My Project

I forget that some people don't even know that I am going to India. If you are part of that group, the reason I am going is to participate in a manufacturing internship at TVS Motors. TVS Motors is a maker of motorcycles and scooters. In the past they have won the Deming Prize, so you know they have their act together with quality control. Today, three days before I am scheduled to leave the country, I finally received information about the project Helicopter Bob(Perchard) and I will be working on. I would explain the project, but honestly I don't think I would do a very good job since it is all pretty abstract right now. Here is what the email said though:


The title of the project given to you was "Setting Up An Effective Business Intelligence Warehouse System for Management Information Reports".

Introduction:
The project sponsor is the Business Planning function, which has itsObjectives as Business Strategy development, Implementation and Businessexcellence. It is a small team consisting of the following members

Mr.Ananda Krishnan (GM-Business Planning)
Mr. Vagheeswara Subramaniam- Vaghi ( Sr. Manager - NPI)
Mr. Karthik Ganesan ( Manager, Strategy and CompetitveIntelligence, Order Obtainment group)
Mr. Manu Saxena (Sr. Manager, Order Fulfillment group)
Mr. Rajkumar (Manager, ASEAN Business)
Mr. Kumaresan ( Econometrics)
Ms.Naomi ( Econometrics)

I will be working closely with you guys in conjunction with our department.My brief background: B.S in Mechanical engineering, M.S from Texas A&MUniversity (College Station), M.B.A from Indian School of business,Hyderabad.

Need for the Project:
As mentioned, Strategy implementation is a Key role of this function andthis is where our need area exists. We have a Medium range strategy, whichrolls out as an annual policy deployment cycle every fiscal year. TVS-MFollows a TQM methodology for Policy deployment and a perfomancemeasurement system called Managing Points / Checking points.

The metrics are evolved over a 6 month period, which is initiated by a Competitive War game (That was concluded recently). The Top Down requirements are rolled out, and the function wise resource contraints and requirements are represented and after a catch ball process, the final metrics are decided and deployed.

These metrics are deployed into the MP/CP system described earlier and the progress on PMS system ideally should be indicative of the company performance. This is the first area that needs some analysis.

The financial performance of the company is tightly linked to the disparate performance tracking across the company. Today this linkage is very weak and it needs some work. This is the second area of analysis.

Today, the management reports are not automated and are completely delinked. This causes problems for management reviews. This is the third area of analysis.

Deliverables:
1. A complete anaysis of the entire policy deployment and tracking system with areas of improvement.
2. A complete mapping of company level goals down to function and sub-function level metrics, with exception alerts and clarity in the variances.
3. A survey of best practises in BIW IT systems which would be applicable to TVS-M.

Please get in touch with me if you have further questions. This Objectives and Deliverables can be worked with in order to ensure significant output in the short time that you are here.

Best Regards,Karthik Ganesan


Karthik also requested that I do some research about the company on their website. Since I am going to be going 100 mph until I get on that airplane, that probably isn't going to happen. Here's to winging it though.

Song Recommendation- Make This Go On Forever by Snow Patrol