The Client
The company enjoys a market share of over 60 per cent in the automobile lighting business in the country and offers a wide array of complete automobile lighting systems and solutions, other related products and accessories for four-wheeler, two-wheelers, trucks, buses, earth-movers, and tractors as well as a variety of diverse applications. The company retains its brand leadership through its ability to deliver products to customers on time through its well-oiled supply chain and highly efficient distribution network.
The Challenges
In a fiercely competitive auto components sector, predictability of inventory levels and just-in-time arrival is critical to operational efficiency and success. This requires real-time visibility of inventory levels across all sections of the production line so that the production runs at optimum levels and operating costs are controlled.
The Objective
The client used SAP for monitoring production but faced challenges in tracking the status of finished goods as well as work-in-progress across the three main sections involving moulding, surface treatment and assembly due to geographical spread and 24×7 operations. The client sought a solution to improve the overall visibility of the inventory (both finished and semi-finished) across operations.
The Solution
- A custom web-based solution on ASP.Net 4.0 to interface with SAP to improve the traceability of raw materials, work-in-progress and finished goods.
- A web-based inventory tracking system integrated with the main SAP system for ease of access from any location within the production site.
- Management of user-profiles, access privilege, storage location, machine details including generation of barcodes and communication with barcode scanner within the different production sections for accurate traceability.
The Benefits
- Automation of the procurement process.
- Improved tracking of products in each production section.
- The integrated solution resulted in savings on license and maintenance of the SAP-based solution.
- Improved transaction speed due to anywhere data allowed by the web-based system.
- Availability of real-time production analytics.
- Improved operational efficiency from the barcode-based solution.
