Traditionally, Manufacturing Companies have been an important Customer segment for TechGyan. Some of our Manufacturing Customers are listed here https://820.0dd.myftpupload.com/customers/  

We offer a fairly comprehensive Solution set for Manufacturing Industry. Let us examine the different components of the Solution set:

When we look at a Manufacturing Company, we see certain patterns:

Head Office : This is typically located in a Metro city like Mumbai.

Branch Offices : There are multiple branch offices which constantly exchange information with the Head Office.

Factories : The factories are generally located in interior areas

Depots : There are multiple storage depots located in many parts of the country.

Roaming Users: There would be a host of users who would be roaming either between offices or at customer sites. These users are not really tied to any office.

Business Needs:

In terms of Business needs , there will be an Accounting cum ERP system running on a local On Premise Server at the Head Office. The branches and factories would be connected to this server. There would be a Central file server at HO which will host documents . However, more often than not, these would not be directly available to users outside the HO.

Usual concerns and gaps:

1. Business Continuity : The Server running at the HO does not have Business Continuity built in. In case of a major issue , be it Fire, or something else , if the Server goes down, the ERP goes down.
2. There is a frequent downtime of Data links between the branches and HO. And when the link goes down, the Business stops.
3. Inadequate Data backup Policy : The ERP data at the server would have a backup policy of daily or weekly backup. However, if the location itself becomes unavailable due to any reason  like a Malware attack or Fire ; the data backup is also lost as rarely will there be data backup which would be stored off site.
4. In terms of regulatory compliance, data needs to be stored for a certain period, usually 7 to 10 years. But this is rarely done due to high cost of storage and space which is usually at a premium at the HO.
5. If a new branch or an office is getting setup , and they need to setup a new file server , its always a challenge to get the data on this new file server to be same as that on the other file servers in the Corporate network
6. The HO usually has an IT Team which monitors the Security patches for applications . But outside of HO , more often than not the devices are not patched and applications are open to malware attack.
7. The IT Team in the HO has no visibility of the user devices especially those outside of HO. So if users are for example , not updating their Anti Virus, such critical information is not available to the IT at the HO.
8. For people on the move, there is always a danger of losing device and losing critical corporate data as the data is accessible to anyone who finds the device.
9. For mobile users, another area of concern is that if they lose their laptop, they also lose expensive software licenses .
10. The Mobile users are also not part of Corporate Active Directory .This creates security concerns in the area of Identity Management.
11. Users create their data in their My Documents which are never backed up by the IT .So there is always a possibility of losing this data in case of disk crash or Malware attack or if device is stolen.
12. Communication between users in different locations is either on Email or on WhatsApp. Email for basic communication is very inefficient and WhatsApp for Corporate communication is non compliant.
13. Collaboration between Teams and within Teams is almost absent.
14. Document workflow and approval is only via Email . Again this is very inefficient.
15. Task Management is also via Email. Needless to say , there are more misses than hits in using Email for Task Management.
16. While the ERP sits at the HO, the business intelligence in form of Dash boards and Mobile Apps is lacking leading to delayed Decision making.
17. The Corporate content in form of various documents is scattered across the whole organization among multiple servers and PCs. Inefficient and non Compliant.

While we have listed a few usual gaps based on the interactions we have had with many Manufacturing Customers, we believe there will be more. But we do have Solutions in the above listed areas.