The Malawi based Portland Cement Company (PCC) - part of the Commonwealth Development Corporation`s African Cement Group - has purchased the MAXIMO Enterprise Asset Management System from the Pretoria based business solutions provider MST to address several problems that are adversely effecting their drive to remain globally competitive.
PCC quarries limestone and shale, from which clinker is manufactured, at its Changalume works and then, transported 60km by rail, the clinker is ground and processed into cement at its Blantyre factory. PCC manufactures approximately 150,000 tons of clinker per year. The company`s assets include large engineering equipment such as kilns, cement mills, raw material mills, crushers and earth moving equipment.
Mr Gilbert Wood, Group Maintenance Management Consultant at Portland Cement Company`s (PCC) Head Office in Blantyre, said the problems at PCC include a substantial waste of engineering inventory, the inability to retrieve and manage spares efficiently, and to provide management reports in a meaningful format and timely basis, together with unnecessary downtime.
The purchasing function will be improved by researching, enhancing and storing technical data on procurement items within the system. It is envisaged that the electronic request for quotation (RFQ) functionality of MAXIMO coupled to its information cataloguing of technical specifications and drawings will streamline the maintenance supply-chain operations in an environment that often has few suppliers, long lead times and occasionally high agency fees.
With MAXIMO already in use by several organisations in these remote areas all of whom are facing similar challenges, it will now become possible to selectively share information of common interest across organisations and empower consumers to jointly negotiate better pricing and conditions.
Mr Wood, a Management Consultant from the UK based cement giant Blue Circle Industries Plc and who previously project managed the introduction of the systematic control and management of maintenance in Blue Circle, was seconded to assist the CDC African Cement Group in addressing their problems on the strength of his stores, purchasing, maintenance and system implementation knowledge.
"We decided that PCC`s problems would best be addressed by a system that was flexible enough to accommodate the current business processes, whilst providing for the institutionalisation of improved control processes of our assets and operations within the adopted principles of Total Productive Maintenance (TPM). We compiled a features guideline and evaluated several systems according to the detail requirements. MAXIMO proved to have the functional advantage and came out tops regarding maintenance management, purchasing, stores and maintenance spares procurement and application stability. We believe MAXIMO is the product most likely to deliver the benefits we envisage. Apart from the product we considered the profile and stability of the company we would be dealing with and are looking forward to working with the MST team for a successful implementation," Mr Wood said.
According to Mr Wood, PCC intends to contract MST Consulting Services to assist with the implementation and interface between Maximo and PCC`s financial suite. The implementation plan was jointly compiled by PCC and MST.
After completing the implementation of MAXIMO for its Malawi operations, the CDC African Cement Group will roll out MAXIMO to its other sites in Zambia and Tanzania during the first half of next year.
Mr Wood says PCC`s objective is to first implement MAXIMO`s stores and purchasing modules because this is where he believes the most immediate benefits will be realised. The benefits expected in this area are:
The reduction of total stockholding by being able to link the purchasing decisions to the condition of the plant, employment of other Just-In-Time techniques and the optimisation of stock levels.
Reduced purchasing costs by enhancing the technical descriptions to enable competitive procurement.
Reduction in downtime by providing a more efficient stores function, to include proper stock records, ability to locate stock, even in remote stores, and technical specification data on spares and linking of substitute spares.
Mr Wood said the next objective with MAXIMO will be to improve the planning and scheduling of maintenance work. "Only 20 percent of maintenance work is currently planned and the rest is unplanned or breakdown maintenance. We are aiming for 40 percent planned maintenance over the next two years, and 60 percent thereafter. We also want to increase labour utilisation by minimising the causes of delays before work can start by;-
Reducing or eliminating the time spent searching for spare parts
The use of pick lists on planned work to enable stores to pick items in advance and have them ready for use."
Mr Wood says, "With just a 10% improvement on repair costs and a similar percentage on procurement costs, the savings for the first year will be in the region of $600,000. Additionally, a conservatively estimated once-off reduction in stores stock holding will yield a further $700,000 over three years. Many companies, and not just in Africa, become disillusioned with projects such as this because they are often guided by a combination of internal and external personnel who claim benefits that are neither realistic or achievable. Here I believe, the benefits claimed are realistic and because they`ve been conservatively estimated then, by definition, more likely to be achieved."
Danie van Vuuren, MST Senior Account Manager: MAXIMO, says PSDI`s continuous investment towards the development of MAXIMO, keeping it in step with technology and functional demand, is paying off with MAXIMO being deployed at PCC in a thin client configuration. This ground breaking technology dramatically reduces infrastructural demand on the user side and centralises the total administration function. With the next step being objects on the web, the distance/performance dimension associated with information systems will virtually disappear, enabling real enterprise-wide information sharing.
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