Oracle Customer Success—Shree Cement Ltd.

Founded in 1979, Shree Cement Ltd. (Shree) is a rapidly growing Indian company that focuses its core business on cement and power. Growing from a single manufacturing plant with a 2 million metric ton production capacity per annum, Shree is now a leading cement manufacturer that sells 25.6 million metric tons cement per annum and operates 10 manufacturing plants across North and East India and more than 50 regional sales offices. It also produces 612 megawatts of green power each year by converting large volumes of waste heat generated from cement manufacturing processes and sells it to Power Grid Corporation of India. The company received multiple awards recognizing its environmental best practices, such as 2015 Corporate Governance and Sustainability Vision Award from the Indian Chamber of Commerce.  Shree aims to build more new plants in South India over the next six months and invest in new technology to ensure timely delivery and enhance customer satisfaction.

Due to year-over-year business growth, Shree’s legacy enterprise resource planning (ERP) platform could not support the increased transaction volume, such as processing cement orders across multiple locations. It also needed to shut down the ERP system for monthly patches updates, negatively affecting manufacturing operations. The unsupported legacy system also posed a significant risk to the business. To sustain its leading position in the industry, Shree wanted to upgrade its ERP system to minimize downtime and gain support service from Oracle.

By upgrading to Oracle Database 12c and Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12.2.4, Shree gained real-time visibility into ERP processes and reduced significant planned downtime. It also accelerated procure-to-pay cycle time by 69x and enabled faster dispatching time. Managers can create reports 40% faster and have improved inventory planning. Shree also ensured purchasing best practices, increased operating efficiency, and supported future growth.

• Reduces Planned System Downtime, Ensures Continuous Manufacturing Operations

  Since 2008, Shree used legacy Oracle Database and Oracle E-Business Suite for its ERP system. With 20% growth in cement production and 30% growth in power generation annually, Shree experienced performance issues with the legacy ERP system due to exponential growth in transaction volume and additional loads on the server. The manufacturer also needed to ask users to log off and shut down the system for up to two hours to apply monthly patches updates and reboot the server during the month-end period. It caused disruption to manufacturing operations, such as dispatching cement materials to customers.
  
  With Oracle Database 12c’s online patching feature, Shree can apply patches and upgrades to a cloned database and copy it to the production database without requiring users to log off the system. This helped to dramatically reduce planned downtime to less than 10 minutes instead of up to 4 hours previously. With Oracle Maximum Availability Architecture, Shree ensured high system availability and enhanced data protection for business-critical data, such as cement sales orders.
  
  “With a high-performing, reliable, and secure Oracle Database 12c, we can support the demands required for our rapidly growing business and improve customer service.  The multitenant architecture also allows us to easily migrate to Oracle Sourcing Cloud Service and other cloud services in the future,” said Manoranjan Kumar, CIO, Shree Cement Ltd.

• Accelerates Procure-to-Pay Cycle by 69x, Ensures Purchasing Best Practices

  Shree uses outsourced trucks for dispatching cement materials to customers. It could take up to three to four days to process payment for transporters after delivery. By automating its procure-to-pay process with Oracle Purchasing and Oracle Financials, Shree can rapidly calculate and create invoices as soon as transporters deliver the goods to a depot. The integrated ERP system also automates bank payment instructions based on pre-defined business rules, such as delivery cost, with registered suppliers, and sends invoices to transporters via email and text message. As a result, we accelerated the procure-to-pay cycle by 69x. Oracle Financials also enables Shree to easily adopt changes in local accounting and regulatory requirements across different states in India.
  
  “We use online bidding for procuring all our raw materials or manufacturing equipment.  Thanks to Oracle Purchasing, we have streamlined purchasing processes and ensured best practices. Our buyers can focus on negotiations with suppliers rather than paperwork and increase saving opportunities,” Kumar said.

• Reduces Truck Weighing Cycle by up to 70%, Supports Business Growth

  Previously, Shree needed to allocate 4 staff across 11 weighbridges in each plant to manually gather truck weighing information—including truck number, driver name, truck capacity, truck weight, empty weight, and gross weight. Truck drivers also had to wait for the weighing system to generate an invoice and collect it at the plant gate.  The entire process took seven to eight hours and affected dispatching turnaround time.
  
  By capturing vehicle master information with Oracle Database 12c and integrating logistics management system with Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12.2.4, Shree now inputs the truck information directly in the ERP system and automatically prints an invoice as soon as the driver completes the gross weight. It greatly reduced truck weighing cycle time by up to 70% and re-allocated all the operating staff resources to more valuable tasks.
  
   “With the automation, we have increased the number of trucks coming through on our weighbridges.  This turned into faster dispatching turnaround time and higher production volume, supporting business growth,” Kumar said.

• Creates Reports 40% Faster, Improves Inventory Planning

  Before implementing Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12.2.4, there was no integration capability with mobile applications. Shree needed to manually copy data from the mobile application to a non-Oracle technology platform and then bring back the updated data into the ERP system.  It created data integrity issues across all the plants and offices.
  
  By integrating the mobile application with Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12.2.4, Shree gained real-time visibility of ERP processes, such as inventory management and purchasing, and improved operating efficiency. Truck drivers, for example, can create goods receipts at a remote depot even without internet. The integrated mobile platform then automatically synchronizes the updated inventory in the ERP system once internet connection is available. Users can also create reports, such as cement inventory status, up to 40% faster, thanks to a high-performing Oracle Database 12c and Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12.2.4.
  
  “The mobile capability allowed our regional offices to instantly view accurate cement inventory status for each depot and start selling right away. It also improved our inventory planning and reduced stock lifecycle,” Kumar said.

• Enhances Maintenance Control, Increases Asset Utilization

  With 10 manufacturing plants across multiple locations, it is imperative for Shree to track and manage equipment lifecycle, such as the maintenance history of grinding units, to minimize machine downtime and ensure smooth manufacturing operations. By using Oracle Enterprise Asset Management, Shree gained a complete view of asset life cycle in each plant and enabled staff to efficiently plan and schedule preventative maintenance control.  It increased asset utilization and reduced impact on production activities.
  
  Shree also deployed Oracle Human Resources to capture employee records across the enterprise, providing insight for managers to monitor employee performance and identify training needs, such as machinery operations. Furthermore, employees can view and update personal information, such as changing contact details, via self-service functionality, reducing the burden on the HR team. By using configurable workflow and approval feature, managers can also access and approve requests from employees, such as annual leave, without relying on an individual supervisor. This helped the company to improve productivity and enhance employee satisfaction.