NokusaEI, the South African specialist enterprise content management (ECM) consultancy, recently completed the implementation of the SAP document management system at a zinc smelter on the banks of the Derwent estuary in Tasmania. This project (One Vault) is part of a corporate roll-out of the SAP document management system throughout the Zinifex group, which is being managed by NokusaEI. Previous phases included roll-outs for the Zinifex Century mine in Queensland as well as the Zinifex Head Office in Melbourne, and the project is currently continuing with another smelter in Port Pirie as well as a zinc mine at Rosebery, Australia.
According to Gerhard du Plessis, the NokusaEI project manager on the project, Zinifex uses a diverse range of technology which poses unique challenges to a modern ECM system like SAP. The SAP system had to provide functionality for old as well as new document technology, and for administrative documents as well as documents and tools used in the drawing office environment, including a new high-tech 3-D modelling environment. It is a credit to the great strides made by the SAP ECM functionality that all these requirements could be satisfied without the need for any third party software products, which reduced the total cost of ownership dramatically.
The remoteness of many of the Zinifex sites posed unique challenges for the projects, but as the SAP system is designed for a distributed environment, it was possible to implement a cost effective system that could ensure availability of critical documents at remote sites even when the links to the centralised SAP system are unavailable.
Phil Palmer, the Zinifex project leader states, "NokusaEI continues to play a very significant and effective role in the ongoing success of the One Vault project. The dedication, passionate approach and leadership provided have been much appreciated."
This project entrenches SAP as a significant player in resolving document management problems in the international mining sector, and NokusaEI as the leading international implementer of the functionality.
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