How LG improved its manufacturing, quality and sales with a BI solution

A market giant for over two decades, LG Electronics has grown in India as a top brand in consumer durables market with an annual turnover of more than USD 2 billion.

The company has two manufacturing units and more than 70 branch offices and stock points to cover the sales across the country. So, how do you manage the analytical data of not just manufacturing but also sales of such a vast operation?

The company’s middle management was facing a lot of challenges in collecting relevant data and preparing analytical reports. “The major challenge was data spread across various global and local systems,” says Ajay Rambal, head-IT of LGE India. The task proved to be tedious and time consuming for the middle management to prepare and analyze.

The lack of a business intelligence (BI) tool to convert this data into meaningful analytical reports led the implementation to take place. The top management was keen on getting the structured data for decision making at the click of the button.

To overcome the challenges faced, the IT team suggested the implementation of a BI Solution to build the analytical dashboard for manufacturing, quality and sales area.

The selection of tool and technology was undertaken by the team who did an extensive work to analyze the scope of the project and the optimum technology. The IT team tried and tested a lot of permutation and combinations of various tools and technologies to finally decide upon an amalgamation of five products including a BI tool, an ETL tool, a database, a data warehouse and a front-end interface.

The LG Electronics IT team designed various dashboards that can provide the details about the current status and historical data for analysis. The management can now get the daily, weekly and monthly analytical data on the click of a button. The data can be analyzed using various permutation and combinations with a drill down approach.

Analytics solved

The implementation has given getting various benefits in different functions. In manufacturing area, it is helping in improving production quantity improvement, reduction in the shortage of raw material, improvement in production amount, reduction in labor cost, reduction in manufacturing cost, improved on-time delivery, idle time reduction and production amount improvement.

In quality area, it has improved the reduced field failure, cost, lot rejection, part return and total line defect rates; and an improved part quality for the supplier.

In the sales area, the project is improving the sales amount, product and model profitability, product supply, and a sales growth. Additionally, LG also experienced a reduction in sales loss, and implemented a scheme management and sell out management. The management receives various automatic reports for daily, weekly and monthly analysis.

These can be viewed from the dashboard and critical reports are sent by auto mail to all concerned members. A daily review of management meetings using the BI dashboard is a proof of the same is one of the parameters of the project’s success.