Background
The shipping area of Sims Metal Management at Botany co-ordinates the shipping of containerised and bulk exports of scrap metal for the region covering AU, NZ and PNG.
Shipments were being tracked manually using spreadsheets with documentation completed in a legacy system with these documents then being lodged with the necessary stakeholders.
Business Challenge
The current system had remained largely unchanged over the past 15 years, has resulted in the execution of inefficient shipment processes which have a risk of being error prone. A business process review of the Export Shipping and Export Finance processes identified many process steps that could be eliminated through automation and the use of a best of breed system with integration to other core systems. It also identified gains to be achieved in the visibility and timeliness of the financial reporting of foreign exchange variations.
Results
CMC project managed the initial implementation of a new Logistics System over a 12 month time frame to replace the current system, implement interfaces between the global system and the ERP system (MS Dynamics AX) , migrate the export accounting system and implement a new costing module to replace the manual export financial accounting process.
The project addressed current limitations and delivered a range of both hard and soft benefits including:
- Reduced Australian Head Office costs.
- Improved visibility over the timing of settlement of contracts.
- Improved control over shipping/export costs.
- Improved the ability to analyse, investigate and explain foreign exchange/ averaging account variances.
The project was then handed over to an internal Project Manager to complete.
