Mission critical documents faxed

One of the most diversified steel mini-mills in the US has achieved exceptional value for faxing mission critical documents with using Oracle connector software.

Oregon Steel Mills knows how important it is to deliver on the quality and value of its products.

Known as one of the most diversified minimills in the United States, the manufacturer offers a wide range of specialty and commodity steel products for domestic and global markets.

The company has two divisions: the Oregon Steel Division and the Rocky Mountain Steel Mills Division.

The Oregon Steel Division produces plate and pipe products and operates three facilities in Portland, Oregon; Napa, California; and Camrose, Alberta, Canada.

The Rocky Mountain Steel Mills Division is located in Pueblo, Colorado, and offers a broad line of products, including standard carbon and head-hardened rail, high- and low-carbon wire rod and bar.

Aimed at reducing its operating costs and adding greater value to its products, Oregon Steel Mills upgraded all of its facilities in 1997.

In the spring of 1999, the manufacturer also implemented Oracle Applications 10.7 SC at its two divisions to synchronize their systems and bring their financial functions up-to-date.

Up until that time, the Oregon Steel Division used character-based Oracle Applications 9.4, while the Rocky Mountain Steel Mill Division used a dated hardware and software system that was no longer under support contract, making time and materials support costly.

Upon migrating to 10.7 SC, Diane Hill, manager of database systems, recalls, "Our users were encouraged to concentrate on workflow improvements." Electronic forms generation became a focal point for change.

At both divisions, formatting documents electronically with Adobe Accelio (Rocky Mountain) and Fantasia (Oregon Steel) had made printing much more flexible.

Purchase orders and other critical business documents could be generated on several printers without having to specify ones loaded with special preprinted paper, eliminating the need for the expensive forms.

"The forms packages let us manage our printing situation more effectively," Hill states.

After working through some glitches with the forms packages, both divisions agreed that automatically faxing the formatted documents was the next step.

On two separate occasions, Oregon Steel Mills tried to implement fax solutions.

Unfortunately, neither integrated seamlessly with the forms packages.

The previous faxing system also provided inadequate reporting capabilities for buyers and accounts receivable clerks.

Hill recalls, "We wanted a company with proven fax and form integration experience.

That is exactly what we received from STR Software and its AventX product suite." In early 1999, STR Software completed an on-site installation of AventX UNIX and the AventX Oracle Connector at the Portland Steelworks in Oregon, the company's steel plate minimill.

Compared to previous installations, Oregon Steel saw little or no difficulty integrating the forms and fax capabilities of the AventX product suite with Fantasia.

Hill comments, "The installation went very smoothly.

We couldn't be happier with the sales and installation assistance that we'd received.

The STR Software systems engineer worked with our staff to understand our needs.

He did an absolutely excellent job for us.

I wish all of our third-party vendors were this easy to work with." Currently in production with purchase orders, invoices and quotes, the Oregon Steel Division faxes upwards of 100 pages every day.

Although the volume is relatively low for this multimillion-dollar company, each document represents a large sum of money.

Therefore, successful transmission is vital to Oregon Steel Mills' success.

Hill remarks, "The AventX Oracle Connector is so transparent.

It fits so neatly with Oracle that many of the users don't even realize they are using a fax software package." Employees simply use the Concurrent Manager interface in Oracle Applications to fax their documents.

Depending on the situation, they can batch-fax all of their documents at night or send them individually during the day.

Multiple transmission status reports are generated daily.

They are automatically sent to a printer where a designated employee reviews the report and notifies users of failed faxes.

Although the users find AventX UNIX easy to operate, it is quite sophisticated.

AventX UNIX queries the Oracle database for fax routing information, including the fax number, recipient name and company.

Oregon Steel Mills has a multi-org Oracle environment, supporting several locations from the Portland facility.

Due to the number of locations and various lines of business, the company's Oracle database contains many datasets.

Thus, the same PO number can appear in a database table multiple times.

Given this, both the location identification and PO number must be used when querying for the fax number and other routing information.

Hill remarks, "STR Software's technical support continues to be awesome.

They have been extremely helpful in answering our questions and pointing us in the right direction.

Overall, the entire project helped us rethink our business processes and improve our workflow." In spring 2001, Oregon Steel Mills expanded the use of the solution to its pipe plant in Napa, California; it expects to do the same with the one in Camrose, Alberta, Canada.

Even so, the Rocky Mountain Steel Mills Division continued to use another faxing solution.

However, in 2001, Oregon Steel Mills decided to integrate the AventX product suite into the Rocky Mountain facility in Pueblo, Colorado, instead, in an effort to bring both systems into line.

David Duffey, systems engineer for STR Software, traveled to Portland in January 2002, where the center of the company's computer network was located, to conduct the implementation.

Another instance of AventX UNIX was installed which would be dedicated to the faxing needs of the Rocky Mountain division.

The existing AventX Oracle Connector was also configured to work with the latest version of AventX UNIX.

In February, the Rocky Mountain division went into production when the following documents were later automated: reports, bills of lading, invoices, packing slips, order acknowledgements, order statements and statements.

According to Hill, "Our ultimate goal is to run one instance of AventX UNIX out of one machine for both divisions.

There are plans to integrate it with StreamServe as well.

As for future plans, we are going to try to utilize as much functionality as the AventX product suite allows.

I believe we are not using it to its fullest yet." Oregon Steel Mills also expects to upgrade to Oracle E-Business Suite 11i within the next year.

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All products and companies herein may be registered or unregistered trademarks of their respective owners and are hereby acknowledged.

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