External Kanban and Supply Chain Managers According to Ultriva's Nandu Gopalun
(OPENPRESS) October 21, 2009 -- Nandu Gopalun, an Ultriva consultative implementation expert, noted, "IT, MRP and ERP systems have prompted the lean electronic kanban implementation. Every plant has lean initiatives but only 10 to 15% understand it correctly. That is why we act as lean consultants. At most installations the Internal kanban side is addressed by Material's Managers and on the external kanban side, it is the Supply Chain Manager."
According to Narayan Laksham, CEO of Ultriva, (www.ultriva.com), "We design lean manufacturing software and solutions that drive lean processes across the supply chain, from suppliers to customers." Ultriva's flagship product, Ultriva Electronic Kanban, eliminates stock-outs while reducing inventory levels up to 75 percent. Ultriva Lean Scheduling complements demand-driven replenishment strategies by optimizing production schedules in real time around the most variable customer demand. Ultriva Supplier Replenishment extends the replenishment capabilities of Kanban to include schedule-based replenishment, discrete POs, min/max, consignment and VMI (vendor-managed inventory) replenishment methods. Ultriva's products are in use in more than 100 plants worldwide, incorporating more than 4,000 suppliers, transacting over one billion dollars of inventory and reducing manufacturing costs for industry leaders such as AGCO, Emerson, Ingersoll-Rand, McKesson, Rexnord, and Timken.
Gopalun has handled a wide variety of plants and industry sectors for Ultriva including Hussmann- IR (a large plant), Franke Food services (IT), Trane- Fort Smith, Motorola-China, Trane-Mexico. Gopalun said, "Defining and drawing the value stream mapping is my first step. We set the vision and goal correctly, and explain to customer what we are going to do. We help customers by showing what the bottlenecks are and how to breakthrough these bottlenecks. Typically every plant used to say they are unique. I agree everyone is unique in some form. Some of them are really non-value added, we need to explain and prove the value of lean and how to get into continuous improvement mode."
Gopalun suggests that, "The current economy is the best opportunity for lean solutions like Ultriva." The value proposition of this company is clear:
1) Standardizing the process
2) Value Ultriva brings to the success of a lean organization
3) Real cost-savings
4) Implementing continuous improvement metrics
5) Eliminating errors
6) Visibility
7) Easy integration with Resident system
8) User friendly
