Poor data quality and slow, manual reporting impacted Bestway Cement’s managers’ ability to identify opportunities for operational efficiency, affecting profitability and environmental impact.

Bestway Cement deployed SAP S/4HANA on IBM Power Systems H922 servers and IBM FlashSystem 5000 storage, implemented by IBM Lab Services. 

With four major sites each delivering millions of tons of cement a year, Bestway Cement runs energy-intensive, complex industrial processes. From goods inwards to customer deliveries, operational efficiency is an absolute priority, to help the company achieve improved quality, enhanced profitability, and reduced environmental footprint. 

Built in part through acquisition, Bestway Cement relied on multiple, separate solutions to run the business. In this situation, from raw materials to final product, managers were unable to obtain timely, accurate data for analysis, impacting their ability to identify opportunities for efficiency improvements. 

For example, as trucks enter and leave each site they pass onto weighbridges to determine the exact loads, which is a critical piece of data. Extracting the information (e.g. truck identity, materials item, load weight, time, date) and matching it to finances and production was an error-prone process, and by the time results were generated a week or more later, opportunities to rectify discrepancies were long gone. 

Junaid Nasir, Head of Information Technology Department, explains, “Extracting information was largely manual, which introduced an element of human error. Managers were sent printed reports, often based on poor quality input data, that ran to hundreds of pages, all delivered two or three weeks after the event. Similarly, on the finance side, the general ledger, payroll, and accounts payables systems ran on individual systems, and month-end closing could take up to three weeks.”

He continues, “In a commodity sector such as cement, operational capability is the central lever to enhance profitability. At the same time, when running a business with very high energy consumption, efficiency also makes a direct contribution to reducing environmental impact. With these twin imperatives, Bestway Cement looked for ways to improve performance by providing real-time data to executives, helping us to cut waste and grow the business, even as we improve our green credentials.”
 

The ultimate ambition at Bestway Cement is to help the company improve efficiency by matching orders closely to production, reducing waste, and cutting energy and environmental impact. 

By deploying integrated SAP S/4HANA solutions on IBM Power Systems H922 servers and IBM Storage, for the first time Bestway Cement will have an integrated overview of its production across all four manufacturing sites. From raw materials to finished product, Bestway will gain visibility of costs, profitability, and processes, available in real time.

Sufiyan Ehsan elaborates, “Daily production and cost reports are now available on an actuals rather than estimated basis, with zero manual intervention and no reporting errors. Taking up the earlier example of the weighbridges, we can see truck tare and gross weights in real time from every depot, and we can highlight potential mismatches that might cause production or delivery problems and take action.”

To provide streamlined information flows, Teamsun has built executive dashboards that deliver month-end closing figures within one day. The dashboards permit drill-down into related operational data – such as the cost of goods inwards, production performance and much more – enabled by the integrated nature of the SAP S/4HANA solutions and the high-performance IBM server and storage platforms. 

Junaid Nasir concludes, “The SAP and IBM solutions are helping to transform efficiency at Bestway Cement at every level. For example, real-time information provided by the executive dashboards have removed the need for printed reports, saving thousands of sheets of paper every week.”

“With SAP S/4HANA and IBM Power Systems, Bestway Cement can understand its current production, delivery and financial position, and work to find savings that help us deliver improved profitability, offer a better service to customers, and realize lower operational costs. IBM and SAP technologies help Bestway to achieve more as we consume fewer resources, at great benefit to the industry, its stakeholders and the environment.” 

Bestway Cement (links resides outside ibm.com) manufactures more than 10 million tons of cement annually and is the largest cement producer in Pakistan. The company achieved revenues of approximately PKR 79 billion (USD 500 million) in 2019, employs more than 2,000 people, and frequently wins environmental excellence and corporate social responsibility awards. 

Teamsun Technology Pakistan (link resides outside ibm.com) is a multinational IT service group with a service network covering Greater China, Southeast Asia, North America and Eastern Europe.