SUMMARY STORY

Company Profile

The customer is a leading manufacturer of high precision, ultra thin stainless steel strips and coils. With an annual turnover of about USD 50M, the company , backed by a skilled and motivated workforce and state-of-art cold rolling machinery, manufactures stainless steel strips of less than 0.05mm thick.

Background to the implementation

The executives  realized early ( in 2008 itself ) the importance of an ERP in managing their complex and growing business and the advantage that an open-source ERP could bring by making enterprise functionality available to Medium Sector Manufacturing Companies .

Openbravo was chosen as the product for the implementation and it was decided to go with the open source version of the product. The company with their original partner were successful in getting purchase functionality for their consumables, spare parts etc. onto the ERP.

Then delays in the implementation made them look at anew, at the options.

Key Challenges and the Response

The key challenges were

• Delays in extending the implementation to additional functionality
• Difficulty in enhancing the existing customized functionality.
• Changes to the core product, which made it difficult to upgrade to the latest version.
• Performance issues, which appeared as time progressed, made the user experience less and less acceptable.
• The company management team decided to use the Professional Edition and approached Promantia (a certified Openbravo partner ) with expertise in Manufacturing Domain and Agile Practices to assist in the ERP implementation.

Implementation highlights

The implementation started in May 2011 and was executed as a series of phases, starting with transition of support. Over the next 10 months or so , they implemented

• Raw Material Purchase and Inventory Management
• Preventive Maintenance for Machines
• Quotation and the Sales Flow
• Production

as well as upgraded their Openbravo version from 2.50 MP 9 to 2.50 MP 31 and then to 3.0 MP 7.1 .

The result

The ERP roll-out is back on track, and the customer has redrawn their 2-3 years roadmap confident that it can be achieved this time.

QUICK FACTS

• Industry: Manufacturing – Iron and Steel
• Activity: Converting Hot-Rolled stainless steel coils into thinner sheets/strips/coils.
• Number of employees: 200 approx.
• Estimated Annual Revenues: USD 50 M approx.

IMPLEMENTATION

• Implementation country/countries: India
• Effort: 300 days for Phase 1
• Edition: Openbravo Professional Subscription
• Version: 2.5/3.0
• Modules: Purchase, Sales, Warehouse, Production
• Launch date: 15 Dec 2011 ( end of Phase 1 )
• Challenges and Solutions:
  • Since the system was already in production, support needed to be given , and a pent-up pipeline of enhancement requests were waiting to be addressed.
    • Phased out the code-cleanup, so that delivery of business functionality was not stifled .
    • Deep involvement of the customer team in analysis and testing (to minimize impact on existing functionality)
    • Identified and implemented quick wins to get initial momentum.
  • Implementation team was remotely located.
    • Use of agile practices – weekly planning and delivery, daily standups with client during critical project phases, prototyping, video linkages
      • Train the trainer approach – the implementation team focused on training the ERP team and they in turn trained and supported the end users
• Results:
  • Phase 1 was completed on schedule ( and within budget ).
  • Customer target – which was on corporate sales – has now shifted to retail sales and has expanded beyond Bangalore into other cities.
  • Significant functional enhancements including pack based sales, product and pack swaps during the rental period and more complex promotions have been incorporated in the product.