UNO MINDA Group leverages digital tech for competitive edge

Headquartered in Manesar, Haryana, UNO MINDA Group is a conglomerate comprising of several companies that manufacture diverse range of auto components for Indian and international OEMs. UNO MINDA has 59 manufacturing plants globally, with a workforce of more than 20,000 personnel.

Parna Ghosh, Vice President & Group CIO, UNO MINDA Group is responsible for the strategic initiatives in IT and driving digital transformation across the group. Ghosh is focused on ensuring that the group is relevant and innovative in the entire information technology gamut. UNO MINDA Group has more than 25 product lines and footprints globally, hence, connecting the entire organisation under a single umbrella, is imperative.

The group is keeping itself abreast with digital technologies to be sustainable and significant in the market, and deliver an integrated planning view for maintaining transparency within the various organisational functions, along with, offering the top management and shop floor management, a faster decision-making platform.

The group has rolled out the SAP S/4 HANA as the core digital platform, in order to enhance the connectivity with SAP and the surrounding applications which could be digital or mobile.

It has also digitally connected approximately 350 suppliers, who were earlier communicating through emails. Now they are embracing a supplier’s portal, backboned by analytics for visibility and transparency in the supply chain.

“We have an SAP data warehouse, where we are developing analytical, historical, prescriptive and predictive dashboards for the top management for supporting decision-making,” explains Ghosh.

IoT for production line

The group is connecting manufacturing plants with Internet of Things (IoT) platform. It has collaborated with an Indian startup, which uses best-of-the-breed IoT platform and has developed applications and interfaces in the fore and adopting best practices in the relevant areas of Industry 4.0.

The IoT solution connects the machines and production lines, which required zero manual intervention for data capturing. The data is automatically transferred from the production lines to the SAP systems in real-time.

“The objective is to reduce the manual effort of data capturing. Since the auto ancillary businesses are highly manpower intensive, driving efficiency and higher productivity is the key focus area and bringing in customer satisfaction and quality is the outcome for the Industry 4.0 initiative. Secondly, digital gives us a competitive edge and enhanced customer experience. We have already witnessed improved efficiencies in the plant equipment and assets,” states Ghosh.

The solution keeps a close tab on the energy consumptions and maintains accuracy in the manufacturing plants. It tracks the machines’ and assets’ productivity. The IoT solution is currently live in four plants and gradually, UNO MINDA plans to expand the solution to other plants.

Now, Ghosh is upgrading the IoT solution with integrated planning view dashboard for the supply chain, capacity, human resource and production planning, on a single platform.