| | JAN-FEB 20199Consultants ReviewDigital Transformation for Inventory ManagementInventory management is also one of the critical issues for manufacturing industry. In packaging sector, de-lays in truck loading & missing rolls are regular phenomenon. To over-come this problem, the companies are automating the whole process with the help of RFID & bar codes to reduce the loading and unload-ing time of materials and provide complete traceability. For inter-plant transfers we en-abled the RFID on rolls and for cus-tomer sales we have started using the bar codes. Packaging personnel at the shop floor were given scan-ners and TABS with a customized screen in SAP with very less inputs. A customized hanger which could control the TAB and scanner was developed to ensure the hands free movement of the personnel on the floor. By these initiatives, companies are able to reduce the container load-ing time from 3 hours to 30 minutes which was a huge saving for us. With limited number of loading points, it helped to load more containers in less time with more accuracy. Also, all the validation for rolls like right customer mapping, quantity map-ping and right packaging type used or not could be done in no time. Customer Relationship Management toolsOne of the most important areas where digitisation can help the manufacturing industry is Customer Relationship Management (CRM). Organisations have successfully managed to reduce non value adding conversations between the customer and the company by introducing the CRM tool.Nowadays, the packaging com-panies have implemented an end to end CRM tool/solution at their office. Within a span of couple of months/introduction of the tool, they have been able to significantly reduce non value adding conversations between the customer and the company as all the required information is sent out to the customer by auto email alerts, or is available for him to retrieve it online. This has considerably im-proved the ease of doing business and also allowed the sales team to focus on value adding activities like business development and sales. There have also been some measur-able results like increase in revenue of approx. one percent by proper follow up and SEO integration and 20 percent reduction in customer complaints etc.Digitisation of Internal ProcessesAnother area where digitisation could help in ease of managing in-ternal affairs is using Business Intel-ligence (BI) Tools like IBM Cognos Analytics, IntelliFront BI, Dundas BI, SAP BI etc. Traditionally, most key decision making reports/MIS were prepared by the finance teams using Microsoft Excel. In the past, a lot of effort went into collecting informa-tion from various departments and keeping a close tab on any changes or modifications at Cosmo. Through the SAP BI/BO tool, information is now available online for all depart-ments like production, purchase, finance and sales to view any time of the day. Auto generated mails are also sent at specific timings during the day based on the role of the per-son. Reports generated through the BI tool can be viewed by all depart-ments for things like finding the pro-duction conversion ratio, inventory trends along with ageing of inven-tory with non-moving bucket, pro-duction line efficiency, along with down time analysis, purchase trends along with vendor ratings and deliv-ery time trends v/s defined norms.
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