If QAD MFG/PRO is down even for 10 minutes, our work stops. Its like the life line of the Company," says Balu Srinisavan, Executive Director, Ford Information Technology Services India (FITSI).
Reads like an advert for QAD? Well a company couldn't ask for a better advertisement for its product than the words of a satisfied customer. And Ford Motor Company is satisfied all right.
In 1995 the company decided to roll out its operations in the "emerging markets" India, Thailand, China, Vietnam and Korea being the initial markets.
Given the volumes in these markets it was concluded that the IT applications used in the established markets would be an overkill for them. The process Leadership Team for Ford Asia Pacific markets decided to go in for QAD MFG/PRO for the entire Asia-Pacific region. And Thirdware Solution Limited was chosen as the implementation partner for the region.

Model site
India, the first market to launch the car was chosen as the model site for the implementation of the package. This model was then repeated in the other countries - Thailand. Vietnam, Korea, the Philippines, Malaysia and China.
October 1996 was the launch date for the Ford Escort in India. Work at the plant site started in February 1996 and was completed by October 1996. The core implementation process took four to five rnonths while consultancy was spread over a longer period.
Three locations Nasik (manufacturing), Chennai (finance and purchasing) and Pune (parts warehouse) went live with following modules:

 Purchasing

 Manufacturing, Planning and. Logistics (MP&L)

 Finance

 Sales

 Parts and Services

Why QAD MFG/PRO and Thirdware?:
"Ford uses mainframe systems in Europe and the US and we wanted the same for India too. We basically wanted an affordable package which was quick to implement and needed minimum training for the end users. QAD fit the bill and was the right choice for Ford India", says Srinivasan who was then the implementation leader for Ford. Also global IT applications which were used centrally to serve North America and Europe did not seem a viable option for the Indian market with volumes of 12.000 to 30,000 units anually. The company, therefore looked at QAD, a packaged application which would serve the functions for an automotive company and was scalable, adds Pradeep Erinjery, Director, Thirdware.

Explaining the choice of Thirdware as the implementation partner, Srinivasan says, "Thirdware had the required business process exposure that Ford was looking for ... the requisite process and business knowledge. The one impressive point about Thirdware was that they had the right mix of people who could understand processes quickly even if they had no prior experience in the sector.

Ford infact, picked up a 20 percent

Stake in Thirdware which it claims is put of its long-term strategy. "Globally, we have joint ventures with various IT companies ... it's part of our long-term policy,' says Srinivasan.
"In India too, FITSI has partnerships with Covisint, Satyam and Thirdware for all IT solutions required by Ford throughout the Asia.Pacific. The basic rationale is that Ford is in automotive company and not a specialised IT firm. We want to partner with companies who can supply us with IT resources as and when we want. Though, we have a core in-house IT team they are not always in a position to provide specialised IT services".

Greenfield Site
According to Srinivasan "one of the biggest advantages of implementation in India was that it was a greenfield site" which means that we were starting from scratch. This made our work easier as we had no legacy systems from which to migrate.....no need to unlearn and learn anew! The package was used from day one of the company starting operations in India".
"The challenge , however was that we had to define and implement th eprocess. we stuck to certain core/standard processes of Ford which were mapped on to the package with its existing features."
For Thirdware it was a two edged sword, says Erinjery.
"Ford is a process-oriented company and they wanted the core processes to be standard across the world, be it in US or India. They brought in six to eight people, experienced and well versed with their processes specifically to ensure uniformity in processes adopted here."
"To a large extent that helped in defining the task at hand. But the challenge lay in educating Indian employees about the processes as they were all new and had little knowledge about the company and product. Training them was time-consuming."
Srinivasan adds: "we had a week of overview training session, then training for key users. this was followed by an intensive training for functional users with regards to specific modules."

Customisation
"There was hardly any customisation. We did not touch the core package as we were all too aware of the drawbacks. If we customised too much it would be difficult to upgrade to a newer version of the package. Also a maintainance would be a problem.
Moreover, the package suggests certain business practices which are very good. If we customised then we would not be able to take full advantage of this package." says Srinivasan.
"The only area that poses a bit of a problem in India was tax laws. But the package has a Global Tax Module (GTM) which came in quite handy and has taken care of most of our legal problems as it was developed by QAD with a lot of inputs from various Indian companies." he added.

Support
Since, february 2001, Thirdware has set up a regional application management centre in Chennai which provides solutions to all Ford sites in the Asia-Pacific. "In fact Thirdware runs an Asia-Pacific centric help desk for QAD and this takes care of all our sites too" says Srinivasan.

Investments
"In India alone the company has spent $8 million on its initial IT initiatives including the implementation of the package, hardware , software and networking among other infrastructure" according to Srinivasan.

A Web-enabled future
"We are currently working on consolidating the MFG/PRO packages running in different countries into a single database in Singapore" says Srinivasan.
The integration of all Ford Asia-Pacific sites to corporates e-Business applications is also in progress. "Apart from the consolidation we plan to move on to a web-enabled version of MFG/PRO" says Srinivasan.