Piaggio Vehicles automates canteen coupon management system to save cost

A penny saved is a penny earned. Drawing upon this conventional wisdom, Rajeev Mittal, Head-IT/ IS, Piaggio Vehicles undertook a quick win project which helped his organization save cost and correct inefficiency.

With 6,000 daily transactions across five canteens, Piaggio Vehicles was serving up quite a large number of employees and visitors. But that only left an aftertaste of bitter bewilderment for the company. With its canteen management system wallowing in manual processes, Piaggio Vehicles could not carry out an accurate accounting of the canteen consumption. .

“The canteen managers took the count of daily consumption based on the attendance of people reporting to work. But this method was inaccurate because it also took into consideration employees who brought their meals and did not consume canteen food regularly. This lead to erroneous accounting of consumption creating discrepancies in contractor bills settlement and MIS generation,” recalls Mittal.

The money-sucking canteen management system was a snafu that had to be fixed quickly.

Acting on the opportunity, Mittal set out to automate the process. He installed Smartcard readers and integrated them with printers in each canteen. These devices were then connected with centralized server where the software and data setup was done.

“We issued Smart card to each employee with their credentials on it. When a person visits the canteen for snacks or meal, he flashes the smart card before the machine and a coupon is generated by the printer. We have put validation in the software for eligibility of daily coupon consumption per smart card to control usage,” he explains.

The custom made solution using Java and MS SQL database also combined hardware like smart card readers, writers and portable printers.

Piaggio Vehicles spent Rs 10 lakhs on the automation project which delivered a fast payback by saving the company wads of money. And the company is relishing the quick returns. Through automation, Piaggio saved Rs 30 lakhs annually in recurring cost. And that’s not all, the automation drive saved 144 man-days annually for the Finance, HR/Admin department.

The quick win project also weeded out process inefficiency in the generation of MIS and various reports. “It led to transparency of transaction data which provides complete visibility of usage and cost to the HR/Admin department. It allows us to present a daily limit on the usage of canteen facility,” states Mittal.