Re-think, re-engineer, close the gaps: new cement information management solutions

The ability to compile, access and analyze critical information is one of the most challenging tasks facing managers of cement plants. Opportunities clearly exist for cost reduction, increased productivity and greater profitability. Increasingly sophisticated process control and plant optimization systems provide raw data in great abundance. Yet, too often, individual process control systems amount to isolated "information islands" that lack a means of integrating related data. At the same time, powerful business computer systems are providing an increasingly detailed picture of financial and marketing conditions. New cement-specific information management systems (IMS) are being developed to integrate production, process, energy, environmental, quality and key business information into a consistent relational database. By compiling, condensing and providing access and analysis tools, IMS systems overcome traditional barriers of information access within automation and information systems. Process, production and business managers can have the information they need presented to them in the most useful form on their desktop personal computer. IMS provide tools for plant managers that are unavailable from the process control system. Similarly, they provide a detailed database for use by enterprise managers that cannot be provided by the business control computer system. This way IMS systems close the functional gap between these two systems.