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| Case Study |
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Patni partners with an automobile giant to
provide lifecycle ERP support |
Leveraging its significant experience with the automotive sector, Patni implements and
enhances the Baan ERP for the large automobile manufacturer
The Client
A Fortune 500 company,
the client is a world
leader in car
manufacturing. It
operates from almost all
countries in the EU
region and in a few
countries in Asia and the
Americas.
The Challenge
The customer had traditionally deployed the Made to Stock
(MTS) business model for cars for most of its prominent sites.
The customer wanted to bring the Indian site onto the business
process template followed globally. Patni was chosen as the
partner to deploy, enhance and support the India deployment.
The team foresaw two major challenges: Indian tax laws were
not supported by the template and a need was felt to support
the 'assemble to order' (ATO) business model in order to
control inventory costs. The deployment turned out to be a
full-fledged implementation
The Solution
Patni leveraged its knowledge of the Indian version of Baan, and Baan
interfacing features to develop interfaces to the global template.
Patni's strengths in developing web-based solutions were also exploited
to develop solutions for the ATO business model.
Key responsibilities included:
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BPR and Implementation: Re-engineering of processes had to be
carried out simultaneously with implementation. This called for
an implementation of the Distribution, Manufacturing, and
Finance Baan packages, using an iterative implementation
methodology |
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Web based Model for ATO: The change of model from MTO to
ATO called for developing a web-based solution to allow dealers
to order cars online. A web application tightly coupled with the
Baan ERP instance was developed and implemented |
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Application Support: Besides offering day-to-day support, the
team also supports the Baan instance through platform projects
like:
- Service pack upgrade
- Archiving
- Supporting Oracle upgrade
- New interface developments
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The Technology
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Baan IV bx |
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ORACLE 7.3.2 |
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MS IIS 4.0 Server |
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MS MTS 3.0 |
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ASP, VB Scripts |
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MS SQL Server 7.0 |
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HP UX 11.x. |
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The Benefits
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The Web-based interface reduced the time required to
reserve vehicles from three days to twenty minutes |
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Seamless interfacing of other operations with the ERP
significantly reduced the time for accessing information
and making a number of queries, primary among them
being a facility to query and access the reservation
system, and a facility to enter the details of the sales to
the end-customer |
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The change to the ATO business model has resulted in
significant reduction in inventory and lead-time |
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Online dealer interface reduced the delay in processing
the sales order and reduced the pressure on the internal
staff for interfacing with the dealers for various statuses |
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As it was closely interfaced with Baan It also provided the
internal sales staff, the ability to reserve cars for
dealers/sales depots and to monitor the reservations. |
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