Site MapChristchurch ReadyMix Concrete
Christchurch Readymix Concrete realises enhanced supply chain management with business process improvement
Christchurch Readymix Concrete is a leading supplier of concrete products to the Canterbury market. Christchurch Readymix Concrete’s commitment to producing high quality products whilst maintaining personal service and attention to clients’s needs has enabled the company to continue their successful expansion to now employ over 100 staff. Christchurch Readymix Concrete’s operations include batching plants at their Belfast and Hornby sites as well as four Sand and Shingle plants located at Belfast, North End, Amberley and West Melton.
Datasouth have a long-standing relationship with Christchurch Readymix Concrete and in 2003 entered into discussions on a strategy for migrating Christchurch Readymix Concrete from a paper-based to software based capacity planning system. From these initial discussions, a series of ongoing projects are helping to transform Christchurch Readymix Concrete’s business process and work-flow systems with the goals of increasing productivity, efficiency and site management.
“Readymix regard our long-standing relationship with Datasouth as a true partnership. Datasouth have taken the time to gain a deep understanding of our business and have worked with us over the last five years in developing the ReadyBook platform as a core enabler for our business. Datasouth’s ability to support both our network infrastructure and application development requirements makes them a logical partner of choice for our business” — Richard Sands, IT Manager for Christchurch Readymix Concrete.
Laying the foundation with ReadyBook
In 2003 Datasouth began working with Christchurch Readymix Concrete to design a customised capacity planning software solution ‘ReadyBook’ to enable Christchurch Readymix to migrate from a paper-based capacity planning system which had a number of limitations. Datasouth partnered with Readymix in designing ReadyBook to provide an easy to use interface for forward ordering and planning. A key requirement for the application was simplicity of use, ensuring that staff with minimal knowledge could utilise the application with ease.
ReadyBook integrates a number of functions that have enabled capacity planning improvements including an ordering system for concrete and associated products and providing the ability to keep track of truck locations using destination and truck load data.
“The ReadyBook solution is extremely user friendly and is available on all sites, with batchers now able to assist dispatchers with managing directions of trucks, this allows the business to maximise truck utilisation levels” — Richard Sands.
As part of the ReadyBook deployment a disaster recovery solution has been enabled which ensures desktop users can continue working in the application in an offline mode if connectivity to the ReadyBook server is lost as well as ensuring transaction data is protected in the event of a disaster.
Richard Sands remarks that
“No other solution on the market provides the level of disaster recovery functionality that Ready-Book delivers; this ensures a high level of application availability to the business.”
Improving work-flow through application integration
With stage one of the ReadyBook project successfully deployed Datasouth assisted Christchurch Readymix Concrete in completing a business process review to determine a best-fit solution to facilitate information flow between ReadyBook and a financials application. With manual invoicing still in place there was scope to improve efficiencies through the automation of the invoicing stage.
The decision was made to deploy SAP for Financials and integrate the SAP application with ReadyBook. For stage two of the Ready-Book project, Datasouth integrated both applications to enable a high level of data flow and task automation. A highly-customised solution was created to enable client information, inventory, quoting and invoicing detail to become visible to both applications.
“There were no off-the-shelf products in the market that could provide the specific functionality Readymix required. Datasouth have been able to deliver a highly customised and cost-effective solution that achieves exacting requirements around work-flow and application integration” — Richard Sands.
This application integration has seen a significant reduction in the work-flow required to manage quoting and ordering processes and has removed a number of previously paper-based processes.
Richard Sands comments that
“the ReadyBook integration with SAP has eliminated an inefficient triplicate manual process previously required to manage remote site batching. Administration staff no longer need to manually create packing slip delivery dockets as this process is automated between ReadyBook and SAP”
Reporting on the status of quotes and orders can now be provided in real-time and the system has been designed to be highly scalable to support ongoing company growth by allowing additional sites to be added into the system when required.
The Next Step; Automated Concrete Batching
With stage 2 of the ReadyBook project now in production, planning has commenced to implement automated concrete batching. Once this automation stage is in production all manual steps will be removed out of the supply chain.
“The end result is a solution that provides far less potential for data entry errors, provides greater visibility and management of trucks and plant, achieves greater levels of staff productivity and enables better decision making to keep Readymix competitive in the market and deliver exceptional service to our customers” — Richard Sands.
Project Summary
Benefits of delivered project
- Business Process Improvement to achieve more efficient use of resources
- Elimination of paper-based processes
- Increase visibility throughout the supply chain
- Scalable platform to support company growth
Microsoft Software
- Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Standard Edition
- Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Standard Edition
- Microsoft Visual FoxPro
