Aravind Mills LTD (AML) Case
Aravind Mills LTD (AML) Case
Aravind Mills LTD (AML) Case
Arvind Mills Limited (AML) -the flagship company of the Lalbhai group headquarter in Ahmedabad, India manufactures and exports denim (over 150 varieties) and shirtings for the past 100 years. Through its subsidiaries, it also manufactures and markets Arrow shirts and Flying Machine, Lee, Newport and Ruf and Tuf casual-wear for the domestic market and has a vision to expend in fashion industry globally through R&D and strategic acquisition. The company has a tie-up with Alamac Knits Fabrics Inc., USA, to manufacture knits. In 1997, Bipin B Lal graduated from Stanford business school and joined as CFO in AML and was to encounter with many challenges. Most of the units were either sick or facing liquidation or outdated in terms of technology and business practices.
Arvind Polycot Limited This company, formerly known as Saraspur Mills Ltd, was on the verge of liquidation following the textile industry recession during the late 1980s. In 1990, Arvind took it over, gave it a new name and a revamped product line and turned it around. The Ahmedabad-based unit makes cotton and blended fabrics for the Indian, as well as, export markets. The company is in the process of setting up a facility to manufacture bottom weight fabrics. Arvind Polycot is an associate company of The Arvind Mills Limited. Arvind Intex Limited Ahmedabad-based Arvind Intex was a sick unit - The Nagri Mills Ltd - that Arvind took over in 1991-92, and rehabilitated since. The company produces cotton yarn for the Indian and international markets, and recently commissioned a completely modernised spinning unit to produce ring spun yarn for the Indian market. Arvind Intex is an associate company of The Arvind Mills Limited. Arvind Cotspin Limited Arvind Cotspin, located in Kolhapur, Maharahtra, is one of India's largest 100% exportoriented spinning mills. The company manufactures 100% cotton yarn and double yarn in a wide range of counts and varieties. It intends to expand into gabardines. Arvind Cotspin is an associate company of The Arvind Mills Limited. Arvind Worldwide Inc, USA Arvind Worldwide, based in New York, is the sole agent for Arvind and helps in the marketing of denim, shirtings and yarn. Arvind Worldwide is a wholly owned subs idiary of The Arvind Mills Limited. Arvind Worldwide (M) Inc., Mauritius Arvind Worldwide (M), incorporated at Mauritius, has branch offices in London, Hong Kong and Dubai, which acts as agents for Arvind and help in the marketing of denim, shirtings,
Case written by Prof. M P Jaiswal, Management Development Institute, Gurgaon as the basis for class room discussion only and not for any administrative efficiency. 1
garments and yarn. Arvind Worldwide (M) is a wholly owned subsidiary of The Arvind Mills Limited. Arvind Overseas (Mauritius) Ltd., Mauritius Arvind Overseas (Mauritius) is the renamed, re -vamped Shape Fabrics Ltd. - an existing denim-making unit, which ha d stopped operations after making losses. Arvind Overseas (M) Ltd. is a wholly owned subsidiary of The Arvind Mills Limited.
The existing market information systems were inefficient to handle the day to day increasing workload of the firm. This was mainly because that most of the legacy systems (existing systems) were Island systems and had very little or no interface between them. Also the legacy systems were developed by in -house software engineers; whose retirement from the firm has resulted in inefficient handling of the systems. Also another major drawback of the legacy systems was that modifications/updates were not possible to them, whereas most of the ERP packages offered high flexibility in modifications and adding of updates. 2. The modernization of the production process demanded the need of an ultra modern market information system:-
During 1997 Arvind Mills underwent major modifications in the production process and set up an ultra modern plant in Santej. So the management felt that as they are having the most advanced production technology in the world, their management information system should also be of state of art technology. 3. Difficulty in integrating various Island systems:-
The Arvind mills management found it extremely difficult to integrate the existing in -house developed information systems. Most of these systems were suitable to the particular business function it was made for and could not interface well with other systems.
4.
Cus tomer Relationship Management (CRM) is gaining importance day by day and has become essential for the survival of any business. The textile market is becoming more and more competitive day by day, which necessitated the need of better Customer Relations Ma nagement. This will help the firm to more efficiently cater to the needs of the customer and thus retain them. The most important feature in this case is the traceability factor. The customer at any point of time can log into the system and find out where his order is? What is the status of the order at present and how long it would take to process and likewise. 5. Competitive Advantages :-
The adoption of a state of art Information system would give Arvind mills a competitive edge over their competitors. The marketing manager can confidently take orders as he can just login to the system and find out the different order status and can tell the customer when he can deliver the order. 6. The Advantages of a better SCM:-
The package facilitated an efficient Supply Chain Management (SCM) environment, which would help in coordinating supply with production and avoid extra inventory build up in the raw material stores. Also the package supported efficient implementation of other operations management techniques like JIT (Just in Time), logistics management, production scheduling etc. 7. A better Production Planning process:-
The production planning in Arvind Mills was an extremely tedious job as most of the production was MTO (Made to Order). Coordinating the production process and stream lining the production function with other departments could be handled more efficiently by an ERP package like SAPR/3.Also the package helped in defining the capacity limits to utilize the capacity to the maximum. 8. Tamper Proof :-
As the system requires data inputs at all the stages and identifies orders through primary keys over different functionalities, the system is absolutely tamperproof. Each and every bale opened should be reported and reentry in the database requires to be done in a very difficult method (only through the knowledge of the concerned supervisor. This all the more makes the system tamperproof.
include SAPR/3, PEOPLE SOFT, ORACLE, and RAMCO etc. These packages were evaluated on basis of certain criteria. After evaluating the different options based on the criteria; and suitability to the Arvind Mills conditions, SAP R/3 was selected. SAP R/3 was preferred over others mainly because of the following reasons: Suitability to the business environment of Arvind Mills. Across the board functionalitys Global presence of the company (Software provider) More suitable for processing industry than other software packages:-One of the major problems faced by Arvind Mills was capacity planning at the Loom shed. Nor the legacy systems or the other packages could efficiently carry out the capacity planning process. Successful Track Record: - SAP is one of the earliest available ERP packages and has proven its consistency and efficiency over the years. The largest sold ERP package and proven in the Market Strong in BPR and Best Business Practices Mark of quality for the Customers.
project made some progress but the major issues remains unresolved. The project plan of this phase got extended for another 5 months. The project manager of AML pointed out that due to problems with the implementation partner understanding and product weakness, the project did not progress well. HE said we learned from these mistakes, and we would to do a better job with remaining Phases. Phase II: Time period 1998 October to 1999 February. The second phase included configuring of SAP for marketing and customer service and relationship management functions. However, the second phase was much more challenging than the first phase, given the non-standard and inherently complex nature of Arvind Mills sales and service processes. For instance, customer rebate percentages varied across customers, customer-product combinations, and customer-product-order volume combinations. Additionally, the same customer sometimes had multiple accounts with Arvind Mills and had a different rebate percentage negotiated for each account. Also SAP CRM solution was not mature and had many gapes. PWHC was replaced with a new consulting firm, Accenture Business Consulting, to assist Arvind Mills with the second, third and forth phases of SAP implementation. Bipin explained his experience of SAP implementation in phase II: Accenture was very knowledgeable in the technical and configurational aspect of SAP implementation, but change management was still a dark area. Unlike Phase I, we were clearly targeting process redesign and enhancement in Phases II, and Accenture brought in best practices by virtue of their extensive experience with process changes in manufacturing organizations. Accenture wa quite comfortable in deploying ASAP implementation methodology. Since Phase I was somewhat of a disaster, we wanted to make sure that we did everything right in Phases II III and IV and not skimp on resources. SAP CRM implementation requires data and process design from customer side and that was it self a challenge. Apart there was contractual problem with Accenture as they wanted to replace the configuration done in Phase I. The option was to get the money recovered from PWHC as they messed up Phase I and hence to replace with Accenture. Bipin became the most worried person as he had to encounter new challenges of SAP implementation apart from the usual business problem. As part of the change management, five training rooms were equipped with computers running the client version of the R/3 software to train users on the redesigned processes and the new R/3 environment. The steering committee was formed to oversee and coordinate the change management process. Reporting directly to the senior vice president level, this committee was given the mandate and resources to plan and implement any change strategies that they would consider beneficial. An expe rt of change management commented on the above program:Traditional system training does not work very well for SAP implementation because this is not only a technology change but also a change in work process, culture, and habits, and these are very difficult things to change. You are talking about changing attitudes and job roles that have been ingrained in employees minds for years and in some cases, decades. System training will overwhelm less sophisticated users and they will think, O my God, I have no clue what this computer thing is all about, I dont know what to do if the screen freezes, I dont know how to handle exceptions, Im sure to fail. Training should not focus on how they should use the system, but on how they should do their own job using the system. (Taken from public source reference) Phase III: Time period: May 1999 To August 1999. The third phase included commissioning of SAP for supply chain management functions of Arvind Mills. Though SAP provided a sales and operational planning (SOP) module with their R/3 package, Arvind Mills R/3 project management team believed that this module lacked the intelligence required to generate an optimal production plan from continuously changing supply and demand data, even when all data were available in a common database. The R/3 system was originally designed as a data repository, not an analysis tool to solve complex supply
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chain problems or provide simulation capabilities5. Subsequently, in 1999, when SAP added a new Advanced Planner and Optimizer (APO) module to help with data analysis, AML realized that the combination of R/3s SOP and APO modules would be the answer to their unique SOP needs. However, it was realized that implementation of SOP and APO requires extensive planning data to be migrated in SAP information ware house systems which was originally for plan phase IV. In other words, phase III can be implemented only after implementing phase IV. Phase IV: Time period: September 1999-2001. The fourth phase focused mainly on translating the information collection (data generated) into decision making. The data ware house and data mining tools are used for the same. However these tools are effective only when the entire historical error free data are available in the digital form. Apart it also requires external market research data to be available. The text as well as non text data such as document, files, drawing, engineering were also to be digitized and this call for another project with altogether different software systems. This was never visualized in the project and hence this phase was a complete blank. As an outcome of this phase a new project on Knowledge Management Systems (KMS) got created. In the selection of the consultants -Should instead of directly consulting a software consultant Arvind Mills should have consulted a an independent management consultant which will be in a better position to judge the business needs of the industry and then suggest the best option that the company could take with regards to the desired package as well the vendor the company should choose. This will also remove the biases as this is an independent consultant with no motive for a sales pitch. In the beginning feasibility analysis covering various aspects such as detailed project management, change management, cost benefit analysis, business process analysis, organization readiness, etc. should have been carried out with the help of an independent management consultant. The project should have been steered by the top management with strong internal core team from various business units
The implementation should have been focused on adoption of best business practices, process reengineering and restructuring. The training strategy for employee should have been on new work practices through SAP rather than on SAP. The ERP systems such as SAP caters the need of standard business functions such as finance, MM, Sales, HR, Maintenance, production planning, QM, etc. and often does not fit into core production scheduling, product design, PLM, operations etc. There are other industry specific solutions such as Manufacturing Execution Systems (MES), Product/Project Life Cycle Management (PLM) which are to be implemented along with ERP solutions. Though the top management had made a successful transition to the new organisational structure, problems still persist when it comes to the change in lower management and operator level. This all indicates a lacuna in the entire process of training and managing the change process. Right now the senior management of the company feel that they have not achieved such a significantly high benefits that they had expected prior to the implementation of SAP. On the
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various interviews we had with the management and the department hea ds we found out that the major area of concern is in the production department. With the implementation of SAP they had put in systems that necessitated standard costing procedures for the textile production. The issue here was more of that relating to the human resources management. The operators in the production line were not enthused nor or willing to key in the data required to be entered in the system so that it can help out in getting better information about the process as well as the costing. As me ntioned earlier the human resource issues are very critical to any radical change in the processes of the organisation. This indicates a lax on part of the team to properly take stock of all critical angles of the change issues. Management is now seriously considering of getting the entire implementation audited by a proven independent management consultant and seeks professional guidance on either re-implementing the systems or repairing the faults?
Improving business processes is paramount for businesses to stay competitive in today's marketplace. Over the last 10 to 15 years companies have been forced to improve their business processes because we, as customers, are demanding better and be tter products and services. And if we do not receive what we want from one supplier, we have many others to choose from (hence the competitive issue for businesses). Many companies began business process improvement with a continuous improvement model. This model attempts to understand and measure the current process, and make performance improvements accordingly. You begin by documenting what you do today, establish some way to measure the process based on what your customers want, do the process, measure the results, and then identify improvement opportunities based on the data you collected. You then implement process improvements, and measure the performance of the new process. This loop repeats over and over again, and is called continuous process improvement. You might also hear it called business process improvement, functional process improvement, etc. This method for improving business processes is effective to obtain gradual, incremental improvement. However, over the last 10 years several factors have accelerated the need to improve business processes. The most obvious is technolo gy. New technologies (like the Internet/ERP packages) are rapidly bringing new capabilities to businesses, thereby raising the competitive bar and the need to improve business processes dramatically. Another apparent trend is the opening of world markets and increased free trade. Such changes bring more companies into the marketplace, and competing becomes harder and harder. In today's marketplace, major changes are required to just stay even. It has become a matter of survival for most companies. As a result, companies have sought out methods for faster business process improvement. Moreover, companies want breakthrough performance changes, not just incremental changes, and they want it now. Because the rate of change has increased for everyone, few busin esses can afford a slow change process. One approach for rapid change and dramatic improvement that has emerged is ERP enabled Business Process Reengineering.
Reengineering does not claim to substitute for either a sound business strategy, product or technology. It is only a mechanism for radically improving the performance of the business processes for the vendors, customers and products. But by centering the whole concept on processes, reengineering is inextricably linked to technologie s; not just to information technology that provides the necessary tools for the transformation, but also to other technologies that are necessary to the processes. The role of human operators is radically altered in reengineering. Instead of specialized skills, a broad range of competence is called for. A keyword in reengineering is flexibility, and this applies to humans as well. Functionally based vertical hierarchies are replaced by horizontal structures where the position-based power is replaced by participation-based authority. This shift provides the scope for extensive delegation of power and responsibility in reengineering; this is one of the reasons for the present shift towards coming forward with programs and incentives for worker retraining, called re-skilling.
Board of Directors
Divisions Functions
Finance & Accounts
Denim
Marketing Manufacturing
Shirtings
CEO
Knits
President
BottomWeights
Spinning
Garmenting
Operations Marketing
Engineering
Marketing
Yarn
Design
PPC
Cotton Purchase
Processing
QA
Design
Casual
Naroda Unit 1
Fabric Operations
Voiles
Ankur Textiles
Central Utilities
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Fig 2: The ASAP implementation methodology for SAP project with key activities in each stages.
Stage 2
Stage 4
Stage 1
Stage 3
Stage 5
Project Preparation
Detail Project Scoping Project Kickoff Sizing Assessment Project Team Training
Realization
Baseline Configuration Final Configuration Final Integration Test Create End User Training Material Conduct Org/Job Impact Analysis Develop Org Transition Plan Develop Custom Code Project Checkpoint
Go-Live & Support Go Live Production Support Conduct Hand-over Project Checkpoint
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Finance Projects HR
Central Database MM
Maintenance
Assets
Data
Transformation Services
ERP Applications
External data
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Table: List OF BEST BUSINESS PRACTICES of SAP ERP SYSTEMS LIST OF BEST PRACTICES/ PROCESSES FINANCE ACCOUNTING & CONTROLLING
Activity Based Costing Cost Centre based accounting Profit Centre based Accounting Adoption of SBU Concept Treasury & Risk Management Compliance with IFRS Cash Management & Forecasting Cost element accounting Funds Management MAINTENANCE MANAGEMENT Preventive Maintenance Condition based Maintenance Dynamic scheduling of maintenance jobs Root Cause Analysis PRODUCTION PLANNING & CONTROL MRP II and Capacity Requirement planning Finite and Infinite Capacity planning
MATERIALS MANAGEMENT
Kanban system ABC classification of Inventory MRP based inventory planning Vendor rating Vendor performance evaluation Online Bid evaluation Automatic generation of Purchase Order Uniform Codification of materials PROJECT MANAGEMENT PERT chart analysis Critical Path Analysis Cost Centre based project management Project based budgeting and accounting HUMAN RESOURCES MANAGEMENT Centralized payroll Competency based mapping Performance based appraisal
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Table 2. Financial highlight 10 Years Financial Highlights 1991-92 1992-93 1993-94 1994-95 1995-96 1996-97 1997-98 1998-99 1999-00 A. Operating Results : Sales Other Income Total Income Net Profit After Tax 42092 1158 43250 4105 49470 431 49901 4836 60197 1040 61237 5880 68148 2940 71086 7179 85011 1484 86495 7630 96060 101973 99822 108958 1761 1248 1631 2289 97821 403221 101453 111247 7892 8007 4567 5179 (Rs. Lacs) 2000-01 117688 2951 120639 6250
B. Financial Position: Fixed Assets (Net) Current Assets (Net) Others TOTAL ASSETS Share Capital Reserves and Surplus Shareholders Funds Loan Funds TOTAL CAPITAL EMPLOYED
(Rs. Millions)
Mar -01 12 11,991.20 -542.3 11,448.80 295.1 11,744.00 2,101.20 -161.4 4,725.10 6,664.90 539.4 65.8 2,139.50 221 850.2 10,481.00 1,263.00 202.2 1,058.00 433 625
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Table 4. Ratios
Period ended No. of months Mar-98 12 Mar-99 12 Mar-00 12 1-Mar 12
Return on (%)
27.3 42.6
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) s c a L 15000 . s R ( e 10000 u l a V
5000
0 2 9 1 9 9 1 3 9 2 9 9 1 4 9 3 9 9 1 5 9 4 9 9 1 6 9 5 9 9 1 7 9 6 9 9 1 8 9 7 9 9 1 9 9 8 9 9 1 0 0 9 9 9 1 1 0 0 0 0 2
Years
120000 100000 80000 60000 40000 20000 0 1991-92 1992-93 1993-94 1994-95 1995-96 1996-97 1997-98 1998-99 1999-00 2000-01 Sales TOTAL ASSETS
Year
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