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Praveen Chaudhary,
IT Consultant,
Uflex Industries
 Uflex Limited, which provides complete integrated packaging solutions right from design to delivery, is a leader in the flexible packaging market in India. The company, which has around 7,500 employees spread across the globe and operates in a 24x7 process manufacturing environment, relies on technology for critical business functions. Praveen Chaudhary, IT consultant, Uflex, who looks after its whole IT infrastructure, reveals the significance of technology to the company in this exclusive interview with Faiz Askari, Bureau Head, Network Computing. Excerpts:
On the role of IT at Uflex: Advocating the benefits of technology for the whole organization, Chaudhary says that IT is deeply integrated in the company’s core business operations. “Usage of IT starts with order booking and continues till the time of dispatch of the final product. The management acknowledges that IT has streamlined the entire business processes at the company,” he says. Uflex has deployed Oracle eBusiness Suite as an end-to-end ERP. This application touches the entire manufacturing and business processes at various levels in the organization. “IT is identified as the key enabler for our business,” says Chaudhary.
On smart deployments: Besides ERP, the company has other key IT implementations like intranet and IP phones, which are bringing huge cost savings to the company. Through these measures, Uflex is saving more that 70% on its total communications expenditure. The company has implemented the entire solution from Cisco.
Beyond communications, Chaudhary also highlights another area in IT – Remote Infrastructure Management – where the company is reaping significant benefits. Says Chaudhary, “We are using RIM very effectively. Earlier, service engineers needed to be physically present at the desktop or wherever any problem occurred. But now most of the maintenance activity happens remotely.”
On industry-specific insights: “In our business, ink is the main component of the entire manufacturing process. Since this is the most expensive component for us, we were very sensitive about its consumption,” says Chaudhary. So, monitoring and controlling the usage of ink becomes a focus area for Uflex. What the company did was that it connected the ink dispensing machine with the Oracle eBusiness server. “By doing this, we now have full control of total ink inventory, as we are managing and monitoring ink usage by an automated process.”
On ROI from IT: Commenting on the overall value that IT has brought for Uflex, Chaudhary says that apart from streamlining the business processes, the company has managed to cut 30% to 40% of its total production cost with the help of various technology tools.
On future moves: Even after covering the entire business process through IT, Chaudhary still feels that there is a huge scope of adding value to the management through his department. “We have identified certain areas where we feel there’s scope. Manufacturing job scheduling for employees is one such category where we will be starting work soon. We are also going to automate the budgeting process for each manufacturing plant.” Another focus area will be controlling power expenses with the help of IT tools.
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