Chennai-based JKM Daerim Automotive, a OEM supplier to car manufacturers, is ICICI Infotech’s first automotive customer for the Orion ERP package, which has aided the company in switching from DOS-based applications to Windows. Akhtar Pasha finds out how

According to K R Srinivasan, DOS-based legacy applications were the main road blocks at JDAL

It’s not just carmakers who are deploying IT to manufacture technologically advanced automobiles. Information technology is also helping OEM suppliers increase occupational efficiency. Take JKM Daerim Automotive (JDAL) for instance. The company is a 73:27 joint venture between Bangalore-based Dynamatic Technologies and Daerim Enterprises, Korea.

Established in 1997, JDAL has evolved into a leading manufacturer and OEM supplier of auto ancillary products to carmakers like Hyundai for its Santro and Accent range of cars, Telco (Indica), Fiat (Palio) and Volvo. JDAL manufactures 50 different products, including engine and transmission components such as lever clutch assembly, shaft, and gearbox for cars at its Chennai plant.

The company is supplying 30 components to Hyundai and four critical engine components to Indica. In addition, it is a single source supplier of 17 critical engine and transmission components to Fiat’s Palio. JDAL is in the process of supplying critical components to Mitsubishi’s Lancer and Mahindra & Mahindra’s Scorpio. All the automobile components are passed after stringent quality tests using ISO standards.

Road block
In August 2000, JDAL expanded its facility for supplying components to Hyundai and Telco. What started with a 12-part manufacturing fulfilment of ancillary products for Hyundai vehicles rose to a 30-part supply order, compelling JDAL to seek a highly flexible and cohesive system to meet its growing business requirements.

K R Srinivasan, general manager finance and corporate affairs of JDAL says, “We were using a legacy-based application that could not be integrated with our new requirements like the QS 9000 quality standard.” JDAL was using DOS-based legacy software called CENTRACK for sales, exercise and inventory, that did not mesh with Windows. To make matters worse, CENTRACK withdrew support for its product. Tally was used for accounting. Srinivasan adds, “As our requirements grew, we wanted to integrate Windchill, for design and development of new products. These challenges drove us to consider using an ERP solution that would cater to our demands and bring efficiency into the system.”

Challenges
Since JDAL was the first automobile customer for ICICI Infotech, the latter had to customise its Orion package to suit JDAL’s requirements. Hari Padmanabhan, president and head for the Enterprise Solutions Group at ICICI Infotech says, “We customised Orion-manufacturing—a production rolling plan was incorporated in Orion for automating the entire planning process based on confirmed orders and machine capacity. Developed in the Oracle 8i RDBMS framework, Orion has an open systems application architecture that meets the demanding needs of a growing enterprise.”

The beginning
In the second quarter of 2000-01, JDAL finalised on an ERP solution. After evaluating several ERP packages from vendors like QAD and Oracle, the company decided to use ICICI Infotech’s Orion ERP solution. Orion was the first choice because it covers crucial operational areas such as rolling production plan, shop floor scheduling, quality assurance process, inventory, rejections and wastage. According to Srinivasan, Orion was considered for four reasons:

• Cost advantage: Orion’s cost was 30-40 percent lower when compared to its rivals.
• Better MIS support: Data capturing capability.
• Better handling of internal checks and controls.
• No third-party agency was involved in implementation.

Hari Padmanabhan says the ICICI Infotech team helped integrate Windchill, a payroll package and Tally with the Orion ERP application

In November 2000 JKM Daerim decided to implement four modules of Orion-SCM, inventory, sales and excise and it went live with all four modules in April 2001.

JDAL formed a 11-member cross-functional team comprising departmental heads for the implementation. Srinivasan says, “For our internal purposes, we customised the stock position and made it Web-based for production and material planning. This helped us in sharing information and decision-making.” Padmanabhan of ICICI adds, “Our responsibility was not limited to just implementing Orion. Our team was involved in integrating Windchill and Tally with the ERP application. (Windchill is a product from PTC). From our side, two engineers were working at the customer site, and they trained about 11 people on Orion.” Currently JDAL is using Windchill for its OEM customer, TENNACO Automobiles of the US.

IT infrastructure at JDAL
A LAN connects 40 HP PCs. Users are connected to the application server running Orion. JDAL uses a HP server with Pentium III 600 MHz dual processor, 18.2 X 2 GB HDD and 512 MB SDRAM running Windows NT. In addition to this a Compaq server was used for hosting the database and Windchill running on Windows NT. The company has spent Rs 30 lakh on the entire implementation, which includes the cost of hardware, software, networking and manpower training.

Benefits
With the ERP system in place, JDAL has been able to improve system administration and provide better security for data and software. Srinivasan says, “Handling huge amounts of data was not possible using a DOS-based application. On Windows, multiple users can now access data from different locations. The system is also helping us to carry out our internal quality control (QS 9000), which was not possible earlier. In addition to this, Orion is playing an important role in our vendor rating system. By using the user-friendly SCM module we can do better analysis of data.”

Orion ERP

Orion has been developed using the Oracle RDBMS as its back-end. Oracle tools were used for the development of its front-end. It was developed using Oracle Developer/2000 and Oracle JDeveloper Suite. At the core, there are two modules—Core and Sysadmin and around these powerful kernels users can pick and choose the modules or applications they want to use. Popular modules include general ledger, accounts payable and accounts receivable for finance, inventory, procurement and sales for operations and distribution management. Orion manufacturing helps in tracking work-in-process inventory, wastage and by-products analysis.

Benefits

Orion helped JDAL in rolling out a production plan, shop floor scheduling, in a quality assurance process and inventory control. It helped the company to move from legacy-based applications to a Windows-based ERP solution. Better analysis of data. Easy system administration.

Future plans
In the second phase, JDAL is planning to implement extended ERP so that its suppliers can access and share data over the Internet. Srinivasan says, “Extended ERP will happen soon when the internal requirement goes up.” In addition the company is thinking of adding the CRM module to cater to its five customers—Hyundai, Telco, Fiat, Mahindra & Mahindra and Volvo—as a value-added service. It is also considering opening a sales office in Bangalore.