A process of integration regenerated

Lack of system integration between the shopfloor and boardroom is a serious issue for the process sector, costing each UK plant around £6m per year in unplanned shutdowns. So says BASF IT Services (BIS). Each site experiences a minimum of seven unplanned shutdowns totalling £4m in direct costs of repair and lost production, plus £2m for pre- and post-shutdown performance delays. A survey, which the company commissioned from Benchmark Research, found that 76% of executives said they know of the problem – which BIS calls the ‘disconnect’ factor – exists, yet only 26% considered it a high priority. What’s more, 41% of respondents said they had no idea of the cost implications of not having real-time information flowing through their process plants. This is an issue that BIS says it can solve. The 2,300-strong company, which was spun out of parent BASF AG in April 2001, believes the research findings support its target to grow non-BASF business throughout Europe. Wolfgang Erny, managing director for BIS’ application and infrastructure division, says: “We have analysed our service portfolio, set priorities and grouped our offerings for the various market and customer target groups. “Three core competencies have resulted from this: process industry solutions, infrastructure services and business process outsourcing.” He adds: “Within two to three years we want 15 to 20% of our turnover to come from business outside the BASF group…We have substantial technical and process know-how.” The company anticipates turnover this year at eur440m – with eur15—20m of this stemming from external business. At present, the major client is BASF group, and BIS has recouped “significant savings” for its parent in terms of its IT, “and we are also implementing new procurement strategies which will enable the company to make sustainable savings of 35m euros by 2004,” adds Erny. BIS’ credentials are, he states, “on the one hand, our extensive process know-how and, on the other, our experience in managing large-scale projects. For example, in just 13 months, we managed to install 31,000 new PCs at all BASF sites in Europe. We significantly increased the network capacity and we carried out a reorganisation of the support services.” A partnership with engineering services company Aker Kvaerner is one key which BIS hopes will unlock more of the process industry market. The alliance has been formed to help process manufacturers reduce their maintenance costs and improve plant utilisation by integrating data from the shop floor with their ERP systems. This initial contract, worth eur 2.7m, runs to the end of 2004 but can continue with one-year extensions. The two partners have jointly developed a maintenance planning system, called SAP-PAS, to integrate with SAP’s R/3 ERP system and Primavera’s P3e asset management and project planning tool. David Wilson, BIS’ sales director, says: “With our 30 years’ experience as IT service provider for BASF, optimisation of the IT environment has become second nature for us… Combined with Aker Kvaerner’s engineering know-how, we’ve built a compelling case for breathing life back into the process industry by integrating maintenance with the rest of the business.”