Teck Resources - UXC Eclipse
Customer Case Study
Teck Resources MinePoint, built on Microsoft Dynamics AX, allows for multi-site integration for growing resource company
Industry
Solution
Mining
Teck Resources chose to implement MinePoint, built on Microsoft Dynamics AX:
Straight Talk “UXC Eclipse did an excellent job of bringing quality resources in and supporting our IS department. I really appreciate that they are working through the structure & approach we have in place for the business, rather than around it.”
• Allows for multi-mine site operations
Chris Coupal,
• Integrated Enterprise Asset Management
• Improved financial reporting and cost control • Reduced reliance on paper-based systems
Director of Business Solutions Teck Resources Limited
Challenge Headquartered in Vancouver, Teck Resources wanted a solution for its coal operation that would unify various disparate procedures, software applications and information. The goal: to provide transparency across their six coal sites within a single data platform. Chris Coupal, Director of Business Solutions for Teck’s coal business unit, sought an integrated solution that would help establish strong, standardized operational processes and procedures. “We were trying to tackle something that is truly transformational – for six mines
that have historically operated independently, in effect in a silo, to operate as one,” said Coupal. “We have historically relied solely on people for our success and, while people will continue to be a key to this, we can’t only rely on those with 20 or 30 years experience. We need solid processes, and a good solution that allows more junior people to come in and achieve the same results.”
1
Teck Resources recognized the need for more than just an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) solution. The business also needed an Enterprise Asset Management module that would monitor, schedule and support all on-site equipment and maintenance requirements. With the six remote sites previously managing their own equipment ordering and allocation methods, ranging from open records, pick ticket systems, and a paper-based honour system, manually keyed in after each shift, Teck Resources wanted every coal site to operate under the same processes. “Our aim is to leverage the same maintenance best practices, event templates, scheduling and maintenance functions across all sites,” Coupal continued. “We need to ensure that we have set ourselves up to work as one collective team, merging experience from across all six sites and following more disciplined practices in the future. As long as we have a consistent solution and can achieve continuous improvement, everybody benefits,” said Coupal. After careful consideration of suitable ERP solutions in the market, Teck selected Microsoft Dynamics AX as their preferred solution along with an Enterprise Asset Management module to track and schedule each sites ongoing equipment maintenance requirements. “We chose Microsoft Dynamics AX because it was both cost effective and early in its lifecycle – an emerging player in the ERP space, which meant we would have a long term, evolving solution through its maturity and growth. With
“It was the quality of the people provided, their understanding and expertise in Enterprise Asset Management, mining and maintenance that really brought UXC Eclipse to the table.”
2
Chris Coupal Director of Business Solutions Teck Resources Limited
Microsoft behind it, we believed we would have access to reputable ISVs, more developers, and as such, it would be a better choice than other large ERPs,” said Coupal. Teck began by implementing Microsoft Dynamics AX with Enterprise Asset Management at one of its sites. This first implementation took some 18 months to complete. “About nine months after the first implementation, we realized we weren’t getting where we needed to be. After making a few enquiries, I called WellPoint, the supplier of the Enterprise Asset Management module, and said we needed someone who knows what they are doing with the Enterprise Asset Management product and understood mining, and they recommended UXC Eclipse,” said Coupal.
Solution With global experience and MinePoint, an award winning solution specifically customized for the mining industry, UXC Eclipse was the perfect partner to assist with the implementation at Teck Resources five remaining coal sites. “UXC Eclipse parachuted four people in very quickly and, in a month, managed to solve a significant number of our defects related to the maintenance area. It was the quality of the people that were provided, their understanding and expertise in Enterprise Asset Management, mining and maintenance that really brought UXC Eclipse to the table,” says Coupal.
Built on the Microsoft Dynamics AX platform, MinePoint provides Teck Resources with a solution that incorporates the deep functionality required by the mining industry, including: standard financials and reporting to stock exchanges, operations reporting across all mine sites, maintenance scheduling and repairs, enterprise asset management and vendor classifications and supply chain management.
Outcome and Benefits Implementing one solution across all six coal sites allowed Teck Resources to create shared service organizations within the company. As an example, “We have one accounts payable group that pays all invoices for all sites, and as we migrated more and more sites onto Microsoft Dynamics AX, the task became quicker and faster,” says Coupal. An additional product, DAXTI, has been installed as a simplified interface to Microsoft Dynamics AX for maintenance tradesmen on the floor to easily utilize the solution for routine day-to-day tasks, including managing work orders and dropping pick tickets for selected parts. “This interface walks them through simpler forms, mimicking their function’s workflow. By removing the paper-based processes which required foremen to key in information, we now get everything quicker and in real time. We now get more detail in front of tradesmen, and they can access parts within the system themselves – they can review parts books, select parts, add them to their work order, and complete and raise work orders, says Coupal. “It’s allowed us to extend the reach of the Microsoft Dynamics AX system, right down to the floor – and that’s really where we have improved information and data. It’s starting to support the maintenance best practice changes we are putting in place - to forecast and schedule maintenance and decrease reactive maintenance, and trying to get better information into our cost book.”
3
Implementation Support Determined to support the successful implementation of the MinePoint solution across their business, Teck Resources established a focused engagement team comprising employees from each of their business function areas: maintenance, materials, finance and engineering. In conjunction with UXC Eclipse’s delivery, the engagement team implemented an entire release management process, allowing the business to identify and prioritize business requirements, which were then prioritized from a delivery perspective and incorporated into the eventual solution releases. “We have established a sustainment release process with a delivery release every two months that introduced new requirements. This allowed us, in a very managed and controlled way, to focus on quality and the development of solutions, training materials, and release notes. We got to a point where we could receive requirements, prioritize them, and build them; communicate out to the business through release notes, and potentially training; and release the functionality in partnership with the business,“ says Coupal. Teck Resources operates an internal IT support team with the philosophy of one support team, one support number. “We have our support team, which is supported by UXC Eclipse Support. It’s really important that, as an organization, our IS group understands the way people are using the system and the challenges they’re having. UXC Eclipse provides the depth and breadth we require, which helps us become more competent on our own.”
To assist with the rapid pace of change, the result of both site implementations and monthly releases, Teck Resources requested UXC Eclipse staff members to “walk the ground” amongst users of the solution, providing day-to-day assistance and navigation of the solution. “We placed UXC Eclipse people in a support role at the sites to assist people in learning, understanding and dealing across their entire coal operation as they envisioned,” says Coupal. “We are now finally at the point where all the things that we wanted are coming online. We went from six independent mines with their own instance of applications, vendor lists, item lists, inventory to one single instance of Microsoft Dynamics AX and one single company within Microsoft Dynamics AX. This allows us to view inventory across all six sites, view our financials across all six sites, do cost comparisons across those sites, and look for critical spares across all six sites and it really allows us to work as one – like one mine with six very large pits rather than six independent mines,” continued Coupal. “From an Enterprise Asset Management perspective, or maintenance perspective, we have confidence in our equipment meters therefore we can perform standard scheduling forecasting functionality and are looking forward to continuing to develop the solution to meet our needs. We are working to set the stage for Reliability Centered Maintenance (RCM) and having a single consolidated system and common best practices across all six sites.
4
“Ensuring core maintenance practices are the same across all sites allows us to continually improve in a holistic and inclusive way. By implementing common RCM frameworks for common equipment used at our sites, we can establish some scalabilities and consistencies as we go forward,” says Coupal. With standardized operational processes and procedures across multiple sites through MinePoint, Teck Resources now have ability to review information about the business presented in a consistent and reliable manner, allowing greater confidence in decision making. “We have a new vendor trade agreement, so we can look at pricing with holistic view on inventory across all our sites. We have one item definition across all our sites, one vendor list. We know, with this system, we will never again be in the position of having our vendor tell us to look at one of our own sites for critical parts,” says Coupal. Teck Resources was able to reduce expenditure on spare parts, through the centralization of vendor trade agreements, improved inventory visibility across all sites, and ultimately, negotiating more competitive pricing. This was considered a vast improvement from previous inventory records, when vendors knew more about the location and levels of critical parts than the individual sites.
UXC Eclipse as a Partner
About Teck Resources
As UXC Eclipse came into the project after the first site’s implementation of Microsoft Dynamics AX, which was performed by another Value Added Reseller (VAR), Teck Resources have been extremely impressed with UXC Eclipse’s ability to step into an existing project, resolve the ongoing issues and deliver the business’s requirements with the expertise and professionalism they originally required.
Teck Resources Limited is a diversified resource company committed to responsible mining and mineral development with major business units focused on copper, metallurgical coal, zinc and energy.
“UXC Eclipse is very professional. I think their management has been outstanding, and they have been very responsive. They did an excellent job of bringing quality resources in and supporting our IS department. I really appreciate that they are working through the structure and approach we have in place for the business rather than around it,” concluded Coupal. “This is more than just an IT system or implementing an application. It’s about the journey the people in the organization go through as they adopt this new system. It’s the recognition that things could be different and that we could work together as a team. This system is providing the common tool and consistent process to actually allow us to achieve the transformation that we desired.”
Teck Resources coal business includes six metallurgical coal mines in British Columbia and Alberta and is the world’s second largest exporter of seaborne steelmaking coal.
About UXC Eclipse: UXC Eclipse is a leading provider of intelligent business solutions to the enterprise and mid-market. Established in 1991, UXC Eclipse’s success has been built by providing the highest levels of service and offering a choice of solutions from leading software vendors. UXC Eclipse’s service offerings include applications business consulting and project management, applications development, corporate performance management and business process management. Built on the Microsoft platform, UXC Eclipse also delivers vertical solutions to deliver deep, industry-specific ERP and CRM functionality. UXC Eclipse is part of the publicly listed Australian IT solutions and services company, UXC Limited. To find out more, please contact UXC Eclipse.
For more information, please contact: USA +1 212 965 6400 [email protected] www.uxceclipse.com
© 2013 UXC Eclipse. All rights reserved.
Canada +1 604 899 6092 [email protected] www.uxceclipse.ca
Teck Resources MinePoint, built on Microsoft Dynamics AX, allows for multi-site integration for growing resource company
Industry
Solution
Mining
Teck Resources chose to implement MinePoint, built on Microsoft Dynamics AX:
Straight Talk “UXC Eclipse did an excellent job of bringing quality resources in and supporting our IS department. I really appreciate that they are working through the structure & approach we have in place for the business, rather than around it.”
• Allows for multi-mine site operations
Chris Coupal,
• Integrated Enterprise Asset Management
• Improved financial reporting and cost control • Reduced reliance on paper-based systems
Director of Business Solutions Teck Resources Limited
Challenge Headquartered in Vancouver, Teck Resources wanted a solution for its coal operation that would unify various disparate procedures, software applications and information. The goal: to provide transparency across their six coal sites within a single data platform. Chris Coupal, Director of Business Solutions for Teck’s coal business unit, sought an integrated solution that would help establish strong, standardized operational processes and procedures. “We were trying to tackle something that is truly transformational – for six mines
that have historically operated independently, in effect in a silo, to operate as one,” said Coupal. “We have historically relied solely on people for our success and, while people will continue to be a key to this, we can’t only rely on those with 20 or 30 years experience. We need solid processes, and a good solution that allows more junior people to come in and achieve the same results.”
1
Teck Resources recognized the need for more than just an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) solution. The business also needed an Enterprise Asset Management module that would monitor, schedule and support all on-site equipment and maintenance requirements. With the six remote sites previously managing their own equipment ordering and allocation methods, ranging from open records, pick ticket systems, and a paper-based honour system, manually keyed in after each shift, Teck Resources wanted every coal site to operate under the same processes. “Our aim is to leverage the same maintenance best practices, event templates, scheduling and maintenance functions across all sites,” Coupal continued. “We need to ensure that we have set ourselves up to work as one collective team, merging experience from across all six sites and following more disciplined practices in the future. As long as we have a consistent solution and can achieve continuous improvement, everybody benefits,” said Coupal. After careful consideration of suitable ERP solutions in the market, Teck selected Microsoft Dynamics AX as their preferred solution along with an Enterprise Asset Management module to track and schedule each sites ongoing equipment maintenance requirements. “We chose Microsoft Dynamics AX because it was both cost effective and early in its lifecycle – an emerging player in the ERP space, which meant we would have a long term, evolving solution through its maturity and growth. With
“It was the quality of the people provided, their understanding and expertise in Enterprise Asset Management, mining and maintenance that really brought UXC Eclipse to the table.”
2
Chris Coupal Director of Business Solutions Teck Resources Limited
Microsoft behind it, we believed we would have access to reputable ISVs, more developers, and as such, it would be a better choice than other large ERPs,” said Coupal. Teck began by implementing Microsoft Dynamics AX with Enterprise Asset Management at one of its sites. This first implementation took some 18 months to complete. “About nine months after the first implementation, we realized we weren’t getting where we needed to be. After making a few enquiries, I called WellPoint, the supplier of the Enterprise Asset Management module, and said we needed someone who knows what they are doing with the Enterprise Asset Management product and understood mining, and they recommended UXC Eclipse,” said Coupal.
Solution With global experience and MinePoint, an award winning solution specifically customized for the mining industry, UXC Eclipse was the perfect partner to assist with the implementation at Teck Resources five remaining coal sites. “UXC Eclipse parachuted four people in very quickly and, in a month, managed to solve a significant number of our defects related to the maintenance area. It was the quality of the people that were provided, their understanding and expertise in Enterprise Asset Management, mining and maintenance that really brought UXC Eclipse to the table,” says Coupal.
Built on the Microsoft Dynamics AX platform, MinePoint provides Teck Resources with a solution that incorporates the deep functionality required by the mining industry, including: standard financials and reporting to stock exchanges, operations reporting across all mine sites, maintenance scheduling and repairs, enterprise asset management and vendor classifications and supply chain management.
Outcome and Benefits Implementing one solution across all six coal sites allowed Teck Resources to create shared service organizations within the company. As an example, “We have one accounts payable group that pays all invoices for all sites, and as we migrated more and more sites onto Microsoft Dynamics AX, the task became quicker and faster,” says Coupal. An additional product, DAXTI, has been installed as a simplified interface to Microsoft Dynamics AX for maintenance tradesmen on the floor to easily utilize the solution for routine day-to-day tasks, including managing work orders and dropping pick tickets for selected parts. “This interface walks them through simpler forms, mimicking their function’s workflow. By removing the paper-based processes which required foremen to key in information, we now get everything quicker and in real time. We now get more detail in front of tradesmen, and they can access parts within the system themselves – they can review parts books, select parts, add them to their work order, and complete and raise work orders, says Coupal. “It’s allowed us to extend the reach of the Microsoft Dynamics AX system, right down to the floor – and that’s really where we have improved information and data. It’s starting to support the maintenance best practice changes we are putting in place - to forecast and schedule maintenance and decrease reactive maintenance, and trying to get better information into our cost book.”
3
Implementation Support Determined to support the successful implementation of the MinePoint solution across their business, Teck Resources established a focused engagement team comprising employees from each of their business function areas: maintenance, materials, finance and engineering. In conjunction with UXC Eclipse’s delivery, the engagement team implemented an entire release management process, allowing the business to identify and prioritize business requirements, which were then prioritized from a delivery perspective and incorporated into the eventual solution releases. “We have established a sustainment release process with a delivery release every two months that introduced new requirements. This allowed us, in a very managed and controlled way, to focus on quality and the development of solutions, training materials, and release notes. We got to a point where we could receive requirements, prioritize them, and build them; communicate out to the business through release notes, and potentially training; and release the functionality in partnership with the business,“ says Coupal. Teck Resources operates an internal IT support team with the philosophy of one support team, one support number. “We have our support team, which is supported by UXC Eclipse Support. It’s really important that, as an organization, our IS group understands the way people are using the system and the challenges they’re having. UXC Eclipse provides the depth and breadth we require, which helps us become more competent on our own.”
To assist with the rapid pace of change, the result of both site implementations and monthly releases, Teck Resources requested UXC Eclipse staff members to “walk the ground” amongst users of the solution, providing day-to-day assistance and navigation of the solution. “We placed UXC Eclipse people in a support role at the sites to assist people in learning, understanding and dealing across their entire coal operation as they envisioned,” says Coupal. “We are now finally at the point where all the things that we wanted are coming online. We went from six independent mines with their own instance of applications, vendor lists, item lists, inventory to one single instance of Microsoft Dynamics AX and one single company within Microsoft Dynamics AX. This allows us to view inventory across all six sites, view our financials across all six sites, do cost comparisons across those sites, and look for critical spares across all six sites and it really allows us to work as one – like one mine with six very large pits rather than six independent mines,” continued Coupal. “From an Enterprise Asset Management perspective, or maintenance perspective, we have confidence in our equipment meters therefore we can perform standard scheduling forecasting functionality and are looking forward to continuing to develop the solution to meet our needs. We are working to set the stage for Reliability Centered Maintenance (RCM) and having a single consolidated system and common best practices across all six sites.
4
“Ensuring core maintenance practices are the same across all sites allows us to continually improve in a holistic and inclusive way. By implementing common RCM frameworks for common equipment used at our sites, we can establish some scalabilities and consistencies as we go forward,” says Coupal. With standardized operational processes and procedures across multiple sites through MinePoint, Teck Resources now have ability to review information about the business presented in a consistent and reliable manner, allowing greater confidence in decision making. “We have a new vendor trade agreement, so we can look at pricing with holistic view on inventory across all our sites. We have one item definition across all our sites, one vendor list. We know, with this system, we will never again be in the position of having our vendor tell us to look at one of our own sites for critical parts,” says Coupal. Teck Resources was able to reduce expenditure on spare parts, through the centralization of vendor trade agreements, improved inventory visibility across all sites, and ultimately, negotiating more competitive pricing. This was considered a vast improvement from previous inventory records, when vendors knew more about the location and levels of critical parts than the individual sites.
UXC Eclipse as a Partner
About Teck Resources
As UXC Eclipse came into the project after the first site’s implementation of Microsoft Dynamics AX, which was performed by another Value Added Reseller (VAR), Teck Resources have been extremely impressed with UXC Eclipse’s ability to step into an existing project, resolve the ongoing issues and deliver the business’s requirements with the expertise and professionalism they originally required.
Teck Resources Limited is a diversified resource company committed to responsible mining and mineral development with major business units focused on copper, metallurgical coal, zinc and energy.
“UXC Eclipse is very professional. I think their management has been outstanding, and they have been very responsive. They did an excellent job of bringing quality resources in and supporting our IS department. I really appreciate that they are working through the structure and approach we have in place for the business rather than around it,” concluded Coupal. “This is more than just an IT system or implementing an application. It’s about the journey the people in the organization go through as they adopt this new system. It’s the recognition that things could be different and that we could work together as a team. This system is providing the common tool and consistent process to actually allow us to achieve the transformation that we desired.”
Teck Resources coal business includes six metallurgical coal mines in British Columbia and Alberta and is the world’s second largest exporter of seaborne steelmaking coal.
About UXC Eclipse: UXC Eclipse is a leading provider of intelligent business solutions to the enterprise and mid-market. Established in 1991, UXC Eclipse’s success has been built by providing the highest levels of service and offering a choice of solutions from leading software vendors. UXC Eclipse’s service offerings include applications business consulting and project management, applications development, corporate performance management and business process management. Built on the Microsoft platform, UXC Eclipse also delivers vertical solutions to deliver deep, industry-specific ERP and CRM functionality. UXC Eclipse is part of the publicly listed Australian IT solutions and services company, UXC Limited. To find out more, please contact UXC Eclipse.
For more information, please contact: USA +1 212 965 6400 [email protected] www.uxceclipse.com
© 2013 UXC Eclipse. All rights reserved.
Canada +1 604 899 6092 [email protected] www.uxceclipse.ca
