The Precision Group U.A.E., is a pioneer and market leader in the manufacture of aluminum extrusion dies, tools, press tools, blow moulds and injection moulds, precision moulded plastic products and thermo-formed industrial packaging. The Group has two manufacturing companies in Dubai; Precision Dies & Tools Manufacturing Co. (L.L.C.) and Precision Plastic Products Co. (L.L.C.) and caters to over two dozen of the region’s leading brands, with innovative packaging and industrial solutions. Jayakumar Mohanachandran, CIO, spearheaded the Oracle SCM and ERP Cloud implementation for Precision Group as a part of their Digital Transformation program. Jay participated in Oracle’s Open World event a few months ago and I was impressed with the company’s story and Jay’s vision for the future of manufacturing and the importance of digital transformation. I had the opportunity to ask him a few questions:    

Julia: Jay, Precision Group was managing its manufacturing and back office operations using a legacy application, which was implemented many years ago. What challenges did this create for the business?

Jay: Precision was running on a legacy system for more than 25 years, which resulted in many process inefficiencies. We were not able to manage our reporting since many reports were in silos, and we were lacking an integrated system. We did not have visibility on our shop floor, nor in our inventory organization and that did not allow us to scale and support new processes.

Julia:  What triggered the move to Oracle’s Cloud solution?

Jay: To address these challenges and make sure that we are ahead of the competition, it was very critical for us to modernize our systems, so we decided to kick off a digital transformation program across our organization. Oracle had the best offering in the cloud, in terms of the breadth of applications, how they are seamlessly integrated and the use of advanced technologies embedded in the solutions (like IoT, artificial intelligence and machine learning). It is all integrated, and the beauty is that it comes in a SaaS model: an architecture that continually updates itself without the need for upgrades that are costly and risk business continuity. So with this subscription model, we are constantly upgraded with new functionality. All these features helped us select Oracle Cloud for our entire Digital Transformation program. We were one of the early adopters of R13 (release), which we think that made the whole project a grand success by this time.

Julia:  Why did you choose Oracle vs SAP for manufacturing?

Jay: We were considering Oracle and SAP until the final phase of the evaluation but we wanted to complete our transformation journey in the cloud and Oracle proved to be a leader in the cloud. We needed a solution that delivered manufacturing agility, shop floor control and end-to-end visibility. When we compared Oracle with SAP’s offering, Oracle Cloud was much more mature, it came with a lot of flexibility and agility for industries like manufacturing and provided many more features and innovations like “Smart Manufacturing”. Oracle was standing out from the competition in terms of technical competencies as well as cost effectiveness. With Oracle Cloud everything was embedded into one package, thus, we felt it would be much more efficient and easy to use. With Oracle Cloud, we were getting an integrated system and real time visibility of our manufacturing and inventory organization.

Julia: Precision chose Oracle Cloud to execute on a Manufacturing, HR and Financial Cloud transformation project. What are the results of using Oracle’s Cloud solutions?

Jay: By having this system right now, we were able to achieve increased efficiency and end-to-end visibility into the supply chain. We have real time visibility of our orders and thereby the entire cycles of order-to-cash and procure-to-pay have been completely streamlined. We have complete visibility of our business with advanced analytics in simple dashboards, enabling better collaboration and faster decision-making. This is brilliant, and from day one, we could use all the dashboards.  Oracle Manufacturing Cloud helps us streamline our manufacturing operations and get actionable insights in our factories to drive efficiency, flexibility, and speed. Also, everything is available through mobile. Therefore, our employees can stay connected and work seamlessly from anywhere, enhancing overall work efficiency. This was a major transformation from the 25 year old legacy system.

Julia:  What advice would you give to other companies looking to do the same kind of transformation?

Jay: I think one of the key messages that we can pass on to other companies is the need to have a proper governance structure in place to embark on a digital transformation journey. Manufacturing companies are reluctant to change, because change is not easy in a manufacturing set up and it may cause disruption. We actually had change agents, process champions, who empowered the rest of the organization and made sure we addressed all the challenges and effectively drove the change in the organization.  

If you are looking to embark on a digital transformation, journey and modernize your manufacturing operations click here to see how Oracle Manufacturing Cloud can help you.

Click here to watch a short video showing how Precision Group relies on Oracle Manufacturing Cloud for greater flexibility and agility.

Julia Vagdati is Product Marketing Director at Oracle. Connect with her on LinkedIn.