Attempt all the problems.

Section-A

problem1) describe how advancement in security features affects functioning of the organizations. What is the connection of ERP and data security? Discuss with suitable exs.

problem2) How has ERP facilitated supply chain functions? What advantages have been gained by organizations by integrating their supply chain management functionality with their ERP implementations?

problem3) How do ERP systems integrate with Business Intelligence (BI) systems? How does this integration help in better management and retrieval of BI information? Describe with suitable exs.

problem4) An organization has to prepare itself for ERP implementation much before actual ERP decision is taken. Accordingly, four phases are generally followed in ERP implementation. describe these phases in detail, describing the impact and use of activities which take place during each of these phases

Section-B

Case Study :  INFOR XPPS AT BEHR INDIA

The Company

Based in Pune, India, Behr India Limited designs and manufactures advanced heating, ventilating and air-conditioning (HVAC) units for the automotive industry. A joint venture established in 1997 between Behr Group of Germany and Anand Automotive systems in India, Behr India employs more than 400 people.

The Problem/Situation

As company sales grew at more than 20 percent a year, Behr India had got a variety of applications and hardware systems supporting both its engineering design and general business administration functions. As demands on the IT infrastructure increased, the existing environment was unable to provide scalability and cost-effective growth path which the company required. It was essential to provide infrastructure capable not only of growing with business, but also reducing its total costs of ownership and providing excellent service to customers.

Behr India uses CATIA, Star-CD and Team Centre Enterprise software for its product design, product analysis and product data management, all of which are highly compute-intensive operations. The company also runs the ERP solution tailored for the automotive industry, XPPS, which manages very large volumes of business-critical operational data.

Running on diverse range of physical systems, it was becoming progressively harder to control costs and to provide efficient IT service to support the business. Data was stored in multiple locations with no central system for management, backup, archive or restore, presenting a considerable business risk.

Behr India was determined to implement the new computing environment which will provide highly available and reliable servers to optimize its CATIA design and XPPS production environments. The goal was to provide a stable, scalable, reliable and cost-effective operating environment which will help the company increase sales and support future business growth.

The Solution & Implementation

With help from IBM business partner CMS Computers, Behr India selected an integrated IBM solution offering high-performance with low operational costs. The company implemented IBM System x (xSeries models 206 and 226) and System i5 platforms, with IBM DB2 database and IBM Tivoli Storage Manager, to support wide range of design, production and administration systems. Behr India also installed 22 IBM IntelliStation POWER 265 arid 275 workstations running the IBM AIX 5L operating system to support its CATIA V4 & V5 application. The XPPS ERP solution was installed on new IBM System i5 solutions running the IBM i5/0S operating system with IBM DB2 database.

Behr India also deployed IBM Tivoli Storage Manager Application Servers V5.3 software to manage backup for its. CATIA, CAD and CAM files and for its file servers. The Tivoli software automates many low level tasks, freeing up skilled technicians to focus on higher value work.

Kedar Potnis says, "for a mid -size company, integration and range of IBM technologies are very attractive, helping us to build the efficient, effective and scalable infrastructure. IBM was able to present all of these technologies as a unified solution, enabling us to meet our objectives without having to deal with large number of different vendors."

The Benefits

With its new IBM servers, workstations and software, Behr India has improved availability, reliability and scalability of its infrastructure. Centralized information management is providing better protection against data loss and an extra IBM System is server would be added as the full disaster recovery solution for the ERP environment.

With business advantage depending on successfully leveraging compute-intensive design applications, the high-performance of IBM server platforms and workstations is very important to Behr India's success.

IBM and CMS Computing have provided complete infrastructure for Behr India which offers easy management and ability to expand non-disruptively as business grows. In summary, benefits included enhanced stability and reliability, improved performance for CAD and PDM systems, reduced administrative costs for backup and greater protection for business-critical data, and low total cost of ownership.

problem5) Case problems:

a) Analyze case presented in the above case study?

b) Suggest appropriate measures to company in order to achieve its objectives.