option also had its limitations and
issues. The final but more risky and daring option was to overhaul the existing
ERP and put in place a solution that was more tuned to vertical requirements.

The company having decided to re-deploy its ERP looked at the practical
hurdles towards going in for a lesser known system. In its enterprise apps
decision making process, the company studied the deliverables of generic ERP
solutions with industry specific solutions. In the late 1990s, it compared its
option with an industry specific solution, Textile Integrated Manufacturing
(TIM) from Datatex, done by a company based out of Italy. However, due to its
evolving nature and several dependencies relating to database and hardware, TIM
rated much lower compared to robust solutions like SAP R/3 at that time. During
this time of long drawn ERP re-deployment process, the company was managing its
existing ERP on its own.

But as the textile vertical evolved, so did solutions like TIM. The scenario
has changed over a decade as far as the textile specific solutions are
concerned. There are several products available in the market. These products
also boast of enhanced functionalities to address the growing requirements of
the full range of textile industry spanning from yarn to readymade garments. Two
of them having wider base world over are TIM and Intex. Says BM Shah "The
problem we faced when we decided on a textile specific ERP was whether to
continue with generic solutions or to replace the same by textile specific
solutions. The first reaction came from the users community that was
comfortable using the existing ERP for almost a decade. We were aware of issues
related to migration from one ERP to another and we planned for that transition
effectively."

With the solution deployed in phases, the company in addition to the obvious
benefits of a specific solution that will go live soon, Arvind expects major
improvements in data collection through interface with information system built
into state-of-the-art plant and equipment on the shop floor. Says Shah, "IT
systems well configured across planning and manufacturing can result into huge
savings apart from ensuring on-time full delivery with assured quality. Only a
textile solution can help achieve this potential."

Shrikanth G

shrikanthg@cybermedia.co.in