TAAR SANSAR

"SAP Roll Out In DWP"

As all would be aware, the Borivli & Tarapur Plant locations of Wire Division went live on the Materials Management (MM), Financial Accounting (FI), Controlling (CO) & Project System (PS) modules of the Tata Steel wide SAP ERP w.e.f 1st January 2006 as part of the 2nd phase (after the 1st phase in May 2005 involving the Order Generation & Fulfillment-OG&F-process with the Sales Distribution SD module).
The Doddaballapur Wire Plant (DWP), near Bangalore, which commenced operations in November 2005, had stand-alone “Tally” & “X Factory” Mini ERP software packages for MM & FI processes.
The 2nd phase SAP rollout was extended to DWP w.e.f 1st November 2006. The cross-functional task-force team from Wire Division, including from DWP, worked with the team from SAP CC (Competence Center), Jamshedpur towards this end.

The salient features of this roll-out are

Stoppage of stand-alone software packages in DWP.
Integration of DWP in the Tata Steel wide SAP ERP system along with Wire Division.
On line visibility of transactions & progress status between DWP & Centralized Purchase, Accounts etc. at Borivli.
Standardization of Tata Steel Wire Division processes in DWP also.

Key challenges in this roll-out included

Geographical distance gap between Borivli & DWP out location.
No long history of established legacy MM Information system in DWP unlike Borivli / Tarapur.
Major SAP users are outsourced resources.
Utilizing past rollout learning here by both teams.
Remote system configuration at SAP-CC for DWP rollout & more optimal SAP-CC resources utilization.
It remains now to stabilize the roll-out changeover & make the functional processes owners totally independent.

C.Srivatsan

Packaging For Tomorrow

Mr. D. O. Chavan, Mr. R. T. Gogia and Mr. Rajesh Raut attended the 2 day Asian Packaging Conference on "PACKAGING FOR TOMORROW" held at Hotel Leela Kempinski, on 12th and 13th December 2006.

This program enhanced immensely their knowledge of packaging of various products. In India, the packaging industry is growing at a vibrant rate of 15% as compared to 5% in other countries. High quality packaging is becoming increasingly important to industry and is now one of the significant drivers for growth together with the factors of quality, cost and delivery time.

Handling Emergencies

On 5th July 2006, the Safety Department undertook table top exercises for handling emergencies. The incident of LPG Leakage was simulated. Mr. Shyam Sunder along with officers from TWP and WRM participated in this project. The LCG / MARG members acted as observes and provided valuable suggestions for improvement.
The mock-drills related to on-site and off-site emergencies are crucial to gauge a unit's preparedness in handling such situations effectively. For it helps get rid of lacunae in the system, train persons responsible for handling emergencies and ultimately reduce losses.