Offering providers to metal mills and mines all over the world can name for real-world, heavy lifting. So when Phoenix World determined it was time for digital transformation as new management took the helm, it wanted a contemporary plan to embrace the cloud.
Jeff Suellentrop, chief data and expertise officer for Phoenix World, says the corporate works with some 17 metal mill websites within the US and overseas, providing slag remediation and metals restoration. “We function all of the heavy gear, giant loaders, dump vehicles and principally all of the heavy gear within the metal mill,” he says. “We assist course of the byproduct of slags.”
Slag is the byproduct of steelmaking, during which impurities are faraway from the metallic. Suellentrop says his firm works with slag to assist reclaim treasured metals to return to the steelmaking course of. The a part of the byproduct not returned to steelmaking will get crushed and bought to development and different industrial companies. “It’s a really renewable course of,” he says.
Eradicating the Weight of Legacy Tech
Servicing metal mills is Phoenix World’s primary enterprise, Suellentrop says, with contracts that may final from 5 by means of 20 years. “It’s a reasonably distinctive enterprise, pretty complicated in comparison with conventional order-to-cash kind of course of.
That features very giant asset purchases on the onset with tens of thousands and thousands of {dollars} spent on gear to provoke a contract, he says. “We handle all that gear, all of the personnel, and we additionally upkeep all that gear.”
This all requires a reasonably lengthy promoting course of, with every website constructed independently. Phoenix World had a legacy ERP system in place, Suellentrop says, however the distinctive wants of the websites led to fragmented knowledge that was not very built-in. “Our objective was to get what we name activity-based administration, close to real-time activity-based administration,” he says.
The corporate wished to begin contemporary, jettison all of the tech debt, and course of debt to have a totally built-in, modernized group. “We’ve changed each expertise within the firm within the final two years,” Suellentrop says.
Unfettered by the Cloud
The core of that change, he says, was cloud-based SAP ERP software program, for all of Phoenix World’s finance, buying, processing tech, provide chain, contract administration, plans, and telematics. Phoenix World tapped Syntax Methods to transition to SAP S/4HANA Cloud.
Suellentrop says his firm remains to be deploying SAP at its websites, working towards 100% deployment, which can embrace cellular property equivalent to connecting loaders and dump vehicles. “You’ll be able to think about all of the telematics knowledge, hours, gas consumption,” he says. The system contains connecting some 1,700 associates all over the world, integrating knowledge, stock, and managing upkeep outlets by means of SAP. “We’ve taken out the entire hand offs; it’s all automated,” Suellentrop says. “We’ve actually taken days out of the turn-around time and pushed up utilization of the gear, saved thousands and thousands of {dollars} on stock.”
Upkeep, for instance, has been streamlined to let technicians work straight by means of SAP to order restore elements that may be out there that very same day. “It’s a reasonably excessive quantity of knowledge on the subject of all the knowledge across the property, asset upkeep, after which clearly monitoring of all of the totally different actions and sources,” he says. “Our objective with activity-based administration principally is to see close to real-time P&L by website to permit us to make close to real-time choices which assist us service our buyer higher.”
In prior years, Phoenix World noticed spot implementations of latest options for sure wants. After Suellentrop joined the corporate in March 2023, he was requested to architect the whole digital overhaul and digital transformation for the corporate. “I’m accountable, from the manager group, for that digital transformation and starting this activity-based administration,” he says. “Digital to me is basically delivering it on the pace of enterprise and making a drive multiplier. We actually modified each expertise, jettisoned nearly the entire legacy processes, and displaced them with finest practices.”
That allowed Phoenix World to do away with unintegrated and poor processes, Suellentrop says, and leapfrog to finest practices. “Extra importantly, it allowed us to standardize the entire knowledge set,” he says, which meant not a lot knowledge grooming was wanted, quickening its use with AI. “We principally took out a complete problem with deploying AI.”
New Management, New Technique
Suellentrop joined Phoenix World because it emerged from a reorganization, which he says gave the corporate the prospect to begin contemporary with a brand new management group that had a objective of driving enhancements throughout the board. That included the adoption of AI and a reimagining of the enterprise mannequin. “The metal business has not embraced digital fairly on the tempo of another industries,” he says.
The transformation plan aimed for elevated security, profitability, and effectivity. “We went into this with very distinct outcomes, how we noticed this enterprise working sooner or later, after which we principally align the expertise to ship these outcomes,” Suellentrop says. “I can’t stress the significance of that sufficient, as a result of we had a really clear imaginative and prescient from the management group … it takes immense sponsorship, clearly, to jettison all previous processes and go to finest practices.”
That kind of change administration, he says, included telling workers that processes they adopted everyday, maybe for so long as 15 years, would change. This included digitizing every little thing, Suellentrop says, together with analog information, even for operators driving vehicles. “We removed all of the paper and pencils,” he says. “We’ve deployed tablets; we automated so that they didn’t should enter some issues. We wish to reduce the human knowledge entry.”
Upkeep technicians now use tablets, he says, which permits them to handle work orders, order elements, and plan their workloads.
Phoenix World plans to complete deploying the brand new system and working mannequin within the US this 12 months with worldwide websites to comply with in 2026, Suellentrop says. “We’re doing monetary planning. We’ve a number of new AI value-adders that we’re layering on this 12 months within the vegetation which are deployed … we are able to hyper tune our processes and our profitability as a result of we’ve obtained a a lot increased degree of element.”
