Maruti Suzuki Gets New Markets with a Transparent Supply Chain

"With the economic downturn, OEMS are evaluating various methods to increase their customer bases. In order to enter new markets, Maruti Suzuki has ventured into contract manufacturing. We manufacture vehicles in India to be sold under the Nissan brand in European market," says Rajesh Uppal, chief GM, Maruti Suzuki India.

To support the growing business, Maruti needed a transparent system to interact with its partners abroad. The challenge was to create an integrated, foolproof, automated system which could talk to multiple systems. "The complete cycle from order to dispatch needs to be configured in such a manner that it caters to the needs of all the stakeholders including Maruti Suzuki India, Suzuki Motor Corporation Japan, and the distributor community in the entire export market," says Uppal. Uppal and his team got to work. First they had to understand the distributor's supply chain processes and line them up with Maruti's business process. Then they needed to design a common format for data transfer. "As the new system integrates with external systems, strict adherence to process is essential. We had to align Maruti's internal business functions and users to the new processes," says Uppal.

Using a combination of Unix Shell programming, Oracle forms, .Net, and Windows FTP technology, the internal team brought transparency to the export supply chain. The projectcovers the entire process from when a distributor orders a vehicle to production to shipment. It provides all stakeholders complete visibility of an order's progress. It also updates distributors' systems to facilitate their dispatch planning. It facilitates electronic transfer of orders and acknowledgements, and communicates the daily progress of a production plan, and dispatch status to the distributor.

"The entire process is IT driven and any exception during production, planning, and factory dispatch can be traced and corrective action made with no delay," says Uppal.

The Person Behind It

Rajesh Uppal, Chief General Manager IT & Distribution

Maruti Suzuki India

“Our prime driver with the supply chain project was to increase our customer base in the current economic downturn.”