According to Aberdeen[i], in their quest to harness this complexity, automotive suppliers face pressure to manage growth expectations, become easier to do business with, reduce costs, and overcome interoperability issues across multiple operating locations.
Furthermore, the majority of those surveyed in Aberdeen’s ERP[ii] report cite a number of goals for their ERP system: standardisation of business processes (67%), the streamlining and acceleration of processes to improve efficiency and productivity (67%), greater visibility across functions and departments (39%), optimisation of capacity (17%), and modernisation of technology infrastructure and applications (33%). An effective ERP system is key to overcoming these pressures, managing complexity and boosting profitability.
But the truth is that poor, disparate systems are hindering these initiatives, with more than a third of automotive suppliers using ERP systems that are at least 7 years old, 4% using 15-year old ERP, and 19% with no ERP at all. When you consider what a 15-year old system might look like, it’s easy to see why systems are failing to meet today’s agendas.
Often staggered investment in niche software applications has resulted in disparate systems which hinder communication and visibility across international supply chains. Typically the shortfalls of these systems mean that processes operate in isolation, causing bottlenecks, delays, process duplication and ultimately incurring costs. The cost and complexity of integrating these systems has, until recently, been deemed counter-productive and automotive suppliers have therefore done a very good job of making the best of what they have.
Poor systems imply poor decisions
When considering the fragility of the customer demand-supply chain relationship, and therefore, the speed required to exercise decisions quickly and appropriately, it is easy to get an insight into how poor systems can result in poor decisions. Also poor decisions can lead to unnecessary (unaffordable) costs.
As an example, for a typical plant manager who is responsible for managing volatile customer demand combined with a volatile supply chain, there is little room for manoeuvre in the effective management of product planning and design, customer collaboration, advanced planning and scheduling, manufacturing and assembly, and supplier collaboration. For suppliers that manufacture and distribute globally, even a slight stalling in a particular process can have enormous ramifications.
In order to achieve comprehensive visibility into, and to facilitate vital, rapid responses to arising issues, it is imperative to use tools that allow full integration of the supply chain into key business systems, so that production isn’t isolated from the rest of the business.
Yet this isn’t as easy as it sounds. While the last 10 years have seen an explosion in the amount of data available to businesses, they have seen little development in the way business systems contextualise and present this data to the user. Compare that to the transformation which has occurred in consumer technology and it’s fair to wonder why better progress hasn’t been made.
Rewriting history
 Of course it is impossible to change past decisions. But it is now both possible and feasible to rectify these decisions and change the future. The business software market is currently undergoing a revolution which stands to drastically remove the ‘dead wood’ generated by legacy systems, and in fact change the way in which automotive companies operate. Business software is starting to catch up with consumer software and industry-specific software suites which use lightweight middleware to enable multiple applications to talk to each other in the same place, at the same time, with a single log-in, are now coming of age.
Imagine for example, being able to communicate information from across manufacturing, supply chain and maintenance systems in real-time with multiple local partners and multiple tier suppliers from across the world, introducing real-time alerts (think a Twitter style workflow rather than e-mails) to supply chain problems.
Through a unified view of the business, distinct underlying applications that would historically have been accessed through separate log-ins, can be viewed as one system– aggregating information geared to improve decision making and speed. There is no juggling of log-ins, referring to manual reports, asking other department managers for information before taking action. All of the information is available in one place and can be personalised for the individual needs of the user.
This level of system cohesion facilitates a holistic understanding of exactly what is going on in the business, providing highly detailed control of all modes of manufacturing.
For example, a plant manager may be aware of an inbound shipment for a critical raw material delivery and he wants to ensure it’s on track. Using the single log-in screen, he can access dashboards which monitor the status of this shipment and the other inter-dependent or critical business processes from his desktop or equally his mobile device. He might notice a short shipment transaction going on, and through being made aware of this instantly, he can refer immediately to other systems to ascertain why this might be the case, and take action to rectify. It may be the case that scheduled production downtime might be the cause of the shortfall, in which case, he becomes empowered to reschedule a routine maintenance works order.
Speed equates to growth
As volatile markets, increasing supply chain complexity and a lack of predictability continue to threaten automotive suppliers, it is imperative they are equipped with tools to react quickly, appropriately and consistently to any changes or anomalies in operations.
Souma Das is the vice president of sales and managing director at Infor India.
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The automotive industry has never faced such wide-reaching and complex challenges. In addition to continued economic instability and mounting government pressure to produce new hybrid and electric vehicles (HEV) models in line with escalating fuel prices, automotive suppliers are involved in some of the world’s most complex, demanding supply chains. 
