Steel Mill Gains Efficiency in its Maintenance Management Processes

One of the largest steel producers in the United States, and the largest of the mini-mill operators, had a problem with two software applications from different vendors overlapping its mission-critical processes for maintenance management. Although their Ross ERP software ran the business, the IFS software was their best-of-breed choice for maintenance management. However, the governing software for overall accounting would continue to be the ERP system.

Operating these two disconnected software applications was a manual effort, falling to the accounting department to apply redundant, dual data entry for purchase orders, inventory transactions, receipts and invoices. It had become a time-consuming effort with a high risk for errors. They turned to Ceiba Solutions for a better solution.

The Ceiba team proposed using its CDi software and integration services to synchronize these two applications, assuring them that the new system would monitor, catch and immediately notify of any errors or exceptions that happened in the transaction flow.

CDi operates in the “middleware area,” with no need to modify the vendor applications to make it work. It also has its own rules and monitoring capabilities, brokering transactions and data back and forth between the two applications. Pre-determined rules, decided by the customer, dictate application ownership of specific processes.

The synchronized Maintenance and ERP system has been up and running since November 2008. The customer’s IT organization has better control over the system, and can quickly identify and fix issues when they occur. The Accounts Payable people work more efficiently. And the Purchasing group is confident that the ERP system accuracy is maintained automatically.