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The machine breakdown occurrences in the shop floor of the manufacturing facilities of Ashok Leyland, were captured into the Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system with significant time delay. This affected the overall productivity of the shop floor lines. Hence, there was a need to deploy a computer based application with a simple Graphical User Interface (GUI) in the shop floor, to capture breakdown and update the ERP system accordingly. This application was meant for use by the shop floor associates, who come to know of the machine breakdown occurrences first. Also, there was a need for the managers at various levels to monitor the breakdowns, to ensure their timely closure. To fulfil these requirements, the in-house IT resources were sought after by the plant maintenance group. Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) was identified for application development and deployment. FOSS aids in significant cost savings, as there is no license cost involved in application development.

Ashok Leyland, India had commissioned a web portal towards serving their end customers with better fleet management. The services offered through this portal helps in improving the productivity and safety of vehicles, business operations and hence, the profitability of the customers. Track and trace, SMS/email alerts and report generation are the major functionalities of this portal. They assist the customers in analyzing the operations of their vehicles and take corrective actions towards optimizing them. However, there were certain problems faced by the customers, while accessing these functionalities through the web portal. This includes, significantly high lead time taken for report generation, unavailability of location details in the reports and track page due to early expiry of reverse geo-coding service limits.