Emirates Float Glass Achieves Highest Level of Integration and Automation in the Glass Manufacturing Industry
 
 

Emirates Float Glass Achieves Highest Level of Integration and Automation in the Glass Manufacturing Industry

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Emirates Float Glass LLC (EFG) is a leading producer of clear, body-tinted, and online-coated, reflective-glass products in the United Arab Emirates. Its products are backed by licensed technology from global glass leader PPG Industries, USA. EFG’s customers include glass processing companies that use float glass to produce windows for the construction and automotive industries.

The company’s state-of-the-art glass manufacturing and processing facility, located at Abu Dhabi Industrial City ICAD-2, has the capacity to produce 219,000 tons of molten glass per annum and is gearing up to double the capacity to produce approximately 438,000 tons per annum, making it the largest single factory for integrated glass manufacturing and processing in the United Arab Emirates. Once fired, each glass float line will produce ribbons of molten glass without interruption for 12 to 15 years.

To ensure enterprise application stability and accuracy in a business environment with uninterrupted, 24/7 production, consumption, procurement, and quality control, over a period of 12 to 15 years, Emirates Float Glass deployed Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12. With Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12, the company has established a paperless environment covering the entire spectrum of business processes and created a foundation for a high-efficiency production environment. It also developed customized solutions for Oracle E-Business Suite—such as functionality for packaging materials, sending back-ordered goods, and creating customer credit and debit notes—with only one in-house developer.

 
 

 
 

Challenges

A word from Emirates Float Glass LLC

  • “Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12 is the perfect solution for the manufacturing domain. It covers 99% of our business scenarios, and, using just one developer, we customize the remaining 1%—such as for packaging materials, sending back-ordered goods, and customer credit and debit notes. Oracle E-Business Suite has run smoothly, without a single major issue, for the last four years, allowing us to focus on innovation instead of ERP-related issues.” – Malik Asif Joyia, IT Manager, Emirates Float Glass

  • Ensure perfect enterprise application stability to support 24/7 production, consumption, procurement, and quality control for the glass manufacturer’s operations, which produce 600 tons of molten glass per day, using 14 different raw materials, such as lime and magnesium oxide, and cannot be shut down until 2024
  • Enable the company to optimize operational efficiency to ensure continued growth and profitability in a slowed global economy
  • Enable easy upgrades to the latest application and database releases to take advantage of new functionalities and fixes

Solutions

Oracle Product and Services

  • Deployed Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12 to achieve a level of process integration and automation that is unique in the glass industry and provided the company with a strong competitive edge as it ships 15,000 to 19,000 tons of float glass on average each month with only 250 factory employees working in four shifts
  • Established a paperless environment covering the entire spectrum of business processes and laid the groundwork for a high-efficiency production environment, facilitating faster processes, better visibility, and lower costs
  • Enabled the company to strengthen its decision-making capabilities substantially with integrated real-time information covering all areas of business—from supply chain planning to financials
  • Achieved easy integration with third-party platforms that the company uses for monitoring raw material consumption and product quality, collecting relevant data in Oracle E-Business Suite to ensure the automated flow of information across all departments
  • Used Oracle Database, Enterprise Edition to ensure 24/7 availability and easy scalability of the company’s data center, which currently manages 250 gigabytes of data and is growing at a pace of 75 gigabytes per year
  • Used Oracle Self-Service Human Resources to enable employees who staff the plant 24/7 to handle all communication with the company’s human resources department online, without printing any documents or going to an office
  • Processed labor law regulations, leave requests, gratuities, and other personnel items for the entire staff with only one payroll accountant using Oracle Payroll and its automation capabilities
  • Enabled the IT department to manage network operations, database operations, applications, application development, and consulting services with only four employees
  • Leveraged the technical expertise of My Oracle Support for hassle-free management of updates and a small number of program fixes

Why Oracle

“In a process manufacturing company with ongoing production, warehousing, shipping, and inventory operations that cannot be shut down for 15 years, Oracle E-Business Suite’s unprecedented stability provides us with the business continuity that we require,” said Malik Asif Joyia, IT manager, Emirates Float Glass. “With the high level of integration between its modules, Oracle E-Business Suite helps us to continuously improve the efficiency and effectiveness of our operations.”

Partner

  Emirates Float Glass LLC worked with Oracle Platinum partner Mahindra Satyam for phase one of the implementation, which began in May 2008 and finished in April 2009, including the implementation of Oracle Financials, Oracle Human Resources, Oracle Inventory Management, Oracle Order Management, Oracle Procurement, and Oracle Warehouse Management.

Oracle Diamond Partner Fujitsu Technology Solutions completed phase two of the implementation by the end of 2010, deploying Oracle Advanced Supply Chain Planning, Oracle Payroll, Oracle Self-Service Human Resources, and Oracle Process Manufacturing.

“To correctly map ERP functionalities to business processes, it is mandatory to work with highly experienced consultants—somebody who knows your business and the ERP solution by heart. We worked with Oracle partners Mahindra Satyam and Fujitsu Technology Solutions, which did an excellent job and enabled us to run 24/7 operations in full automation,” Joyia said.