Name: KARTIK SHARMA

PRN: 14030141085

Assignment on Coir
Industry

Submitted By:
KARTIK SHARMA
14030141085

Name: KARTIK SHARMA

PRN: 14030141085

Kurl-on
Background
Kurlon Limited, a Manipal Group Company came into existence in 1962. The
Company was then called Karnataka Consumer Products Ltd and on the 8th of
December, 1995 the company was renamed as Kurlon Limited.
Kurlon is part of the 2,000 crore Manipal Group of Companies founded by the
Pais of Manipal which is a major financial and industrial group in India. The group
has its activities spread over financial services, manufacturing, education, electronic
commerce, software services, share booking, etc. The group is headed by Mr.
Sudhakar Pai who is the Chairman of the group. Mr. Pai is on the board of several
well-known industrial, commercial and educational enterprises. Kurlon was
conceived when Mr. Pai was in Germany in 1962. He found that car seat cushions
were manufactured of rubberized coir. The manufacturer was importing curled coir
from Sri Lanka.
In India, the coir industry has developed very well, mostly in Kerala where
they produce Retted Fiber. Green husks of coconut are immersed in the salty
backwards for 10 to 12 months and the retted husk is supplied to various homes to
make Mats and Matting rolls after producing the yam from this fiber. This has
created employment to many women in the state.
Austrian technology was available to extract fiber from the dried coconut
husk and curl it into ropes and keep it in that state for minimum 3 months. When
uncurled, they become tiny springs. The cars manufactured in India in 60s were
very few in numbers. It was uneconomical to start the molded product out of the
rubberized coir to manufacture car seat cushions. After a lot of experiments and
quality control steps, Mr.Ramesh Pai thought of entering into Rubberized coir
mattress manufacturing. Thus Kurlon was born, become one of the popular
mattresses providing restful sleep to millions of Indian consumers.
Today, Kurlon has created direct employment to over 1000 people and
indirect employment to lakhs of coir workers across the sub-continent. Kurlons
success is built on a solid infrastructure and its powerful marketing strength. The
Company has 44 sales offices, which are profit centers, strategically located all over
the country. All the centers are working on trade terms. The Company products are
exported to West Asia viz; U.A.E., Qatar, Oman, Bahrain, UK, Europe, South and East
of Africa, Indian Ocean rim, SAARC, South East and Far East Countries.

Name: KARTIK SHARMA

PRN: 14030141085
Kurlon Ltd. is the brand leader in the industry and has acquired major market
share in the branded mattresses segment. Taking advantage of the market
potential, Kurlon strongly believes in giving the customers quality products of a wide
range at competitive prices, which will result in customer satisfaction.

What was the case for IT strategy?

Kurlon always had home-grown ERP application, which had no standardization. The
company was relying on historical data to forecast demand for the raw materials,
which was a time-consuming task and prone to errors. Moreover, inter-category
product profitability could not be determined, as much of the data was not even
available.
It took about 6-8 months for the company to select the ERP solution. SAPs time
tested processes and systems and the availability of the industry best practices,
made mySAP an easy choice for Kurlon to enable operational efficiencies in its core
business.
The purpose of deploying mySAP ERP was:

To cope with business dynamics and facilitate exploring of diverse business

opportunities in the domestic and the global markets as well.
To help the company realize its strategic objectives.
To enable integration of multiple functions, achieve standardization and gain
business intelligence across our various locations.

How it was implemented?

This strategy was implemented by introducing an integrated online information
system, Industry Best Practices and an enriched Decision Support System.
The ERP solution was implemented across six locations by Unisoft Infotech,
and was completed at a record time of three months. The first phase of the
implementation addressed supply and distribution, financial accounting (FICO) and
material management (MM), and the second phase catered to production and
planning (PP), plant management (PM) and quality management (QM).

USPs of IT Strategy
mySAP business suite solutions help the company in improving:

Name: KARTIK SHARMA

PRN: 14030141085

customer relationships,
enhance partner collaboration, and
create efficiencies across their supply chains and business operations.

Key Outcomes of the IT Strategy

Kurlon, today, has evolved into a company which offers mattresses in 126 different
configurations and exports its products to the UAE, Qatar, Oman and Bahrain in the
Middle East, to all SAARC countries as well as the markets of South East Asia and
the Far East.
In India it has a dominating market leadership; research has suggested that
the brand enjoys a top-of-mind awareness of a staggering 80%. Everything else
being equal, this would mean that in a future purchase Kurlon would be in the
consideration set of at least 80% of all customers, giving the company an
extraordinary edge over other brands.
For its fine achievements, awards have been quick in coming. The Coir Board
of India has honored Kurlon with many citations over the years. For the past 15
years it has won the Coir Board of India's awards for Outstanding Performance in
Export of Rubberised Coir Products, Development of the Domestic Market for
Rubberised Coir, Best Export Performance at the State Level and the award for
being the Largest Domestic Trader of Coir and Coir Products.
With a countrywide dealer network of 5000, Kurlon provides direct
employment to over 1000 people and indirect employment to hundreds of
thousands of coir workers across the sub-continent.

Suggested IT Strategy V2.0 for the Company

New technologies, such as the automated system that National Coir Research
Management Institute (NCRMI) has introduced, can help resolve issues with
production and quality that must be addressed to make Kurlon competitive in the
global market. This system enables automated identification and characterization of
the micro organisms as the current technology used for the purpose is time
consuming and laborious.