Johannesburg, 14 Jun 2005
Mittal Steel has contracted Unisys Africa, through local subsidiary Mittal Steel South Africa, to implement an IT policy framework for the organisation`s global IT operation.
"IT is not our core business so we need to employ only those systems that support our core operations. We don`t invest in technology that does not achieve this," says Andrew van Lelyveld, senior technical architect, Information Management at Mittal Steel South Africa.
"The framework of principles, standards and guidelines that we have established through the collective knowledge of the global IT team, Unisys Africa and Rethink, achieves exactly this."
The company is one of the most technologically advanced in the business, setting new standards at its steel finishing plants, in automation, productivity and quality in producing cold-rolled and galvanised steels. It also has facilities in the US and France devoted to flat and long products research. It was one of the first steel makers to participate in the customer product design process.
It is in line with this ethos that the business, during a continued period of acquisitions, has developed and is implementing its new IT systems and process framework. The framework is based on an agglomeration of global standards, best practices and methodologies that include IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL), BS7799 and CobIT.
The project aims to standardise IT systems and procedural maturity across 25 facilities for 160 000 employees of this $22 billion revenue-generating business, one of the largest steel producers in the world.
Mittal Steel, chaired and founded by Lakshmi Mittal, is the product of a merger announced in October 2004 between LNM Holdings and Ispat International.
According to a story in Metal Bulletin in February: "Mittal is convinced the steel industry as a whole, not just his own group, has embarked on a new, more profitable era. `You can`t take away the cyclicality of the steel business,` Mittal concedes. `But there`s a new set of managers in steel looking for sustainability and value creation. We`re no longer production-centred, we`re profit-centred. Because of this and consolidation we have a new environment in the steel industry.`"
The framework was derived from the experience and knowledge of the Unisys Africa team, Rethink and Mittal Steel`s IT leaders from all its regions during a workshop held in SA last year. Those include Dubai, Mexico, Poland and the SADC countries. Rethink is a management consultancy and Unisys Africa partner.
Adopting the standards led to the establishment of 85 policies that act as guidelines for Mittal Steel`s global IT operations to reach a standard process and systems maturity. This will enable the company to ensure it is compliant with international and local regulations, not least of which is Sarbanes-Oxley. It will also enable IT to achieve its goal at Mittal Steel: Improving and supporting business processes.
Rolling the framework out to the regions will be completed in phases. Part of the standardisation drive sees the business adopting SAP R/3 across the board, but while that will be implemented on a per-business case, Sarbanes-Oxley compliance is a critical initial goal for all operations during the next year.
"The framework developed through the cooperation of Unisys Africa, Rethink and Mittal Steel`s experienced IT team effectively manages the union between business processes and information systems," says Allan Wattrus, practice director: Global Infrastructure Services at Unisys Africa. "The framework enables cost-effective infrastructure management and is the key to maintaining control in a technologically diverse and changing environment."
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