Implementing 4S for Safety-critical Manufacturing Documentation

⇨ Orica's expansion led to a complex SAP landscape, necessitating a streamlined approach to manage safety-critical processes and documentation effectively.

⇨ The implementation of OpenText's Extended ECM for SAP Solutions allowed Orica to standardize documentation processes, enhance governance, and improve accessibility across its global operations.

⇨ The successful 4S program has enabled over 12,000 employees to access integrated business processes while eliminating the risk of fraudulent invoices and centralizing document management.

A safe, hazard-free environment is critical for some manufacturing processes, especially in sectors that require working with potentially dangerous substances. These highly regulated processes require supporting documentation to maintain safety, adhere to procedures, manage risks, and provide high-quality customer service and employee welfare.

The need

Over the years, Orica, a Melbourne, Australia-based sodium cyanide supplier for gold mining, has grown organically and inorganically to 57 locations in different countries. Following this expansion, its SAP landscape also became complex as dozens of core business processes were implemented in different ways across all its locations.

Due to this, its existing SAP Document Management System (DMS) could not provide the level of governance and accessibility for safety-critical manufacturing and maintenance processes. Many of its locations also stored unstructured content in Lotus Notes, Microsoft SharePoint and other network file shares.

“We had content managed across many different applications and content silos,” said Chris Crozier, chief information officer at Orica. “This often made it challenging to identify the most current version of a document.”

This was the start of the company’s journey to streamline its safety-critical processes with a new mantra: 4S, which stood for “simple, standard, and single SAP.” The project required Orica to standardize processes and better control documentation and other unstructured content, for which it chose OpenText.

The journey to 4S

Orica already used OpenText Content Server for its health and safety documentation and group policy and procedure documents. OpentText’s deep integration with SAP was also a key driver in choosing its Extended ECM for SAP Solutions to help Orica achieve its 4S vision.

Cathy Christy, Head of IT Applications at Orica, explained that the company chose Chrome Consulting to help implement the project as it was an experienced OpenText and SAP consultant.

Early in the project, Orica determined it would use Microsoft Azure’s cloud infrastructure to deploy the solution due to its geographic reach. In the second phase, the company deployed OpenText Extended ECM for SAP SuccessFactors, and in phase 3, it moved to a single SAP S/4HANA solution, further integrating OpenText with Orica’s core business processes for unstructured content.

The company also implemented OpenText Vendor Invoice Management (VIM) for SAP Solutions under 4S. “This enables us to manage the complete source to purchase to pay process, consistently and efficiently, within SAP and OpenText, anywhere we operate, in eight languages,” noted Christy.

Success factors

Orica’s 4S program has been successful in many ways. Today:

• Over 12,000 Orica employees access OpenText Extended ECM for SAP SuccessFactors as a solution for end-to-end business and HR processes.
• It has eliminated the risk of fraudulent or duplicate invoices and processes over 55,000 documents through VIM monthly.
• Orica centrally manages tens of thousands of controlled documents through one reliable source.
• A seamless integration of the SAP Fiori and OpenText Smart User interfaces securely provides users with the content they need for their daily tasks from any device.

Orica plans to add more processes to this platform over time and with the acquisition of new businesses.