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| Case Study |
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Patni optimizes Baan Planning System
for a large Electronic Contract Manufacturer |
By optimizing the
Baan application to provide planning abilities and a What-If
analysis feature, a large electronic contract manufacturer developed
the capability to respond quickly to changing business dynamics.
The Client
The client is a leading contract manufacturer of Televisions
and DVDs for global brands.
The Challenge
The client specializes in made-to-order mass production of
products. Though the company specializes in mass production
of products pertaining to only two categories i.e. televisions
and DVDs, the huge diversity of models in these categories makes
the process of streamlining production costs, an extremely challenging
task.
Due to the nature of the business, the customer had to closely
monitor parameters such as price, quality and availability of
materials. Any small variation in these parameters caused an
immediate impact on its profit margins. While the client had
implemented Baan in its manufacturing plant in India, the ERP
application was not optimized properly to fulfill its potential.
This presented significant challenges to the client like:
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Inability to respond quickly to changing business dynamics
as the planning system in Baan could not react to any
change in the inputs ranging from Sales forecasts, material
availability and resource availability |
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Reducing efforts in manual collection, reconciliation
of data and its iterations. |
Further, the customer had a standard Bill of Material (BOM)
for all the models and varieties of its end products. This used
to change at the level of Production Order on a daily basis.
This added to the woes of planning, since planning could not
be made against a Sales Order, which required an end product
with a particular specification.
The Solution
Patni's solution fulfilled the business requirements of the
client through a planned approach, which included:
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One week quick assessment: Patni first
gauged the implementation at the customer site, by interviewing
the top management and key users of the Baan system |
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Designing a new Business Process Flow:
As a part of the new business process, Patni switched
on Planning Engines in Baan and ensured that the plans
were continuous and tightly linked to Sales Forecasts
or actual Sales Orders. |
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Implementation of Product Configurator in Baan:
For the large number of similar models and varieties of
end products, Patni implemented Product Configurator (PCF)
in Baan, through which a BOM could be made out for each
specification in the Sales Order received from end customers |
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Customization: Wherever needed, Patni
added functionalities in MPS/MRP, through which the customer
could perform “What-If” analysis for releasing
any planned Production or Purchase Orders |
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Training users: Effective training
on the new Business Process Flow was given to end users,
which ensured that there was little resistance from the
users to the new system. |
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The Technology
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Baan. |
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The Benefits
Patni's planned approach ensured that there was no downtime
in switching to the new business processes. Other significant
benefits included:
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Switching on Planning Engines along with implementation
of PCF helped the customer make dynamic, proactive and
customer-oriented plans, down to each individual Sales
Order received |
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Reduction of efforts spent in data entries at multiple
places. This helped the customer reduce its excessive
manpower by 10% |
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The What-if Analysis feature of the solution made sure
that the impact of releasing a plan could be simulated
before releasing it. This made it possible to allocate
and arrange resources and funds. |
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