Joy Mining Machinery South Africa, local subsidiary of global machinery and systems suppliers to the underground coal mining industry, successfully went live on leading enterprise business solution SAP R/3 earlier this year.
Within Joy, the local site is the only one world-wide where four businesses - Original Equipment (OE), Spares, Rebuild and Aftermarket - are being run within a single plant. This, according to SAP project manager at Joy SA, Adriaan Louw, is undoubtedly the most significant implementation in the group.
Following the acquisition of UK-based coal mining company, Longwall International, mother company Harnischfeger Industries became a one-stop coal mining equipment supplier. However, this resulted in under utilised capacity and diverse business practices. Says Adriaan : "SAP was the vehicle chosen for the effective utilisation of resources and business practice unification in the UK, USA, Australia and South Africa."
The SAP service management (SM) module was utilised to cater for the stringent requirements of the Joy component exchange program. This program ensures that a repaired component is kept in stock and when required by a customer, is replaced at very short notice. The customer is then invoiced for the replaced item after the added value to repair the returned item has been costed by Joy.
"The company is highly customer focused, which in the past resulted in endless combinations of our product range. Now, through utilising the SAP variant configurator in our OE and Rebuild businesses, we will be able to serve our customers in a more controlled and effective manner."
"The SAP implementation has left us with a well-trained user community, limitless functionality and transparency, and has guaranteed that Joy will be able to serve its customers in a more effective and professional way into the next millennium."
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