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It all began in 1999-2000. Asian Paints, one of the largest paint manufacturing company in India embarked on a mission to automate its processes and systems which later funded the companys growth spree through the new millennium. Today, the company has one of the most mature IT footprints supporting its operations in twenty countries, and managing thirty paint-manufacturing facilities that serve consumers in more than sixty-five countries.

Challenges
A big IT challenge that the company was faced with recently was the implementation of the Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) platform. According to Manish Choksi, CIO, Asian Paints, the company has essentially been involved in formulation management. The solution to manage these formulations was developed a long time ago and was built on the Foxpro platform which was getting outdated. Though the IT team had a large centralized pool of information through ERP and SCM solutions on a new platform, the core R&D informationhow the products should be manufacturedwas still on the legacy platform.

Manish Choksi, CIO, Asian Paints

The PLM platform was aimed at eliminating the manual interface required to document all the product information and transfer it from the legacy platform to the new one Deployed best of breed technologies which was a combination of the SAP PLM suite, Optiva, and ASD Software

Processes were ISO compliant but to a certain extent were manual in nature, which meant data on formulations had to be transmitted physically by taking several copies of the printouts as per the ISO records and then transmitted to the plants. The problem lay in the fact that there was no capture of information on how the formula was developed; there was no documentation on what processes went into approving formulae; and post approval that formulation had to be transferred manually which was time consuming and led to higher expenses. When the product information was transmitted to the other IT systems, there was a manual interface which took into account all the information being transferred. So, there was a need to eliminate the manual interface and completely automate the process.

Choksi took a holistic look at the challenge around the management of formulations and processes in the development arena. The team then went on a search for a process for the right PLM platform and partnered with some large vendors such as SAP and specialist companies in the space such as Optiva (Inforink) and ASD Software, etc, to integrate the processes and software.

Success Beckons
The effort was to go in for best of breed solutions as they provided a holistic vision and covered every pain point effectively. The PLM solution was implemented 14-15 months ago and succeeded in delivering on all parameters that were outlined at the beginning of the project such as quicker time to market of the formulations, cost savings, reduction in paper consumption, streamlining all processes onto a single platform and embedding information on formulae into other solutions such as the ERP and SCM. On the whole, the project provided end-to-end access and visibility to product information.

After the success of the PLM platform, Choksi and his team are in the process of deploying a Master Data Management (MDM) platform from SAP Netweaver which is all set to go live shortly. The platform will work in integration with the PLM suite.

Going forward, the company plans to adopt a two-pronged strategyone is to re-haul its existing supply chain and distribution system to achieve customer intimacy and the other to develop high manufacturing capacities for future growth. Over the next decade, the company plans to set-up a state-of-the-art manufacturing facility in Rohtak, Haryana with four times the capacity of its existing plants.

Priya Kekre
priyak@cybermedia.co.in

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