Group no.

3A
Industry: Consumer Durables
Company: Orient Electric

Management Information System in

Orient Electric

Submitted By- Group 3A

Atimanas Biswal (17pgp034)
Gaurav Kumar Choudhary
Shashank pathekar
Anirudh Sinha
Arnab Ghosh
Subhankar Nayak
Kunal Rawat
Karan Singh Bhandari
Vamsi Krishna
Devesh Kumar
 Group no. 3A
Industry: Consumer Durables
Company: Orient Electric

ORIENT ELECTRIC

About the Company-

Orient Electric is part of the diversified Indian conglomerate CK Birla Group. A global
market leader in the electrical industry, Orient Electric offers diverse selection of consumer
electrical solutions including Fans, Home appliances, Lighting and Switchgear. The CK Birla
Group is a growing US$1.6 billion conglomerate that has a history of enduring relationships
with renowned global companies. With over 20,000 employees, 24 manufacturing facilities
and numerous patents and awards, the Group's businesses are present across five continents.
It operates in three industry clusters - Technology and Automotive, Home and Building, and
Healthcare and Education.

It has been a household name in the Indian fan Industry for over 60 years. Orient
Electric takes pride in its R&D capabilities, spirit of continuous innovation and commitment
to manufacture cutting-edge lifestyle electrical products that meet the needs and expectations
of new age consumers. Orient Electric operates in over 35 countries and is the largest
manufacturer and exporter of fans in India. The company has a strong pan India presence
with more than 100,000 retail outlets, 3500 retailers and distributors, and 153 service centres
across the nation. Orient Electric operates with a philosophy to carve out a niche in the global
fan industry and evolve into a premier electrical lifestyle solutions provider.

The Challenges of Current System-

Producing thousand electrical equipment per week, operating on a back to back production
cycle, information system is the key to the operational efficiency. To meet the high
expectations of customers in this market segment, the company requires flexibility and speed,
business integration and automation of the process. Business integration is one of the most
important aspects in handling of large amount of data across the globe. To cater to the
different customer demands in different times of the year, they have to have a structured and
reliable forecasting system.

Drawbacks of current system-

 Inconsistent real time data across various departments in the organization making
coordination and quick decision making difficult
 Manual data entry practice making the entire process vulnerable to calculation errors
 Lack of transparency in the performance of different departments causinig difficulty
in finding the bottleneck
 Non-standard procedures for data handling resulting in difficulty of benchmarking the
process
 There was variation in information storing formats
 Only few people had access to key information
 The flow of information across sales, finance and production planning was very
complicated
 Group no. 3A
Industry: Consumer Durables
Company: Orient Electric
 There was also a need for collaboration between the vehicle manufacturers and
dealers to improve the vehicle order-to-delivery process.

Information system is vital in maintaining the production rate in a cost-effective, customized

environment. Orient plants across India are supported by mainframe-based information
systems which then are connected to the different systems and applications. The results are
high maintenance cost and complicated system integration. The amount of time and money
that the company spends on system maintenance is very high, and the goal was to keep the IT
costs as low as possible.

The company desperately wanted an integrated information system, so that the flow of
information becomes fast and effective. They wanted to enter data only once as every dealer
and other key employee were managing information separately with legacy-based systems,
the environment produced inconsistent data, making interpretations difficult and resulting in
inefficient planning for capacity and spare parts. This made it difficult to keep a track of the
present inventory status and predict the demand based on the forecasting using past data.
There were discrepancies in the recorded figures and the actual figures for inventory. The
company wanted a centralized system where the entered information was automatically sent
to all the functional areas like – financial systems, material management, ordering etc.
without delay, caused by data interface or any other data transferring problems and any
update made from anywhere should be reflected throughout.

New Proposal-
At first Orient Electric created an operational model which shows the process flow, they then
used this model to find the most suited application available in the market to meet their
business needs. Planners often face nightmarish situations when a company experiences an
unexpected spike in demand for a product or when a slack sales season leads to a huge
inventory build up. Planners strive to avoid these crisis-like situations because they can
disrupt the entire logistics and supply chain.

The company was looking for a system that could –

 Manage future demand based on forecasting using the past records

 Manage the Complete motor order-to-delivery process
 Make scheduling of manufacturing and delivery smooth
 Handle the warranty claims with efficiency and accuracy
 Enhance the dealership management system
 Manage relationships with customers and partners more efficiently

Orient Electric put together a list of the top five vendors in the marketplace and mapped the
system against its needs. SAP R/3 is the best fit for all. According to most of the company’s
opinion; SAP provided the best standard software solution in the industry for their
requirements.
 Group no. 3A
Industry: Consumer Durables
Company: Orient Electric
Orient Electric have then decided to go with SAP implementation. SAP India provided all the
support and consultation for the implementation. The SAP ERP forecasting functionality is a
planning tool that helps bring greater sanity to sales, production or procurement plans and
minimize out-of-stock or massive inventory build up situations. Forecasting features can be
found in three SAP modules: Sales and Distribution (SD), Production Planning (PP) and
Materials Management (MM). The ERP forecasting functionality uses a material's historical
consumption data and chooses the relevant forecasting model to predict the material's future
demand.

Benefits of New System-

Once SAP is implemented, automation of several processes will help in reducing the cost and
time. Almost all the business process like material procurement, order placements, logistics
etc. will now be sharing the centralized information system which is not totally location
independent. Orient Electric can later adopt some more modules and tools of SAP for better
business process and functionality based on requirement.

The MIS will provide the following advantages.

1. It Facilitates planning: MIS improves the quality of plants by providing relevant

information for sound decision – making. Due to increase in the size and complexity of
organizations, managers have lost personal contact with the scene of operations.

2. It Minimizes information overload: MIS changes the large amount of data into a
normalized form and there by avoids the confusion which may arise when managers are
flooded with detailed facts.

3. MIS Encourages Decentralization: Decentralization of authority is possibly when there is a

system for monitoring operations at the lower levels of the organizational hierarchy. MIS is
successfully used for measuring performance and making necessary change in the
organizational plans and procedures.

4. It brings Coordination: MIS facilities integration of specialized activities by keeping each

department aware of the problems and requirements of other departments. It connects all
decision centers in the organization.

5. It makes control easier: MIS serves as a link between managerial planning and control. It
improves the ability of management to evaluate and improve performance. The used
computers has increased the data processing and storage capabilities and reduced the cost of
data maintenance drastically.

6. MIS assembles, process, stores, Retrieves, evaluates and disseminates the information.
 Group no. 3A
Industry: Consumer Durables
Company: Orient Electric
Management Implications-
Business environment is prone to changes and this factor makes business planning very
complex. Some factors such as the market forces, technological changes, complex diversity
of business and competition have a significant impact on any business prospects. MIS is
designed to assess and monitor these factors. The MIS design is supposed to provide some
insight into these factors enabling the management to evolve some strategy to deal with them.
Since these factors are a part of the environment, MIS design is required to keep a watch on
environment factors and provide information to the management for a strategy formulation

Orient Electric is supposed to experience continuous growth owing to a strong IT

infrastructure. Data and process management will become smooth leading to increased
efficiency in sharing of information and planning ahead. Some other benefits across various
departments could be-
Manufacturing: Production planning and material management will be automated
Documents: Invoicing, orders and other documents will now be generated automatically
Requisitioning: Purchasing and finding the best vendor or supplier becomes easier.
Reporting and Analysis: Standard and specific reports can now be generated just by a click,
analyzing and comparing the reports will be automatic
Decision-making: Availability of online information, analysis and better planning toots will
help Orient Electric managers to take better decisions.

Improvements are expected in general costs, purchasing, resource planning logistics and
financial department. MIS will succeed in providing strong strategy to manage Orient
Electrics’ demand and inventory management in a much better planned way.