Ramensky Mining and Processing Works (RMPW)

The Ramensky mining and processing works is engaged in production and enrichment of quartzites since 1969 and is one of the largest Russian producers of quartz sands. The plant works based on the Eganovsky and Chulkovsky fields making a uniform deposit with reserves of quartz sand about 40 million tons. Among the main consumers of products RGOKA the leading Russian and foreign manufacturers of glass and dry construction mixes.

The Ramensky GOK has own motor transportation, railway, mechanical-repair and repair and construction workshops. As a part of plant there is a chemical laboratory and department of technology control which performs quality evaluation of initial quartz sands.

In February, 2004 Ramenskoye GOKA was become a shareholder by Sibelco company - one of world leaders in release of kvartssoderzhashchy products. Cooperation with Sibelco allowed Ramenskoye to mining and processing works to attract new investments into development of raw and technology base of the enterprise. In November, 2005 on RGOKE earned new workshop of enrichment factory that should provide growth of production indicators to 1200 tons of sand a year.

Earlier on Ramenskoye mining and processing works a number of own software solutions which to some extent reflected primary information was used, automated planning processes of works and reporting. However, as separate divisions of plant worked in different information systems, management RGOKA experienced difficulties in obtaining operational information about activity of the enterprise.

Serious changes in structure of plant – entry into the structure of the largest network company on production of quartz products (Sibelco), development of own production base and also the growing quality requirements of products demanded increase in management efficiency and efficiency of control of activity of plant. For solving of tasks it was necessary to automate first of all management of key processes of business activities within unified information environment of the enterprise. Supply, planning and sales management of finished goods were referred to the main business processes of plant, financial and accounting, the personnel, and the most relevant problems of automation of work of specialists was the exception of repeated information input and reduction of volume of manual transactions.

The management of Ramenskoye of GOKA, having carried out the assessment of the majority of information management decisions of the middle class, did not find completely ready system which would correspond to industry features and individual requirements of plant. Control automation RGOKOM required creation of management decision which would consider specifics of business processes of plant. In an analysis result of the software market the Ramensky GOK came to a conclusion that the Microsoft Dynamics AX system more will be suitable for these purposes.

The partner of Ramenskoye GOKA on creation of a corporate system of management selected the NORBIT company which already have by that moment experience with manufacturing enterprises.

In terms of increase in effective management of the enterprise on Ramenskoye mining and processing works problems of control of a financial status, management of supply and sales processes, including planning of deliveries of finished goods to clients are the most relevant.

Business process reengineering and improvement of account policy of plant became one of key development stages of a corporate system of management on Ramenskoye mining and processing works.

According to the offer of NORBIT company for the purpose of optimization of implementation of Microsoft Dynamics AX and ensuring systematic start in work of a new corporate system of management functionally the project was broken into two stages. At the first stage work of sales office of other products, weight, purchasing department, warehouses, financial service and partially accounting was automated. The second stage included implementation of functionality of personnel management and expansion of opportunities of a corporate system concerning conducting accounting and tax accounting.

Special attention, both from the Customer, and from the Consultant was demanded by development of the training program of key users of a system. Training of users was conducted step by step throughout all project and included the general acquaintance to the Microsoft Dynamics AX system, working off of skills in the test version of the solution and also an additional training course on work with office applications of Microsoft.

"We well understood that the management decision developed by NORBIT for RGOKA will not yield due results if key users are not able to use in a type of insufficient understanding or ignorance of a system it as the effective tool in the work. How the solution was perfect, living people therefore during creation of the program and diagram of training we tried to consider all factors which could interfere with high-quality training of specialists work with it first of all: employee occupation RGOKA, impossibility to distract from workflow, insufficient level of proficiency in the computer, complexity of material and so on. Big support in carrying out training to us was given by plant's management which could interest the employees in active participation in the project".

For problem solving of functioning and development of a corporate system on RGOKE with the assistance of NORBIT company the internal project team which problems included support of work of users, collecting of notes, testing of developments and active participation in further implementation of new functionality was created. In many respects thanks to assistance of a project team systematic start of a new corporate system of management in work of the enterprise was provided.

For process optimization of sale of finished goods in a system additional opportunities of flexible planning of shipments of products on the basis of agreements and individual delivery schedules were sold. The corporate system of management RGOKA supports 3 planning levels: annual, monthly and day that promotes more effective planning of deliveries at the expense of opportunities of timely adjustment them taking into account real monthly customer needs with detailing for every day.

The functionality of automatic formation of customer orders on the basis of monthly delivery plans was developed for management of shipments in real time to Microsoft Dynamics AX and the mechanism of integration of a system with the electronic weight equipment is implemented. As a result at implementation of shipments indicators of weighing of machines, necessary for carrying out settlement transactions, are loaded into a corporate system in the automatic mode.

The functionality of application campaigns was implemented in a system for control automation by supply of plant. Thus, the procedure of formation and the approval of requests for Inventories as divisions RGOKA had an opportunity independently to create requests, department of supply – to automate the procedure of maintaining and the approval of the summary request significantly became simpler.

Problems of operating control of expenditure of material resources were removed due to development of the mechanism of issue of Inventories according to requirements of divisions with the subsequent their write-off, and standardization of the reference book of goods facilitated carrying out purchases and inventory accounting of Inventories.

Specialists of plant conduct purchase planning for the non-productive purposes in a corporate system by means of opportunities of the module "Summary Planning" Microsoft Dynamics AX which allows to analyze the level of the available warehouse stocks and, comparing it minimum permissible value, to issue recommendations about products purchasing amounts.

For automation of planning of supplier payments in the solution Microsoft Dynamics AX for Ramenskoye of mining and processing works possibilities of automatic creation of the magazine of outgoing payments on the basis of data on unpaid accounts and taking into account existence of money on bank accounts were configured.

Implementation of functionality of Microsoft Dynamics AX for conducting accounting and tax accounting at plant was not limited to standard systems capabilities. Due to requirements RGOKA and specifics of allocation of costs on production completions for calculation of actual cost of products were made.

Schemes of allocation of costs on core activities, mechanisms of assessment of work in progress and a remaining balance of finished goods were developed for simplification of the procedure of calculation and the analysis of cost of products of plant in a system. During the reporting period products are shipped at planned cost, and on end of reporting period cost value is recalculated on actually developed costs.

Changes and completions were entered to the module Expense Accounting of Future Periods: completion according to the expense accounting on insurance of personnel upon accidents – automatic calculation of the accepted and not accepted expenses for tax accounting was implemented.

Setup of the module Fixed assets in compliance with needs of plant demanded big preparatory work on inventory, the description and ordering of base of fixed assets. For simplification of accounting and in order to avoid partial write-off of such Fixed assets as the computer equipment and furniture, was performed disassembling operation, i.e. Fixed assets were broken into separate objects, for example, Computer equipment on Monitor, System unit and "Uninterruptible power supply unit".

For fixed asset accounting, being in a reserve (but not on preservation) and the outdated assets intended for replacement, the additional reference book "Fixed Assets in a Stock" which subjects are considered on 01 account separately and depreciation on tax accounting for which was developed it is not charged. In a system the translation function of Fixed assets from operation in a stock was also implemented.

In parallel with automation of work of accounting at plant setting and modification of management accounting and completion of the chart of accounts was conducted. In compliance with requirements of the foreign shareholder RGOKA – Sibelco companies in a system the possibility of formation of financial statements on the basis of the standards applied in Sibelco company was implemented.

The functionality of personnel management was also included in the volume of a corporate system of management. Possibilities of Microsoft Dynamics AX regarding accounting of members of workers, storage of historical data on employees, registration of orders and reflection of information on the movement and movement of specialists were implemented in standard option. For convenience of work with a system and adaptations of Microsoft Dynamics AX to the procedure of conducting personnel records by the staff of NORBIT with active participation of internal project team RGOKA were carried out completions of printed forms and reports, available forms of encouragement in Microsoft Dynamics AX and criterion of transfer to other position are expanded. History of these employees was loaded from the old program taking into account a data structure of Microsoft Dynamics AX.

Within support of a system the data entry mechanism from laboratory of chemical analysis of raw materials in a corporate information system was finished. Registration of results of chemical analysis allowed to create and print automatically at shipment from a system quality certificates of finished goods.

The solution developed for Ramenskoye of mining and processing works based on a corporate information system of Microsoft Dynamics AX became the effective management tool the enterprise. Implementation of Microsoft Dynamics AX on RGOKE allowed to solve many organizational and managerial problems and to optimize a business and business activity of plant, namely:

• Minimize manual work due to automation of the majority of operations on input and processing of primary information.
  
• Reduce labor input of workflows due to ensuring single information input, availability of all accounting and analytical data and decrease in time for approval of working documents.
  
• Provide maintaining history of all transactions performed in a system and exclude duplication of data at the expense of the organization of a common information space for information storage.
  
• Provide control of cash flow and material flows as a result of automation of the majority of accounting and financial transactions, setup of functionality of the management reporting and modification of the chart of accounts.
  
• Implement the management tool receivables for what the solution included possibilities of setup and control of a credit limit for each client and also the flexible mechanism of change of a credit limit when carrying out shipments of finished goods and settlings with clients.
  
• Configure a possibility of independent formation by divisions of requests for Inventories thanks to what the procedure of an approval of the summary request was significantly the efficiency and quality of purchasing activity is simplified and increased.
  
• Optimize supply activity of finished goods to clients due to setup of opportunities of flexible planning of shipments and operational adjustment of delivery plans taking into account wishes of clients, change of the diagram and supply rates.
  
• Carry out shipments in a foreground mode thanks to the developed functionality of automatic formation of orders and integration of a corporate system of management with the electronic weight equipment. Therefore the indicators of electronic weighing used when forming postings became available in a system in real time.
  
• Messages operating control of production costs thanks to setup of the procedure of calculation of actual cost of products.
  
• Keep the automated financial and managerial account, create financial statements on the basis of the Russian and international standards.
  
• Automate personnel records.
  
  

"Software solutions which we used until now not always allowed us to keep the operational analysis of activity of the enterprise as separate divisions worked in the different systems between which data exchange was complicated. It was possible to consolidate primary information for the analysis often only manually, and a lot of time left on data validation. Implementation of Microsoft Dynamics AX allowed us to facilitate significantly work of staff of plant and to increase efficiency, complexity and reliability of management information".

In the long term the corporate system of management of Ramenskoye by GOKA will switch on the data transmission mechanism from SCADA system of new factory in a corporate information system and also regulation of issue of overalls and special stock by positions, service life and the history of receiving overalls and special stock is added.