TCS and SAP Launch New Center of Excellence

by Tata Consultancy Services Ltd

Through New Center of Excellence, Companies to Fast Track Innovative Solutions for the Manufacturing Industry

Tata Consultancy Services , a global IT services, business solutions and outsourcing company, today announced it has teamed with SAP AG, the world's leading provider of business software, on the launch of the 'Perfect Plant' center of excellence at SAP's facility located here.

The Perfect Plant center of excellence is operated by a global "virtual team" from TCS and SAP and will showcase SAP(R) manufacturing applications and partner composite applications working together in a simulated plant environment. Customers can leverage TCS' experience and expertise in cutting-edge solutions along with SAP manufacturing solutions to help them improve their plant efficiencies while lowering the total cost of ownership of their manufacturing infrastructure. TCS, with its Global Network Delivery Model(TM), delivers 'one-stop' domain expertise integrating shop-floor information into enterprise systems, enabling companies to consistently meet their business objectives.

The new Perfect Plant center of excellence will put into action elements of SAP's 'Perfect Plant' initiative, a broader program designed to help manufacturers combine global manufacturing coordination with local execution to improve end-to-end manufacturing operations and financial performance. The initiative focuses on helping manufacturers reduce manufacturing costs, optimize asset utilization, deliver to customer requirements, and surpass quality and compliance objectives. It provides manufacturers with enhanced operations intelligence, a 360-degree view into all plant operations, and provides tight integration between planning, execution and business processes for cost-effective, efficient and coordinated "sense and response" to customer demands.

"The Perfect Plant initiative is a model of how companies can derive maximum efficiencies," said Regu Ayyaswamy, vice president, Engineering and Industrial Services, TCS. "The Perfect Plant Center of Excellence combines the strengths of SAP solutions in manufacturing and TCS' engineering expertise in shop-floor systems and solutions to bring adaptive manufacturing closer to reality for global manufacturers. TCS looks forward to many other such collaborative initiatives in the future."

TCS recently won an SAP Pinnacle Award for Industry Solutions in the Go-to-Market category. The Perfect Plant center of excellence is the outcome of the initiatives by TCS and SAP to drive co-innovation and to provide enhanced value to customers around the world.

"Implementation of the SAP XMII (SAP xApp(TM) Manufacturing Integration and Intelligence) application by TCS, has provided us with local systems availability during times of SAP R/3 planned and unplanned systems downtime. TCS's quality assistance in adapting xMII to be a Manufacturing Execution System (MES) solution for our plants, running on Stratus ftServers, has provided us with a cost-effective and minimal change management solution that nicely addresses our enterprise system downtime requirements," said John Niemzyk, Vice President and CIO for Rexam Beverage Can North America. "The launch of the Perfect Plant Center of Excellence by TCS and SAP clearly reinforces their thought leadership in the manufacturing operations arena."

With the help of the Perfect Plant center of excellence, enterprises interested in addressing their operational challenges are able to design, develop and test solutions in a rapid prototyping mode and simulate the optimization in a risk-free environment. The benefits of implementing solutions designed at the center of excellence include reduced manufacturing and maintenance costs, increased plant efficiencies and production yields, reduced asset capital investments and inventory, reduced premium freight costs, and increased value-chain agility and customer responsiveness.

"TCS has demonstrated tremendous success working with SAP to leverage the SAP xApp(TM) Manufacturing Integration and Intelligence (SAP xMII) composite application as a manufacturing operations platform to support the rapid design and delivery of innovative shop-floor-oriented composite applications," said Harald Stuckert, senior vice president and general manager for Manufacturing, SCM and PLM solutions, SAP AG. "By expanding our collaboration with TCS in a center of excellence environment, we add a unique dimension to our partnership to collectively accelerate the combined value we deliver to our mutual customers. Customers and SAP partners can effectively fast-track new ideas leveraging SAP applications and SAP partner technologies at the center of excellence and combine them with global services expertise from TCS for fast, effective implementation in live production environments."