Adelaide Brighton Cement deployed the myDIALS Operational Performance Optimization Platform to improve visibility into its hazard and injury reporting data. The platform extracts and calculates metrics from multiple internal systems and spreadsheets to create interactive dashboards. This has improved the incident and hazard reporting culture by giving supervisors timely, detailed access to the data. Hazard identification doubled and incident reporting improved 70% since deployment. MyDIALS is now being expanded to additional areas like order and dispatch data to optimize production scheduling and shipping.

1. C A S E S T U D Y
Adelaide Brighton Cement
During the past decade business and government interest in employee safety has jumped
several notches, making occupational health and safety (OH&S) an essential concern for any
organization. These days business partners, shareholders, customers and the community at
large are just as likely to be influenced by an organization’s OH&S reputation as they are by its
bottom line. The management at Adelaide Brighton Cement understands this only too well.
Part of the publicly listed Adelaide Brighton group, the company is one of the leading providers
Company: Adelaide Brighton Cement of cement to the Australian construction, engineering and infrastructure industries. Its
employees operate in a production environment defined by heavy machinery and high
Challenges: temperatures – a combination that could easily prove risky without thorough safety measures.
Adelaide Brighton Cement, like many public
companies is concerned with continuously In 2008 Adelaide Brighton Cement's Angaston plant embarked on a new approach to reducing
reducing workplace injuries and hazards. workplace injuries and hazards. It began with the appointment of Vince Aurora to the role of
plant manager. Aurora had previously been employed as the Angaston production manager.
While hazard and injury reports were being
He had a good understanding of the safety and performance data relating to production
captured, there was insufficient visibility to and activities and was experienced in using the company's SQL database to obtain hazard and
analysis of that information to support a injury reports. While the database was not particularly user friendly and it was impossible to
continuous improvement approach. drill down into reports for additional detail, the database did play an important part in notifying a
broad range of management and staff when safety incidents occurred.
Solution: However, with his newly expanded role Aurora had assumed responsibility for a number of
additional departments. He didn't have the luxury of in-depth historical knowledge of each
The myDIALS Operational Performance department and he soon realized that if safety was to continue to improve, he required
Optimization Platform was deployed very something more than the database. “We needed to be able to visualize the data that was being
quickly. Metrics are extracted and reported, but we certainly didn't want a complete ERP software implementation,” Aurora
calculated from multiple data sources explains. “We wanted a solution that was innovative but also quick to install.”
including from internal systems and
After investigating the market, Aurora selected myDIALS, a business intelligence solution that
spreadsheets and made available for could take input from any of the Angaston plant's existing data sources and present it in a
display and drill-down analysis. series of interactive, online dashboards complete with highlighted key performance indicators.
The solution offered Aurora the ability to create a real-time snapshot of critical safety, hazard
and environment data for all relevant staff and management. “The important thing with
Results: myDIALS,” Aurora continues, “was that it would display and provide drill-down access to
information from the systems that we already had.”
The incident and hazard reporting culture has
improved significantly. Supervisors now have As a hosted solution, deployment offered minimal risk: the cost was low compared to other
access to more detailed and timely information software solutions and deployment required no major overhaul of existing systems. “All we had
enabling them to lead the drive to improve to do was provide a copy of the database and a secure connection for myDIALS. The software
safety and eliminate hazards. then takes data from the database and eight separate spreadsheets and reports it all on a
single dashboard. Within five weeks we were up and running. It was very quick,” Aurora
Now myDIALS is being extended to additional comments.
areas such as order and dispatch data to
optimize the performance of the production Immediacy of OH&S information and the ability to analyze data have been amongst the biggest
scheduling and shipping departments. benefits arising from the new software. “The interface is crisp, clean and easy to understand.
Even the back end is designed for a simple end user, not a technology freak, so it is very easy
to go in and modify the dashboard. We can slice and dice data as never before. Plus the
dashboard gives live information every time an incident is raised. We never used to see this
kind of reporting in anything other than monthly reports,” he adds.
Since deployment, management has seen an increase in reporting culture at the Angaston
plant. Hazard identification doubled in 2008 while incident reporting improved by seventy
percent. A new cross-functional weekly OH&S review meeting has been instituted to help
manage the increase in reports and to ensure follow-up action where required. The supervisors
who attend these meetings are leading the plant's drive to improve safety and eliminate
hazards. Aurora points out, “We could only get to this level once we started to get reliable, real
time information.”
United States Australia
With OH&S improving, Aurora is now turning his attention to other responsibilities. He is now
1-866-99DIALS +61 (0) 7 3118 5013 incorporating dispatch data in the dashboard so that the sales personnel can more easily
(1-866-993-4257) monitor customer order status. Metrics such as tonnes of product, by-product, the site,
weighbridge and potentially even the silo involved in shipping will be recorded and updated
hourly so that plant managers can better plan and allocate production scheduling. The ultimate
aim is to ensure that customers never run out of product.
www.mydials.com