Published on November 29, 2023
Tata Chemicals operates in two main verticals – basic chemistry products and specialty products. The company’s basic chemistry product range supplies essential ingredients to global leaders in glass, detergents, pharma, biscuit manufacturing, bakery and various other industries. It also operates the largest saltworks in Asia, and ranks as the third largest soda ash and sixth largest sodium bicarbonate manufacturer globally.
Established in 1927, Tata Chemicals has its biggest manufacturing facility in Mithapur, Gujarat, India. As part of its endeavour to be a top-tier sustainable chemistry company, Tata Chemicals wanted to revisit its processes.
Continuing their engagement with TBExG, after the intervention on improving its asset management and order-to-cash processes, Tata Chemicals again engaged with Tata Business Excellence Group (TBExG) for improving their procure-to-pay (P2P) processes. For this engagement, TBExG requested Abhishek Chaudhary, DGM, Central Purchase, Tata Motors, and Sandeep Shelke, Senior Manager, Procurement, TML Business Services, to be a part of the team and share their knowledge and expertise on the subject.
The team started with an understanding of the existing P2P cycle at Tata Chemicals and mapped out the current processes with the help of inputs from the relevant teams at Tata Chemicals. The team then used the standard framework of the P2P cycle, as suggested by the American Productivity and Quality Centre (APQC) as reference, and super-imposed the existing processes to identify the potential areas of improvement.
The team also researched practices of group companies on the EDGE portal to come up with practices that would be most useful and relevant. As set of recommendations was then presented to Tata Chemicals, based on these areas of improvements. These were also discussed with the team at Tata Chemicals, to arrive at the ones with the highest benefits.
The final recommendations included developing integrated quality plans, automating PO amendments and invoice processing, and a self-service portal for vendors. Standardisation of invoices, tracing of import transaction in ERP and outsourcing of shared services were also part of the recommendations made.
The suggested practices included practices from Tata Motors and Tata Steel that could benefit Tata Chemicals.
The senior leadership was very appreciative of the improvements suggested and Tata Chemicals has started reaching out to group companies to learn the practices.