Successful Eskom project acclaimed by industry

Eskom`s Generation Plant Maintenance project team has won the Fix Category award in the IT Project Masters competition for the successful completion of the Eskom Generation SAP R/3 Plant Maintenance Implementation Project (M2K+ Project).

The award was presented at the Computer Society of South Africa`s (CSSA) Annual President`s Banquet on 14 November, at which the IT Personality of the Year 2002 and the CIO of the Year 2002 were also presented.

The project, assisted by the Focused Business Solutions division of leading IT solutions and services provider arivia.kom, was completed one month ahead of schedule and 20% under the originally planned expenditure of R30 million.

The project was managed as a joint venture between third-party contractors Accenture and Labat, arivia.kom as integration partner, SAPSA as vendor, and Eskom Finesse Solution Centre as internal SAP support. Arivia.kom was responsible for the integration and continues to manage the new environment.

The Fix Award is for the category of best internal IT implementation to optimise or upgrade an existing solution or process. The project involved the installation of SAP PM at 10 Eskom power stations involving approximately 2 000 users. The implementation replaced the existing Permac system with a stable, modern and industry-specific business solution, with embedded plant maintenance best practices. The project is considered one of the best IT implementation projects yet completed at Eskom.

Martin Smit, Eskom Generation Plant Maintenance project manager, who accepted Eskom`s award, says: "Just two months after the completion of the project, an Eskom audit has shown that the system is operating well within its specifications and the key benefits of the implementation project have been met."

The project kicked off in September 2000 and the power stations involved successfully switched over to the new system on 1 July 2002. "A critical element of the successful operation of a power station is that of plant maintenance and a large percentage of a power station`s cost budget goes towards ensuring that maintenance is managed, scheduled and performed efficiently, cost-effectively and successfully on a 24-hour basis, 365 days a year," says Smit.

"We took the decision at the end of 1999 to change our existing solution, a mainframe application - Permac - as it was reaching the end of its lifecycle and support for the product was no longer available from its original supplier. Changing business needs as well as advances in technology also made a strong case for change. "The SAP R/3 PM application was chosen as we believed it would streamline and integrate the plant maintenance system with Generation`s existing SAP financial, costing and materials management modules as well as provide a stable and modern business solution with a capacity for growth."

The project was enormous and came with many challenges. Eskom Generation expects to switch off the Permac system at the end of the year and to confidently run SAP without any glitches. The system is currently generating 70 000 work orders per month.

Smit says that arivia.kom played a major role in assisting Eskom Generation with the purification of the data and the design and development of the purification tool. More than five million entities per power station had to be exported from Permac to the new SAP R/3 PM system over weekends.

Says Smit: "Ariva.kom provided invaluable input and worked closely with the power stations concerned, guiding them through the process, supporting the testing process and ensuring the purification procedure met the integrity requirements. One of the most apparent results of the new system is that of productivity which has improved as a result of the integration of the SAP R3/3 PM system with Eskom`s SAP financial, costing and materials management modules. A key area is cost reporting which is now fully integrated with the cost reporting modules. This has resulted in the availability of real-time and accurate information. Productivity has improved due to the integration."

Smit believes that the success of the project was due to the excellent synergy between arivia.kom, Accenture and Eskom Generation`s Implementation project team. "The project team, comprising representatives from all three companies, formulated a vision for the project which was `to be the best SAP Plant Maintenance project implemented in SA`.

"We had the buy-in of the whole team and we truly believe that we achieved our goals in terms of cost, time and performance, and this I believe we accomplished by keeping our communication open and frank and simply focusing on the project goal," he says.