Brief introduction of the enterprise
Shanxi Coal Import and Export Group Co., Ltd (“Shanxi Coal Group” for sort hereinafter) is one of the four export enterprises with coal exporting right in China and the only large state-owned enterprise with two channels (export and domestic marketing) in Shanxi. As a key enterprise in Shanxi province, the scale of Shanxi Coal Group is enlarging and its business is expanding, and its operation ability, business ability and control ability have improved steadily; the Group has expanded its business from simple coal export trade to coal exploiting, high-speed rail equipment manufacturing, and investment of diversified businesses; meanwhile the Group highlights coal industry as its main business, and has expanded its coal industrial chain upward and downward; in the upward direction, it has integrated some large-scale coal mines, and in the downward direction, the Group has expanded to coal electricity, coal chemical industry and other industries; at the same time, the Group has also set foot in the fields of wharfs, stations, and transportation business. As the business scale becomes larger and the industries become more diversified, Shanxi Coal Group has set higher standards to internal coordination, budget and performance management, resource integration, risk control and professional service ability to the Group’s realize sustainable development.
Requirements on informatization
Shanxi Coal Group has been developed rapidly in recent years, and informatization management has always been the forceful weapon for the rapid development. While as the business scope of Shanxi Coal Group is becoming larger, more and more higher standards have been put forward to the construction and planning of information system:
1. Information: the foundation information has not realized standardization; the information is not comprehensive; the problem of information isolation; information delivering is not timely and accurate.
2. Application: the application is insufficient, and many business activities lack information technology support; the application is scattered, and can not meet the requirements of business coordination, information coordination and personnel coordination; the openness of adopted technology of some application is weak, and is not flexible enough to meet the need of business changes.
3. Infrastructure: except for network infrastructure, other infrastructures are relatively weak; the infrastructures lack of standardization; the allocation of many allocations is generally low.
4. IT management and control: IT management and control system at Group level has not been set up, and the relationship between information department and subordinate enterprises is not clear; information department team building needs to be strengthened.
Regard of the above mentioned business requirements, one of the three major measures of Shanxi Coal Group is to set up modern management platform, i.e., a comprehensive platform of informatization management, computer management, network management and so on. To do well in informatization construction, IT overall planning of informatization shall be carried out first. IT overall planning plays a leading role in informatization construction, so it has significant meaning in ensuring the consistency of information technology strategy, information system architecture and business development strategy, and in guiding information construction of the enterprise to be carried out in the right direction.
Project practice
In September-December of 2009, under the active promotion of the leaders of G-Ocean Group, GreatWe informatization consulting group carried out extensive interviews to high level management, functional departments, branch companies, mine shafts and coal management office of G-Ocean Group. Based on this, the consulting group had also made a plan to the informatization construction project of G-Ocean Group, and had also sorted the core management functions of G-Ocean Group and the coal business component model, which is as follows:
In the planning, it is clearly specified that Shanxi Coal Group will implement 27 projects in 5 fields within 5 years to support business development and strategy realization, just as shown in the following chart:
In order to meet the requirement of rapid development of the company, Shanxi Coal Group has made a Three Year (2010-2012) Informatization Construction Acceleration Plan to accomplish the goal of information acquisition and business control. Based on the overall plan, GreatWe has also undertaken the task of informatization construction of Shanxi Coal Group. In March, 2010, 2010 Informatization Project Phase I of Shanxi Coal Group was officially initiated. The project is called “6+1”Project Group, including: PMO project group management, MUP production platform phase I, BUP business platform phase one, IUP unified information platform, MDM major data management, ESB enterprise application project integration phase I, IT infrastructure construction. In December of 2010, all information systems of “6+1”Project Group were implemented and went on line successfully.
Project value
With the construction of “6+1”project group, the goal of “set foundation, establish platform and sort clear key businesses” has been realized; and “6+1” informatization project group has brought Shanxi Coal Group the following business values:
1. Standardized flow: the business flow of coal production, supply and marketing has been sorted, and has been strengthened in the system; flow standardization has been realized and the overall operation efficiency has been improved;
2. Coal safety production management has been reinforced: the Group could easily get information of “one ventilation and three preventions”, gas supervision, personnel positioning, production volume of the coal mines timely, accurately and comprehensively, and that has provided information foundation for the Group to strengthen coal safety production management; it has strengthened the management to the production plan, production technology, production scheduling, safety production and production execution of two levels of bureau and mine; it has also set up production platform technology standard, established mine shaft control system integration interface standard to provide guidance for large-scale construction of the newly integrated coal mines.
3. Coal supplying chain management has been improved: integrated information resources, improved organization of coal source, and better management of logistics, stock, marketing, settlement, import and export; loss of coal in stocking and transportation has been reduced, the reaction speed of Shanxi Coal to coal market has been improved, and coal and transportation resource allocation ability has also been increased;
4. Firm foundation has been set up: information acquisition and flow control of key business fields have set up information foundation for the further realization of the goal of “efficiency, control, coordinaiton” in phase II of the project; the enterprise service bus, short message platform and major data management platform have provided technology foundation to informatization construction of later stage; application foundation has been set up for the comprehensive informatization operation and management of Shanxi Coal Group.
Customer evaluation
1. Zhao Jianjun from Coal Company from Shanxi Coal Group: the usage of production platform has given great convenience to our daily work, especially in terms of the generation and summary of daily report of gas and comprehensive scheduling account, as this system can automatically generate daily report of gas according to gas condition of every shift and report it to the company. The usage of this system has completely freed us from finding the maximum gas value everyday manually, and the automatically formed daily report of gas is very accurate, which has greatly shortened our working time and improved our efficiency. The report could be derived and printed through various methods so that it will be very convenient for leaders or superior departments checking at any time.
In terms of production scheduling, the system could automatically form comprehensive scheduling account according to the report of every shift, and the scheduling account could be reported to the company through internet. The era when production data shall be reported through telephone and tunneling footage has ended, the system has not only simplified working procedure but also improved work efficiency; What is more important, the Group could carry out timely supervision to coal production condition, and the supervision force of the Group to coal mines has been reinforced.
2. Zhao Xiaochun from International Allocate and Transport Department of Shanxi Coal Group: in December, 2010, BUP business platform system was put on line, and after seven months of operation and constant improvement, the system has satisfied the requirements of Shanxi Coal Group in business procedure and management, and thus the business has become more standardized and the management has become more informationized.
BUP system has made the business more standardized and office coordination between various departments, local companies and port companies of the Group has been realized, and thus the goal of coordination and integration of internal business has realized. Meanwhile, work efficiency of all departments has been greatly improved. Such as the statement of Allocate and Transport Department could generate the freight volumes of all local companies of the day within one minute, and it is convenient, accurate and timely.
3. Du Lifang, from Information Department of Shanxi Coal Group: all the application systems involved in IUP system of unified information platform could conduct unified authentication and limited distribution management of users, support us to get all application information within access permission through information gateway; the short message warning function has been provided to improve the timeliness of affair treatment; the function of statement preparation and generation has been provided, which has greatly improved our handling efficiency of daily business.
4. Xu Yang, from Network Technology Department of Shanxi Coal Group: the unified major data management platform has helped Shanxi Coal Group to realize unified management of production, transportation and marketing, and has also provided fundamental support to the standardization management of Shanxi Coal Group. Group headquarter, joint-stock companies, local companies, ports and coal mines have formed a unified data standard, which is a guarantee for all information systems to express their values and work coordinately.
