Industry: Engineering and Construction
Category: Business Process Management, Cloud, Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Mobile Solutions, SAP HANA

Streamlining Global Operations: Weir Minerals' SAP Success Story

Why NTT DATA Business Solutions?

 

  • Strong technical competence SAP HANA expertise
  • Managed cloud services and IaaS capabilities
  • Strong recommendations from SAP and SAP partners
  • Initiatives on the Public Clouds

Peter Atkinson, SAP Program Director, Weir Minerals

We engaged itelligence* Malaysia to build our global SAP hosting platform. We have received exceptional service - with very few unplanned outages, and flexibility on their part to help us at very short notice if needed. They have been a key contributor to the success of the project.

Weir Minerals is a global leader in the mineral, oil and gas, and power industries. Chiefly manufacturing equipment for slurry transportation and dewatering systems, Weir also provides spare parts and services to the niche oil sands and flue gas desulfurization markets.

Weir Minerals around 14,000 employees generate annual sales of about £1,844.9 million (Weir Group).

Challenges and Benefits

Challenges

  • Global roll-out plan for SAP solutions covering 6 continents over 5 years
  • Insufficient in-house resources requiring Weir to outsource SAP hosting
  • Specialist service provider needed due to limited market knowledge of SAP HANA at the time

Benefits

  • Warehouse management and business processes streamlined in 35 locations
  • Managed cloud services free up international resources
  • All SLAs met, ensuring business as usual throughout
  • 24/7 international support, with local representatives

Solutions

  • SAP Extended Warehouse Management (EWM)
  • SAP BusinessObjects BI
  • SAP Data Services
  • AWS DR-DC environment
 
Weir Minerals

Learn more about how Weir Minerals established a unified SAP ERP strategy and streamlined its global processes with warehouse management.

Read full story

About the Project

Initiating a Global SAP Rollout

Weir Minerals’ 14,000 employees are operating in 35 countries and are serving a wide international clientele. The company wanted to deploy a unified SAP strategy for ERP and warehouse management to streamline processes at all locations around the globe. This project was a greenfield development, replacing legacy systems for which Weir did not have sufficient in-house resources. In order to embark on its SAP journey that would span 6 continents and serve over 6,500 users, Weir Minerals needed guidance and an external hosting partner for solutions based on the SAP HANA platform. NTT DATA Business Solutions was chosen as it has worked closely with SAP for years and delivers global strategy with local expertise on solutions, implementation, and management.

Hosted Services for Flexibility and Scalability

Weir naturally wanted to maintain service availability for its huge clientele throughout the rollout. NTT DATA Business Solutions Malaysia’s technical experience and 24-hour support made it possible to keep unplanned outages to a minimum and react efficiently on short notice if required. All service level agreements (SLAs) were met during the project, allowing for business to continue uninterrupted. Weir initially lacked memory for SAP EWM, but the flexibility of managed cloud services and IaaS from NTT DATA Business Solutions meant the company could quickly scale up to rectify this. Weir Minerals has now accelerated and streamlined its business and warehouse processes with selected SAP solutions and hosting services from NTT DATA Business Solutions.

Unifying a Diverse Infrastructure

The company implemented solutions from the SAP Industrial Machinery & Components portfolio alongside a few original systems. These include SAP EWM, which tracks and automates warehouse processes for more efficient stock management. The application comes as an addition to SAP Supply Chain Management, helping Weir accurately plan projects, people, and infrastructure. As the company needs to collaborate across multiple locations worldwide, having universal access to cleansed and accurate data created by SAP Data Services greatly improves communication. Combined with SAP BusinessObjects BI, Weir Minerals has real-time analytics in a clear interface which will improve decision-making in the long run.

Hosted Services for Sustainable Expansion

Since the end of 2015, Weir’s SAP strategy has been deployed in Europe, Latin America, China, and Malaysia – which has 56 servers alone. Weir benefits from cost-efficient managed cloud services and a single source for all system support – ideal for future rollout in the US, Australia, and Africa.

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About NTT DATA Business Solutions

25
countries
30
years of experience
6000
customers worldwide