HOW WE DO IT - Case Studies

Lehigh Cement Company 

Lehigh Cement Company has served the construction industry in North America for more than 100 years as a producer of high quality cements and construction materials. Lehigh is fully owned by HeidelbergCement of Germany and is affiliated with some of the world’s most technically advanced cement operations and related construction materials activities. Around the globe, the Group has extensive operations in Europe, Asia, Africa and North America.

Lehigh recently deployed a GPS-based Fleet management system to enhance and integrate with its current dispatch systems. Although many of these systems were fully integrated, decision makers at all levels of the organization didn’t have timely access to the dispatch data or the ability to analyze it. Having better insight into where the delivery trucks were, when they were there and for how long would help minimize idle time and increase efficiencies overall. Concrete delivery costs are one of the organization’s primary operational expenses—and Lehigh fully recognized that better access to data and analysis capabilities could save the organization significant operating costs through enhanced efficiencies.

Quadrus was engaged by Lehigh to provide a robust business intelligence solution that brought together data from various disparate Oracle data sources, including the fleet and dispatch management systems. The developed solution included the use of Microsoft SQL Server for ETL and Analysis Services for the support of various OLAP cubes and KPI calculations. Lehigh was also provided with a web-based portal that enabled users to analyze dispatching data from their desktops. The portal dashboard was based on Windows SharePoint Service and custom BI web parts to provide flexible mechanisms for displaying key performance indicators (KPIs), trends and targets. A web-based analysis tool utilizing Office Web components (Pivot table and Pivot charts) was also created to enable dynamic, real-time analysis of data for better business decisions. Suddenly, users could leverage real-time business data while providing visual representations of trends and targets. Users could quickly and efficiently create customized reports for easier business analysis and decision-making. With the click of the mouse, users could now easily create their own views and analysis—and display results in both tabular and graphical formats.

Previously, dispatch information was manually prepared in Microsoft Excel spreadsheets and distributed monthly. Now with this timely access to information, customized detailed operational figures are in the hands of decision-makers on a daily basis. This type of information puts management in touch with dispatching operations and provides newfound ability to plan and anticipate. Having access to this kind of timely, granular data has provided tremendous business benefit and ROI to Lehigh. Quadrus has the business intelligence and software development experience to develop these types of complex solutions from back to front—from the early architectural details to final design touches on the web portal’s graphical user interface. The organization appreciated Quadrus’ experience, knowledge and capability to provide a complete solution from back to front. Working with one service provider on all aspects of the projects created a smooth and effective experience for all involved.