Cachapuz implemented the SLV Cement solution by the end of 2009. SLV Cement was fully integrated with SAP ERP due to the excellent partnership between Cachapuz engineer’s team and Konkconsulting’s team. The result of this joint effort was a well defined and tailored integration interface between SLV Cement and SAP ERP allowing the delivery of the best possible solution to comply with the customer’s requirements.

Due to the system adaptability features, SLV Cement frontend modules were also configured and tailored to improve the user experience, enabling on the interface only the required actions in a direct, intuitive and simple manner in order to focus the users on the job and not on the software. With the SLV Cement modules, the number of SAP licenses needed for the dispatching processes were reduced significantly and now, the users are working in one single system – SLV Cement.

SLV Cement reduced also the number of documents printings related to the reception and dispatching processes due to the integration with SAP ERP. At the moment only the picking note (for customers only), delivery note for customers and unload ticket for the plant suppliers.

The parking zone management was also improved with the implementation of SLV Cement due to the organization rules and queue management features of the solution. Every truck that arrives at the cement plant must wait for its turn in the parking zone and SLV Cement will manage the trucks queue fairly and will inform which truck to enter when the time is right. The Parking Zone Manager module of SLV Cement plays an useful role in the cement plant logistics, preventing traffic bottlenecks, increasing the throughput of trucks dispatched and avoiding mistakes and errors calling the trucks to load or to unload inside the cement plant.

Due to its modularity and scalability, SLV Cement allows the integration of innumerous and optional components of hardware that may be adapted to the demands and needs of the customer such as traffic lights, barriers, positioning sensors, information panels, LCD screens, SLV Cement self-service kiosks. For the Nova Cimangola plant, the weighbridges were also enhanced with traffic control components to improve the security of the plant. In each weighbridge it were installed two traffic lights (one to control the access to the weighbridge and other to control the exit of the weighbridge), one control barrier to prevent the access to the plant of unauthorized trucks and also positioning sensors to validate the truck positioning on the weighbridges operations.

SLV Cement offers powerful control tools that register every event in the process checkpoints, marking every log with dates and times. All collected information is processed and aggregated in detailed reports, which are available to consult by authorized system users and that can be analyzed from several dimensions and perspectives. All the information processed and made available by SLV Cement assists the decision makers to check for bottlenecks within the dispatching processes, carrying out corrective measures to solve them and optimize the cement plant. For the Nova Cimangola plant, SLV Cement business analysis modules were configured to address mainly the dispatching performance per zone (parking zone, entrance and exit zone), performance per process (cement loading, raw material unloading), performance on the integration interface and also the analysis of the dispatched and received quantities and the deviations values calculated against the planed operations. The complete knowledge of the cement expedition and dispatching processes is possible only when the right tools are available and respond to the needs of the different users participating in those processes.