Quelle: CIO USA

You wouldn´t expect to find a cement company in the pantheonof innovation superheroes---shoulder-to-shoulder with thosewho created plastic, fiber optics and Post-it notes. Thereare few industries more basic or old economy thancement. Like Clark Kent´s Superman though, the cementindustry has an alter ego that has shed its gray three-piecesuit and can leap outdated business practices in a singlebound. That alter ego is Cemex, a nearly 100-year-oldmultinational cement corporation based in Monterrey,Mexico. During the past 16 years, it has completely changedthe processes by which cement companies communicate with anddeliver to their customers. The company based its processredesign on three components: a satellite communicationssystem called Cemexnet; an overhaul of its tracking,scheduling and routing system known as DynamicSynchronization of Operations; and a digital globalinitiative that links worldwide offices via the Internet.

If you had taken a snapshot of Cemex in 1984, it would havelooked like any other regional cement company. Cemex had sixautonomous plants that rarely communicated with eachother. Managing the network of mixing plants and deliverytrucks was a nightmare. Weather, traffic and labor problemscaused almost half of Cemex´s customers to change theirorders, usually close to the originally scheduled deliverytime.

As a result, Cemex couldn´t give customers a definitedelivery time. It could only say that the concrete wouldarrive within a three-hour window. This cost customers timeand money, but it was standard practice in the industry. Upto that point, no one was able to do any better.

Out with the Old