In an exclusive conversation with APAC News Network, Indradyumna Datta, Group CDO, Jindal Steel & Power outlines how Project Pरagati is helping the organization achieve digital maturity with deployments of data lake, ERP, IIoT, and RFID among others.
What are the key digital initiatives undertaken at Jindal Steel and Power that you would like to highlight?
“Project Pरagati” propels Jindal Steel and Power to the next level of digital maturity. JSP is committed to providing greater value to every stakeholder through the means of digitalization. Digital vision is to positively impact our suppliers, customers, shareholders, employees, and the larger society.
- Our suppliers are benefitting from “Procure to Pay” processes-related automation.
- “Order to Cash” and “Record to Report” processes are getting digitized to drive more value to our customers and shareholders.
- “Mill to Market” and “Pit to Port” processes, especially the supply chain and logistics part, are going through a series of digital interventions that will not only save cost but improve overall efficiency.
- Core operations and maintenance areas starting from mining, iron making, steel making and finishing mill processes are leveraging the power of data analytics, IIoT (Industrial Internet of Things), cloud-based scalable computing technologies, video analytics and other industry 4.0 technologies. This will not only improve throughput and impact EBITDA but also optimize inventory and free up working capital without impacting safety.
Supply chain and Logistics is one of the key areas of focus for JSP. JSP has digitalized the following processes covering end-to-end transportation and logistics management system – transporter onboarding, delivery order mapping and assignment, paperless movement of vehicles, vehicle fitness & driving license check from authentic government portals, gate in process automation, weigh-bridges automation, Tare weight – Gross weight – Net weight related measurement and billing automation, Invoice and other documentation digitization, Gate out process and finally track & trace of the consignment till it reaches customer location with e-POD (electronic proof of delivery) and other functionalities.
Deployment of a GPS / RFID-based transportation management system (TMS) is to automate the logistics operations for having real-time visibility, reporting, and alerts based on deviation, process & time optimization, better route selection and to optimize the cost and improve the whole supply chain activities. Pre-defined rule sets will also help to automate/bypass the historical issues, and error-prone factors of shipment information into the TMS, resulting in faster & smoother shipments. The deployment of TMS would also help the optimization of freight rates to save shipment costs.
ERP Package update to SAP S/4 HANA:
Enterprise resource planning (ERP) is a core software application for any manufacturing business. JSP has implemented SAP as its ERP package to manage its various business processes like – Financial systems & Controls (FI), Material management and supplier management (MM), Sales & Distribution (SD), Project Systems (PS), Plant maintenance (PM) and Production planning and quality management (PPQM). After running the SAP ECC 6.0 system for years together, JSP decided to migrate its SAP suite of applications to a newer version of SAP S/4 HANA to meet the growing business need. Months of planning, development, testing, and rigorous dry runs were carried out to align 10 locations, businesses, and functions for this critical migration without any significant business interruption. The new ERP system offers
- Improved user experience and better productivity due to new functional & performance features
- Future-ready ERP system with advanced analytics
- Business on the go through mobile app-ready business processes, data & insights, and workflows
Moreover, the Governance, Risk and Compliance (GRC) framework of SAP has been adopted. It is a powerful security solution that can be used to ensure your company meets data security, authorization standards, approval workflow management, user access reviews, and segregation of duties (SOD) in the domain of access controls to provide an industry recognized way of statutory compliance and audit requirements.
How are you designing the IT and digital roadmap at Jindal Steel & Power and how is it aligned with the business objectives of higher recovery, better asset integrity and more automated business processes?
The IT and digital roadmap is aligned with the business objectives. JSP (Jindal Steel and Power) wants to improve and optimize its entire supply chain for efficiency, cost reduction, and agility. JSP truly believes in its value of “Better than Before”. The digital project aims to implement a digitalization strategy focusing on key areas of the supply chain and core operations to achieve the goal aligned with the principles of TOC (Theory of Constraints), i.e. T (Throughput), I (Investments) and OE (Operating Expense). The objective is to improve throughput, capex and opex productivity.
How do you apply standardization and some sort of homogeneity to data coming from heterogeneous sources so that you can derive more meaningful business insights from that data?
JSP has adopted a strategy for its data lake. This data lake is connected with various data sources – transactional, ERP and operational data. Raw data stores have been subjected to data rules and data models. This is then transformed into structured data in the data warehouse. This is an ETL (Extract, transfer and load) framework that has been deployed. Governance has been set up for monitoring change requests.
The objective is to ensure the availability of clean data at a centralized location. Different plant control systems, transactional systems, SAP data and other non-SAP systems will be connected to this data lake. Multiple use cases, simple rule-based algorithms, advanced analytical models based on artificial intelligence/ machine learning (AI/ ML), business intelligence (BI) reports & dashboards and applications can be built which will use this data lake as its source and storage.
The key benefits of cloud data lake implementation are as below
- Data Democratization
- Exception based surveillance & alert management
- Data-driven analytics for better decision making
- Reports & Dashboards
How does the function of the CDO at Jindal Steel and Power synergize with that of the functions of the CIO, CISO and other business function leaders?
In JSP, the CDO (Chief Digital Officer) functions as the CDIO (Chief Digital and Information Officer). CISO function reports to CDO. A total 6 verticals report to CDO
– IT operations and Infrastructure
– SAP Centre of Excellence
– IT applications
– ISGRC (Information Security, Governance, Risk and Compliance). CISO heads this function.
– Digital Solutions and Applications interfacing with OT (Operations Technology) systems.
– MIS (Management Information Systems) and Analytics
What is the status update on key components of your digital strategy like social, mobile, cloud, and analytics and what is the role of each stack in our digital transformation?
We have policy and strategy for each of the areas. Let me illustrate with a few examples.
- Technology strategy for mobile applications focuses more on No code / Low code platforms.
- On Cloud, we have multi and hybrid cloud environments.
- On analytics, we have a mix of Qlik Sense and Power BI as visualization and analytics tools.
What is the role played by HR in the overall digital transformation journey at Jindal Steel?
HR plays an important role in designing the right organizational structure. JSP has created several new roles and positions to support the business need of digitalization. DBP (Digital Business Partner) is one of them. This role directly reports to the business or function, and the matrix reports to the CDO organization. DBP roles are created for Operations, Finance, Sales & Marketing etc. Moreover, new functional areas are getting added like Digital solutions and applications, analytics, MES (Manufacturing execution system) etc.
HR not only helps in designing the structure but also helps in talent acquisition, training and retention. We believe people are the ultimate differentiator and JSP provides a fulfilling career growth path. All four values touch the lives of people and are very much focused on internal employees.
The four values are:
– Extreme ownership
– Better than before
– Respect for people
– Sustainability
Rahul Kashyap & Rajneesh De, APAC News Network
