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. The selection of open source software was done according to the design requirements of respective applications. Consequently, Java was identified for developing the breakdown capturing application at the shop floor and Hyper Text Markup Language (HTML), Javascript, Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) was identified for developing the breakdown monitoring application. This paper explains the design and functionality of the breakdown capturing and monitoring applications and their integration with the ERP system. It also presents the estimated cost savings to the company, due to in-house application development using FOSS.