Kwality Dairy Selects IBM Cloud to Drive Supply Chain Efficiencies

04 Oct 2012

IBM has announced that Kwality Dairy India Ltd.(KDIL), a leading dairy and dairy products company in Northern India, has selected IBM cloud to improve the dairy's operational efficiency and productivity in its bid to become a global milk and milk products company.

KDIL has one of the largest milk procurement operations in North India. The Dairy was facing challenges in managing its cash operating cycle effectively and wanted to streamline business processes and improve efficiency across various operations to deliver superior quality products. KDIL previously used non-integrated solutions, which did not help address these business issues and further impacted operational efficiencies.

"Currently, KDIL processes about 1.7 million litres of milk per day, making it one of the largest milk procurement operations in Northern India. Our long term vision is to become a global milk and milk products company and to achieve this goal we have to integrate our operations and improve business efficiency," said Sanjay Dhingra Chairman & Managing Director, Kwality Dairy (India) Limited. "We were looking for a technology partner who could help achieve our vision and goals. With IBM's industry knowledge and expertise we are assured to meet the ever-increasing demands and ease of management," he added.

The IBM SmartCloud SAP Express Dairy Solution, in one of the first such deployments in the Indian dairy industry, will help KDIL build a more robust, integrated operations system and address challenges related to milk procurement and payment, production, and fat and SNF (solid not fat) accounting, among others processes. For example, the solution helps to forecast demand more accurately, generate more efficient production schedules, and see manufacturing processes with greater clarity—critical given the ever-changing quantity and quality of the nonstandardized and perishable raw materials.

As the solution will be based on IBM SmartCloud, it will provide KDIL with a pay-as-you-go model, and the flexibility and scalability required to manage a growing set of requirements. IBM will help KDIL develop foundational business intelligence and reporting capabilities while processing efficiencies through inbuilt industry practices.

India is the largest milk producing country in the world, with an estimated annual milk production of over 120 million tonnes, which is expected to reach 190 million tonnes in 2015. However, the Indian dairy industry is largely fragmented and presents unique challenges in terms of procurement as well as distribution. Hence, the dairy companies in India need to build an operation which is flexible and agile, yet cost effective.

"IBM's SAP Dairy solution is designed to make KDIL more flexible in addressing new business challenges and opportunities for growth," said Kamal Singhani, Partner, CPG, Retail & Smarter Commerce Industry leader, IBM Global Business Services - India/South Asia. "IBM is committed to the success of companies like KDIL and is making significant investment to help these companies succeed. We view these companies as engines of global economic growth, innovation and industry transformation."

SAP Express for Dairy is pre-packaged software and services to help midsize dairy companies improve operational efficiency. IBM's SAP Express Dairy Solution illustrates IBM's commitment to the mid-market sector, which includes many companies that are growing rapidly yet may have limited access to capital.

Source: IBM