The company receives parts only two hours before requirement,
keeping less than a day of inventory.
RAJESH UPPAL
MARUTI UDYOG
Today, our plants run with less than a day's inventory so 50,000 consignments, maybe 6,000 cars a day and each car may be having 8-10,000 parts are being used to manufacture a car but the inventory we have is less than a day. The process of orchestrating is important.
Maruti Suzuki is one of the most iconic brands in India and someone who has seen the organisation grow with time is Rajesh Uppal. Having joined the automaker in 1985, Uppal has risen the ranks to join the senior management in 1998. A company loyalist, Uppal, CIO, Maruti Udyog, says that Maruti is one of those companies which understands the importance of IT. “In 1980s, we created IT as a business vertical which means you are treating IT equivalent to production and marketing. The DNA of Maruti from day one has been of importance which is strategic in nature,” says Uppal.
Being the largest seller of cars in the country by a huge margin, the organisation ensured that the supply chain remained intact and always on top priority. Therefore, for Uppal, the supply chain is one of the biggest areas of transformation. He ensures that all of Maruti's 500 suppliers get the supply components in time, of right quality and at right price points.
“You cannot have excess inventory and without components you cannot make a car, so how do you strike the right balance, figuring out as to how much inventory you should have available at hand,” Uppal explains, adding, When one component is required, you get that component two hours before its requirement and to make sure these are available is a huge process orchestration. I do not think many companies or people in the country have been able to achieve that level of fineness when you do not have inventory even for a day. This is something phenomenal Maruti has been doing,” he adds.
Getting along with IT and technology and approaching businesses is not the way, Uppal feels. “It is the business projects which need to be considered. For example, we started Nexa, a totally digital channel so the level of customer experience and the level of efficiencies of interaction is different in Nexa than the channel we had earlier,” says Uppal.
It is not an IT project or IT enablement with Nexa but a Nexa project, supported by IT to deliver results. And as these happen, customer interaction time improves tremendously through these kind of engagements than the traditional way of going back to the systems and getting data. Customers get an iPad and experience the process themselves.
Efficiency of management is important when it comes to the customer. Maruti Suzuki today has customer applications to manage customers, app for sales executive who manage customers and app for dealers and sales executives. “They get to know who and which customer to talk to and when is the next session. Or there are sales people monitoring the channel, they get to know on their mobile which dealer is not doing well and that is how they monitor their sales dealership territories. Everybody is digitally enabled,” says Uppal proudly. This transformational activity is a journey and not a one-time activity.
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