WINNERS
T.G. Dhandapani TVS Motor Corporate CIO
Importing Benefits — Not Problems To cope with the increasing cost of raw materials and components, TVS Motor decided to source them from China. But its inability to streamline the logistics of this new supply chain led to inflated costs, and defeated the whole purpose. The challenge before the IT team was to find a way to minimize inventory yet ensure that components were available on time so that the manufacturing line did not stop. T.G. Dhandapani, Corporate CIO, TVS Motor, had a plan. His strategy was to set up an application that would provide complete stock transparency along the entire supply chain, enable appropriate triggers to take timely action and — most importantly 140
S E P T E M B E R 1 5 , 2 0 0 8 | REAL CIO WORLD
SNAPSHOT PRESIDENT: K.N. Radhakrishnan REvENuE: Rs 3,900 crore EMPLOyEES: 6,000 IT STAff: 60 PROjECT: Material Requirement Planning COST: Rs 20 lakh PROjECT PERIOD: March — July 2007
— improve the process of material requirement planning. His constraint? It would have to be designed with the existing IT infrastructure. The facility that he created provides a dashboard that shows the availability of materials from order, L/C opening to receipt of material at various stages in the supply chain. Through work-flow, all agencies update the various events, including at the source in China, as the material is being put on a ship, or whether material is waiting at customs. The function is a simple browser-based application. “This has helped TVS Motor to reduce its inventory in transit by almost 15 percent and reduce material cost by 12 percent by reducing wastage and optimizing raw material usage,” says Dhandapani. CIO
Vol/3 | ISSUE/21