Lakshya News

The growth of data – both

structured and unstructured

– will present challenges as

well as opportunities for the

company over the next few

years.

With growing data volumes,

it is essential that real-time

information, historical data

and projections that are of

use to the company are

extracted from its IT

systems. Companies that use

data to deliver better insights

to decision-makers stand a

better chance of thriving

even through difficult times.

The aim thus is to be able

to use archived data, trends

and real-time data for

projections and real-time

decision-making.

Harnessing Big Data

Big Data is a buzzword or

catch-phrase. It is used to

describe massive volumes of

structured and unstructured

data that is so large that it is

difficult to process using

tradit ional techniques.

Understanding and taking

charge of big business data

needs are the next challenge.

The data managers would be

required to look beyond the

bits and bytes and apps and

really work with business

heads to understand how they

make decisions, and get them

the data feeds and analytical

tools they might need to do

this. The ability to collect and

present data in a way that the

business understands, thus

enabling the company to make

decisions faster will then be

the key to keeping the business

competitive.

The true value of data comes

f r om b e i n g a b l e t o

contextualize and understand

it, in order to deliver insights

which can give the company a

competitive advantage. As

such big data should be part of

a w i d e r i n f o rm a t i o n

management strategy making

decisions faster about which

data would be of use to the

business rather than just

collecting and storing data or

looking at big data ensilaged

with groups of individuals

playing around. It will be

important to have a business

case to justify what we do with

big data, whether it contributes

toward gaining competitive

advantage or increasing

revenue with demonstrable

achievement over and above

what the organization has

already accomplished with data.

Leveraging the Data Benefits

Over the next few years, it may

not be possible to predict the

growth pattern of big data but it

is imperative to make forays

now to understand what is

involved. The traits of big data

are varied data types, speed of

growth or velocity, and sheer

volume. Big Data and Analytics converge together t o f o r m B u s i n e s s Intelligence.

Move to Convergence

The industry is going through

an interesting phase with

massive activity to converge

traditional relational databases

and the big data world. The best

way of succeeding is to be able

to look at all the information

available in real time, past and

future in one place.

NTPC since implementing ERP

in 2007 has already accumulated

vast amount of operation

performance data related to its

power stations. With the

availability of latest Analytics

tools, technical / functional

expertise with CC-IT & in line

Business Intelligence and Big Data Analytics

NTPC Ltd. March 2015

Volume VIII No. 1

Business Intelligence and Big Data Analysis

1

Switchover from Data Centre to DR Site in a Record Time

2

Strengthening of Connectivity to Sites from CC

Ash/Cenosphere sale started 3

Some new Initiatives in ERP 3

Special Achievements 3

SRM Training for Vendors at RHQs

4

E-Learning Portal 4

PI Asset Framework-

New Feature of PI

5

Recent Transfers 6

Quotes of the Month 6

Forthcoming ERP Trainings 6

Inside this issue:

Lakshya News

Happy New Year

IT-ERP group wishes

you and your family, a

very Happy Hindu

Year 2072. May God

shower all HIS love

and blessings on you in

this year.

Page 2 Volume VIII No. 1

Business Intelligence

Companies that use data

to deliver better insights

to decision-makers stand

a better chance of

thriving even through

difficult times.

Business Intelligence and Big Data Analytics (Contd…..)

automating data collection

and providing user friendly

analysis interface. To begin

with, some of the critical

ROPR (Regional Operation

Performance Review)

reports have been made

available at the website

with the requirements of

Corporate (OS), ERP-

Operation & BI group have

comb ined to deve lop

Operat ion Performance

analysis tools which work on

the SAP-ECC data that aim to

facilitate operation reviews by

10.0.0.237 under ROPR.

The data needs to be

regularly updated in SAP-

ECC for these reports to

be current and dynamic. A

glimpse of the same is

given in Fig-1.

Fig-1

Business Intelligence

Gathering data is

important, but it is

crucial to be able to

differentiate between

data that is merely

interesting and data that

actually has leverage.

Switchover from Data Centre to DR site in a Record Time

Hyderabad. The activity of shifting was planned to be carried out in 48 hours time. However, the same was carried out ve r y smooth l y and completed in 12 hours t i m e . T h i s w a s

Switchover of ERP landscape from Data Centre, Noida to Disaster Recovery Centre – Hyderabad was successfully carried out on Feb 14 2015. This is the first time that the complete ERP landscape is being operated from DR site –

possible due to the concerted effort of the switchover team comprising of Basis, ABAP, IT-Comm, Functional Teams, DR –Hyderabad IT, HP, S a n o v i a n d t h e Management

Strengthening of Connectivity to Sites from CC

and about 40 sites are presently with the upgraded bandwidth. - The BSNL MPLS links at DC and DR upgraded to 155 Mbps each. - Internet link at DR has been upgraded from 2 Mbps to 20 Mbps - The 68 Mbps alternate Link from Powergrid for Replication between DC and DR has been installed. - The Powergrid Links have already been installed at 5

For improving the availability and performance of central IT services (ERP, email, etc) at sites, connectivity from Sites to Data Centre (DC), Noida and Disaster Recovery (DR) Centre, Hyderabad are being augmented. - For upgradation of existing BSNL MPLS links at sites such as increasing the bandwidth from 4 Mbps to 12 Mbps at sites, advice notes have been issued by M/s BSNL for all sites in the PO

locations (Farakka, Vindhyachal, Talcher Super, Singrauli, Kahalgaon) in addition to at DC, Noida. The Purchase Order for the Powergrid links at all sites of NTPC is also under process at CC, Noida. As per feedbacks received from sites, the availability and response of applications have significantly improved at sites.

Switchover from DC to DR

Switchover of ERP

landscape from Data

Centre, Noida to

Disaster Recovery Centre

– Hyderabad was

successfully carried out

in just 12 hours against

planned 48 hours

Strengthening of Connectivity

For improving the availability and performance of central IT services at sites, connectivity from Sites to Data Centre (DC), Noida and Disaster Recovery (DR) Centre, Hyderabad are being augmented.

Page 3 Volume VIII No. 1

cenosphere sale business with a target date of 1st Jan'15 as roll out date. SAP p roces s was designed and system changes were done by CC-ERP and a training was organized for the representatives of Ash business group of different stations on 23rd Dec 2014. On the

scheduled date i.e 1st Jan 15, Ash/cenosphere sale business was successfully rolled out in all NTPC s t a t i o n s . N T P C Dadri,Badarpur,Tanda, Kahalgaon,Farakka,Unchahar,and Ramagundam have started selling Ash/cenosphere as per the newly designed SAP process.

Ash/Cenosphere Sale Started in NTPC Stations NTPC Board in its 412th meeting,approved to start Ash/cenosphere sale business in NTPC, instead of NVVN, through SAP. On 21st Nov'14, a detailed action plan was finalized by Corpor a t e Ash Business group. As per the action plan, it was decided to implement the SAP process of ash/

Some New Initiatives in ERP System

Blocked codes linking:

In order to ensure unique

codes in the system,

duplicate material codes

and codes which are not

as per the schemes are

often being blocked by

codification team on a

regular basis. Even

though, alternate codes

are subsequently created

by the users, the history

of the old codes was not

available with the newly

created codes. We have

recently developed old Vs

new material code linking

which is available in T-

code ZMMMATMAS.

The history of blocked &

new material code can

also be seen in PR

customer data.

Mapping of DOP 2014:

Recently DOP Section 4

was released superceding

earlier two Sections (4 &

5B) of DOP which was

mapped by the ERP-MM

team in a record time of 3

weeks against 2 months

taken earlier.

3 . V e n d o r

Communication : In

order to meet guidelines of

vigilance department &

with a view to make the

system transparent &

effective, Mails & SMS are

being sent to the vendors

intimating them about

material received at

NTPC, rejections (if any),

payments made and

deductions made (if any).

This initiative has been

widely appreciated by all

the vendors.

4. NMI Linking: A new

process has been mapped

for correctly updating the

NMI status of the material

while transferring the

inventory from blocked

code to new code.

5. CPP portal: As

required by Vigilance and

CVC, a program has

been developed to

automatically upload all

the details pertaining to

tenders published & PO

issued on CPP portal

6. Green Initiative:

a . ZMMLETTER

T - code has been

modified so that letters

can be sent to multiple

users and vendors

through e-mail thereby

avoiding printouts of

letters.

b. ZMM115 T-code for

bill forwarding letter has

been blocked to avoid

unnecessary printouts

and the information is

being sent through e-

mail.

Special Achievements Amit Tripathi, Dy.

M a n a g e r E R P

representing NTPC won

SPL APPREICIATION

PRIZE in a Quiz

Competition organized by

BPCL in Dec. 2014 under

the banner of NAGAR

R A J B H A S A

KARYANVAN SAMITI

for the 4th year in running.

P r i z e d i s t r i b u t i o n

ceremony was held in

SCOPE auditorium on

25.02.2015 wherein

S e c e r a t r y –R a j b h a s a

(Home Ministry-GOI)

felicitated Shri Tripathi.

Ash/Cenosphere Sale

With effect from 1st Jan

2015, the sale business of

ash/cenosphere has been

successfully rolled out at all

NTPC Stations which was

earlier being done by

NVVN.

New Initiatives in ERP

A unique initiative has been

launched in NTPC to update

all the vendors through sms/e-

mails regarding details of

material received at NTPC,

r e j ec t ions ( i f any) ,

payments made and

deductions made (if any).

This initiative has been

widely appreciated by all

the vendors.

Amit Tripathi

IT Communication team has launched an e-learning portal for its Email & Active Directory (AD) users. The p o r t a l h t t p : / /tubeit.ntpc.co.in contains videos on Zimbra Mail, AD, SSL technology and Lotus Sametime web conferencing and their configuration. There are videos for end users guiding them to configure various desktop applications of the said area. The portal is being continuously updated with latest videos. Suggestions and feedback may be sent to bodhraj@ntpc.co.in. - Cen t r a l S ecu r i t y Management Solution (Active Directory) has been implemented in 39 sites of NTPC covering 11680 machines. This solution provides for enforcement of NTPC IT security policies and measures as mandated by Ministry of IT, GOI and

MOP from time to time and to ensure healthiness of computers on the network through OS and AV updates. The main advantages of this solution are : • Reduction in machine downtime • Safe and protected working environment • Reduction in maintenance cost at sites and cc • Audit, tracking and isolation of malicious machines on network • Use of licensed software only • Prevents installation of malware/malicious software in machines • Ease of management of desktops and IP addresses • Deployment of software, configurations of machines and parameters through group policies • Platform for future deployment of facilities like

Single sign-on, File server, Share point, PKI etc across sites. – Zimbra Mail and M e s s a g i n g u s e r interaction meet was organized at HRHQ, NCRHQ, WRHQ-II and SRHQ. Users were demonstrated features of Z imb r a M a i l a n d Messaging system. This w a s d o n e b y a representative from the Mail & Messaging Team CC – IT . The interaction was appreciated by all the participating users. - 15 Training programs were conducted by the IT Communication team on A c t i v e D i r e c t o r y Administration, Zimbra Mail, IP rights in Digital E r a t h r ou gh Web Conferencing system for employees of NTPC through PMI.

Page 4 Volume VIII No. 1

Bhubneswar 23 and 24 February 2015

Noida 2 March 2015

Hazaribagh 25 March 2015

Ranchi 26 March 2015

RHQ C&M HODs were the training co-

ordinators while the trainings were

conducted by ERP-SRM core team

members. To get maximum participation

of vendors, mails were sent to all SRM

registered vendors asking them to attend

the session at a place of their

convenience. As a result, more than 1500

vendors participated in these programmes

spread across all the regions. The sessions

were very interactive and the feedback

received from the participants was very

encouraging. Such sessions will go a long

way in achieving the target of 100% e-

procurement for NTPC and making the

process very simple for the vendors.

SRM Training for Vendors at RHQs Keeping in view the company’s objective of

achieving 100% e-procurement at the earliest

and to enable more and more vendors to

participate in the e-tendering process for

increased competitiveness, an initiative was

taken by ED (CC&M) to organise training

sessions on SRM module at all regional

headquarters. Four training sessions each of

half day duration over a period of two days

were planned at each RHQ as per the

following schedule:

LOCATION DATE

Mumbai 22 and 23 January 2015

Raipur 29 & 30 January 2015

Hyderabad 2 and 3 February 2015

Koldam 5 and 6 February 2015

Tapovan 10 and 11 February 2015

Lucknow 12 and 13 February 2015

Patna 19 and 20 February 2015

100% e-Procurement Locations

Following 7 locations have done 100% e-procurement in Materials and Services during March 15

1. Corporate Contracts 2. ERHQ-1 3. Kahalgaon 4. Barh 5. SRHQ 6. Koldam 7. Gadarwara

SRM - an update

In the month of March

2015, 95.17% of the total

procurement done in NTPC

value wise and 82.31% of

the total no. of bid

invitations were published

through e-Procurement in

SRM E-Learning Portal

E-Learning Portal

E-Learning Portal has

been recently launched by

IT Communication Team

for its E-mail & Active

Directory Users.

is represented below. Fig-1

shows elements of the AF

.PI Asset framework

structure created for Mouda

while Fig-2 shows attributes

of the selected element.

Expected Benefits from PI

Asset Framework

• Enhanced data

comprehension

linking data

(attributes) to assets

(elements)

• Improve data

management by

using a common,

easy-to-navigate

framework

• Implement standards

across your

organization

• Fully leverage your

information with PI

AF’s integration to

the PI System

visualization tools

Page 5 Volume VIII No. 1

PI Asset Framework - New Feature of PI System

Shri AK Jha, Director (T) inaugurates the website for GETS 2014 on 18th July 2014 i

In the latest PI System

software, the feature of

module database is being

replaced with PI Asset

Framework which has

distinct scalability & search

advantages over the existing

system. PI Asset

Framework has been

implemented in Mouda as a

pilot site & is planned to be

replicated in all stations in

phased manner. A brief

about this new feature is

discussed below:

PI Asset Framework (PI

AF) is a representation of

plant equipment and

processes to facilitate

process data analysis. In PI

information, such as the

diameter of a tank or a

reference such as a PI

point, a formula, a value

from a relational database,

a file, a photograph, and

more. For example,

suppose one has a pump

with three associated

pieces of data: the pressure

(read from a PI point), the

inlet temperature, and the

outlet temperature. To

model this in AF, one can

create an AF element to

represent the pump and

then create three attributes

to represent the associated

data.

AF, the equipment and

processes that one wants

to monitor are called Assets.

The PI AF representation

of all your assets and

processes together is called

an Asset Model. The asset

model organizes all the

equipments into a structure

that makes it easy to find

information.

In the PI AF asset model,

each piece of equipment is

represented by an element.

The associated data for an

element, is stored

as attributes of the element.

Attributes can hold simple

values, representing fixed

Shri Bodh Raj, AGM (IT) has

recently completed 2 year Master

Degree in Cyber Law and Cyber

Security (Distance Mode) from

National Law University, Jodhpur

and Institute of Management

Technology, Ghaziabad (UP)

Your valuable suggestions and comments on the Newsletter are

solicited. We are sure, the same shall help us to further

improve the Newsletter. In case you have any article on ERP

which you would like to share with others, do write to us at

Email: lakshyanews@ntpc.co.in

Forthcoming ERP Trainings

Chief Editor, Lakshya News

NTPC R&D Building, Sector-24, Noida

Chief Editor – GM (IT)

Editorial Team – K.S. Kalidas, N.M. Gupta,

Peeyush Arya

NTPC Ltd. We would like to express our sincere thanks to the following

members of our family for their wonderful contribution

Recent Superannuations from IT-ERP

Shri Ram Lal Chaudhary, Manager (IT-Comm)

Shri Parkash Singh, W 11 (IT-Comm)

Transfer from IT-ERP

Shri Indrajit Basak, AGM (ERP) to Bangladesh

Shri Arun Choudhary, AGM (ERP) to Bangladesh

Smt Chandna Chakraborty, AGM (IT) to Solapur

Shri DSS Subrahmanyam, AGM (IT) to Kudgi

Shri GS Agesh, AGM (ERP) to Kudgi

Smt Suravee Tripathiy, DGM (ERP) to ERHQ-II

Shri Hemant Kumar, DGM (ERP-Fin) to Koldam

Smt K V S Prashanthi, Manager (ERP) to Simhadri

We would like to welcome the following executives who have

recently joined IT-ERP group

Shri Mukkamala Venkata Srinivas, AGM (IT) from Ramagundam

Shri Anil Kumar Bhatnagar, Sr Mgr (IT) from Jajjar

Shri Supriya Naskar, Sr Mgr (IT) from NSPCL

Shri Amit Kumar, Sr Mgr (C&M) from Talcher

Smt Manimala Ray, Sr Engineer (Fin) from Koldam

Shri Praveen Kumar Gupta, W1 (HR) from NCRHQ

Smt Nisha Choudhary, Sr. Manager (Fin) from EOC Finance

• You only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough

• Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance, you must keep moving

• The most important thing is to enjoy your life—to be happy—it's all that matters

• Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail

Quotes of the Month

Programme Name Start Date End Date Training Coord Name Venue

E-PROCUREMENT THROUGH SRM MODULE OF

ERP 06-04-2015 08-04-2015 Suchismita Das PMI, Noida

ERP HR WORKSHOP FOR HO-HR 10-04-2015 11-04-2015 Vikash Kumar Malhotra PMI, Noida

PI SYSTEM BASED APPLICATION USER MEET 15-04-2015 16-04-2015 Vikash Kumar Malhotra PMI, Noida

BASIS IN SAP-ERP 15-04-2015 17-04-2015 Suchismita Das PMI, Noida

ERP PROJECT SYSTEM MODULE COURSE 20-04-2015 22-04-2015 Suchismita Das PMI, Noida

TRAINING SYSTEM IN SAP THRU WC 30-04-2015 30-04-2015 Vikash Kumar Malhotra Resp. Sites

ERP MM FOR END USER 04-05-2015 06-05-2015 Vikash Kumar Malhotra PMI, Noida

ERP PLANT MAINTENANCE MODULE 11-05-2015 13-05-2015 Suchismita Das PMI, Noida

E-PROCUREMENT THROUGH SRM MODULE OF

ERP 06-07-2015 08-07-2015 Suchismita Das PMI, Noida

ERP PLANT MAINTENANCE MODULE 13-07-2015 15-07-2015 Vikash Kumar Malhotra Dadri

ERP OPERATION MODULE FOR CHEMISTRY EXE 16-07-2015 17-07-2015 Vikash Kumar Malhotra PMI, Noida

ERP WBP/LC MODULE REFRESHER COURSE 10-08-2015 12-08-2015 Suchismita Das PMI, Noida

MIS IN ERP OPERATION MODULE THRU WC 13-08-2015 13-08-2015 Vikash Kumar Malhotra Resp. Sites

ERP MM FOR END USER 17-08-2015 19-08-2015 Vikash Kumar Malhotra PMI, Noida

BASIS IN SAP-ERP 19-08-2015 21-08-2015 Suchismita Das PMI, Noida

ERP OPERATION MODULE COURSE 14-09-2015 17-09-2015 Vikash Kumar Malhotra PMI, Noida

ERP FM MODULE-FOR GAS STATIONS THRU WC 15-09-2015 15-09-2015 Vikash Kumar Malhotra Resp. Sites