Alstom Quotation Process
Alstom's Customer Services department is responsible for servicing and supplying replacement parts for existing turbine and power plant installations. When a customer at a power plant requires replacement parts, a request for a quotation from Alstom is made. Alstom's speed and efficiency when handling Requests for Quotations (RFQs) is crucial, and this is where the OSIP system delivers.
The customer
Alstom with headquarters in Paris is a global leader in the world of power generation and rail infrastructure. The Group employs 65,000 people in 70 countries. In Switzerland, Alstom is located on five sites with 4,500 employees. Not only is Alstom one of the company’s main international subsidiaries, it is also one of the largest industry companies in Switzerland. The power produced by Alstom machinery accounts for roughly one quarter of the power generated worldwide.
The target
The RFQ process starts with a sales person that inputs a detailed list of materials. In subsequent steps, groups of experts validate, augment and change the related information stored in two separate application systems, one for the technical details of customer power plant installations (Poseidon) and SAP for all commercial data. These processes and workflows were quite complex and consumed much time and resources. The goal of the OSIP project was to leverage existing systems to eliminate much of the tedious validation work, speed up the processes significantly and improve agility and operational performance.
The project
The OSIP (Optimization of System Interfaces & Processes) project was initially launched in 2003. Alstom was responsible for project management supported by a group of external IT specialists. In 2005 Logica was brought to the project primarily for their know-how in Business Process Management (BPM*) methods and tools, and for their expertise in project management. Since then, the OSIP solution has been significantly improved upon and is today of great value to Alstom’s Customer Service department. The OSIP system may be extended in the future to help with other organisational and systems integration challenges.
* Alstom’s OSIP solution is based on TIBCO’s Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) and Workflow Suite
