Process industry profit analyser steers business development at Sapa, Indelex and Rhodia

Process industry firms seeking to get more out of their ERP, legacy financial systems and plant management, historian and automation systems are finding specially tuned business intelligence software is doing the business. Canadian pVelocity’s so-called Manufacturing Profit Intelligence software is changing fortunes at companies like Sapa UK and Indelex (both aluminium extruders) and speciality chemicals producer Rhodia – all complex, multi-plant process manufacturers. The systems extract data from transaction and online plant management systems and are providing manufacturers with new understanding about products, customers and processes in terms of business viability. “We look after complex, multiple product, multi-plants and multi-customer manufacturers, and try to maximise profitability by segmenting products – which are winners and losers from a profitability standpoint – according to production and financial data,” explains vice president of business development Mike Neary. “Our systems enable users to drill down to production orders and find out why they were unprofitable. Then they can implement improvement plans and measure changes in profitability by fine tuning equipment, the product, line or whatever. They can also see which chemistry or market segments are profitable and which are not, and which are seeing strongest growth so they can see where to focus.” UK-based Ralph Allen, European vice president of sales, adds: “From our years in consulting we know the process industry KPIs, but apart from that, what’s special is our user interface and the way the data is organised underneath it. We have a schema into which we can drop information right from the PLCs and plant historians.” And with ‘Powered by SAP NetWeaver’ (the SAP application integration platform) certification granted last month, use with SAP ERP should be even easier. Systems aren’t cheap – Allen says a “six figure investment” is required. However, he also claims that existing users show ROI typically within nine months, and that implementation takes just eight to 12 weeks.