Through outsourcing IT management to the cloud, Sigma Electric focuses on creativity to increase efficiency through its core business functions.
Freeing the IT from the mundane tasks of managing a physical IT infrastructure will also result in great benefits for a company that can then use the freed-up resources to develop and expand.
For the machine component manufacturer Sigma Electric, running and maintaining its own data center has had an impact on the efficiency of the organization.
According to Rajeev Khade, VP & Global Head of IT at Sigma Electric, the biggest challenge for the manufacturer was time to market, ensuring that customer orders were met on or ahead of time. Much of Sigma Electric’s customers are based in the United States and shipping time adds to the challenge.
From preparation to order delivery, all move into the backend system, the ERP and supply chain management applications of which are very important pieces.
As a result, Sigma Electric wanted to advance its innovation and digitalisation efforts to unlock more value from IT to industry, but all efforts were made to maintain and optimise its data center.
In order to prevent further resource drainage, the organisation decided to move all of its IT infrastructures to Oracle Cloud.
“Managing our own datacenter was becoming a drain on our resources and efficiency,” avers Khade. “But now, our IT staff is no longer getting caught up with routine IT management, and now have ample time to work on other innovative initiatives. Through our digitalization efforts, we have been able to cut down on unproductive work in various functions across levels.”
The machine components producer Sigma Electric has more than 11 manufacturing units and 3,000 employees globally and moving to the cloud in the midst of the nation-wide lockdown was a huge challenge.
“With support from our partner, we managed to complete the migration smoothly in a short time. The system was made available to the company’s internal business stakeholders ahead of schedule, with no downtime and data loss,” Khade said.
Sigma Electric has been using Oracle on-site applications for a long time. In addition to its critical ERP application, the company shifted two other applications to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure.
“We’ve achieved superior cloud economics, advanced security, high performance and high availability. Along with a 30 per cent improvement in performance, the switch to an OPEX IT model will help us realize upfront cost savings to the tune of 20-30%. We no longer have to worry about the infrastructure, maintenance and upgrades. The move has proved to be a cost-effective one as Oracle’s universal credits model helps us to consume second-generation cloud services while we pay only for what we use,” Khade added.
The manufacturer is currently working on more than 200 digital initiatives across departments and functions, including manufacturing processes.
Khade focuses on a number of in-house technology-focused initiatives that enable Sigma Electric to bring manufacturing excellence. Initiatives for the capture of machine data by sensors have been implemented. This data assists with predictive maintenance as well in enhancing machine performance.
Sigma Electric is further democratising data within the organisation and plans to make data available to consumers on request. In order to provide consumers with a single dashboard view, multiple data sources have been integrated to provide a single view across various MIS analytical tools.
