Feathers in cap

Zamil ITG made significant progress in standardizing business processes across Zamil Industrial globally. In addition, many processes were improved and automated in the area of Sales, Engineering, Material Planning, Mobile Supply Chain, Finance, HR, and Logistics in ZI BUs. This seamless integration of processes lead to the availability of information for efficient handoffs between functions and gather information early at every stage for business to improve productivity, reduction in reworks and cost management.

• The Engineering System Development team (part of GETS) has developed and implemented 3D modeling casing and coil design and selection software, with a full graphical user interface including compatibility with 2D drawings. It is also integrated with Microsoft Excel to extract the bill of materials that will be used in ERP for EPN generation. The application minimizes manual errors and improves the efficiency and accuracy of the drawings.
• Entire Supply Chain process automated by developing online RFQ-Quotation Management application. Zamil Industrial Supplier “ZISupplier”, a cloud-based application that standardizes and automates purchase management process, was rolled out across ZI. This allows complete visibility of spending across the organization, ensuring compliance with ZI Policy as well as driving efficiency and managing costs by eliminating paperwork, rework and errors.
• Logistic process automated from Purchase requisition to Material receiving and Invoice processing using force.com application, which provides real-time information and features to track the shipments. ICC replaces legacy Metro application, with features such as Purchase Order acknowledgment, Ex-Work date confirmation and Commercial Invoice generation. The application automates routine tasks, saves man-hours and improves tracking capabilities.
• Master planning and scheduling system developed and rolled out for ZI BU’s to streamline production scheduling and optimizing the resource utilization across departments.
• The Global ERP Instance was upgraded to the latest technology. The new version provides flexibility in upgrading, patching, cloning and disaster recovery as well as a better database resource management.
• For T&G, the Enquiry Optimizer System was implemented to streamline the operations of the Sales & Material Planning Department. The manual inquiry practice was completely transformed into the system, which has resulted in improved optimization feature, increased efficiency, and the ability of tracking of material planning and booking, eventually optimizing overall inventory.
• Purchasing, Inventory and Finance modules were successfully enabled for ZS Construction India. This will standardize the practices followed and assist in maintaining and tracking information.
• The Engineering Support Request (ESR) System has been developed and Implemented for the ZAC Applied Engineering and Sales departments. This allows the engineering team to provide timely and accurate support for the sales team, including capturing product configuration information and creating a database of lessons learned for future reference
• A new ZI Short Messaging Service application has been released for ZI Corporate HR, Consumer Female section and CoolCare Call Center. The corporate Short Messaging System application, developed in-house at Zamil ITG, allows for seamless integration with all mobile service providers in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Through its features and customizations, it allows our businesses to launch notifications on employee transactions, product or service delivery, promotions, payment due dates, among others, directly to our employee’s mobiles instead of emails. This helps optimize our communications for the mobile age.
• A new In-house developed Instrument Calibration Test (ICT) Module has been developed and released for the ZAC Quality and Engineering Department. This enables tracking the periodic maintenance of equipment based on the industry standards and regulatory requirements.
• Major IT Infrastructure upgrade for ZS PEB Vietnam has been completed in line with Zamil ITG standards. In addition, all Vietnam user accounts have been migrated to ziic.net global forest domain. These upgrades will enhance desktop/laptop security, reduce operational costs and increase the ability to meet any compliance issues.
• In an effort to manage the budget for projects effectively and automate resource sharing and utilization more efficiently, Project Costing and Billing modules have been enabled for Zamil Steel PEB Egypt. Additionally, Work in Process (WIP) costing and invoice process has been automated to calculate finished goods cost and generate invoices based on product category. This provides accurate cost and streamlines invoice generation based on the product group.
• A major process re-engineering and automation has been completed by linking WIP jobs with Sales Orders for ZAC Applied. The new process enables customers to track and take decisions based on the status of every phase of the production process, increases Efficiency, Accuracy, and Traceability, and provides better customer service.
• For ZAC Applied/Consumer, the Export Logistics process has been streamlined and automated. The new process enables customers to receive sales orders and pick slips via ERP; this eliminates duplication of effort, discrepancies and reduces cycle time delays.

This year Zamil ITG has successfully implemented many new / enhanced / upgraded systems. For ZI business users, it translated into new or improved business processes as well as hundreds of benefits gained.

With the introduction of the BPM function, we have made tremendous progress in our focus to align IT with business goals, by

1. Gap analysis and solution design based on best practices
2. Initiatives in major business processes for centralization and tighter integration to achieve quantifiable business impact

A few highlights summarized below:

• ERP
  • The target of “single-instance” ERP has been accomplished. This has led to standardization of business processes across ZI business in Saudi Arabia, UAE
  • Oracle Human Capital Management (HCM) is getting implemented in more business units (BUs)
  • Many other enhancements have been carried out in various modules of Oracle ERP as per needs of different BUs
• Cloud
  • So far 17 global applications are deployed in cloud environment which enables us to sustain a hybrid and collaborative environment
• Mobile Technology
  • Mobile solutions are provided for field users
• Others
  • Many new solutions and enhancements implemented through in-house systems deployed using Oracle, iSWEET, Java, SalesForce, Taleo, sharepoint etc.

• Various business units of Zamil Industries were integrated into a single point Oracle ERP system. The activity which began in 2012, ensures consistency of processes and single source of data which in turn results in increased operational efficiency & control, This has also resulted in added benefit of significant reduction in the costs of maintenance, management and control.
• Emails are now on Cloud, ensuring anytime, anywhere and any device connectivity so that no technological hindrance can affect productivity of our hard working employees.
• Cloud is the new place to manage the complexities of variety of documents with ease and efficiency. We deployed Document Management system on cloud which has in turn streamlined global sharing, workflow management, security, version control etc. Now engineering drawings can be viewed globally without any problem.
• We have begun implementation of Oracle Human Capital Management for some BUs in ZI; others will follow in near future. That brings in industry-best and consistent practices to manage talent across all entities. Care is being taken that all the country-specific applicable laws and regulations will be adhered to even though we have a unified global repository of data.

• The Expense management application is implemented for ZS Area Sales Offices. It is our first internally developed cloud-based application. This has greatly simplified the process of submission and approval of expenses for people on the move. The turnaround time is reduced and has brought more control to Finance.

• New Oracle ERP (R12) instance has been set up in Dammam as the single global entity and one company is implemented on the same. It would result in consolidation of data, consistency in processes, and reduction in infrastructure cost.
• Oracle ERP re-implemented for ZS Pune, streamlining all finance and SCM modules.

• For the Field service technicians of Coolcare, an application is provided to track and update their work-orders while on the go. It is implemented using an industry leading environment on the cloud platform, and is the first of its kind in ZI