Zamil Industrial: IT-Driven Transformation In Heavy Industry
IT and business today are inseparably intertwined. Accelerated by COVID-19, this global shift has cemented the necessity of digital transformation as a means to ensure current and future business competitiveness.
IT is the foundation of this transformation. If harnessed properly, this area can bring unique strategic value to organisations across sectors.
From technological selection to implementation and monitoring, this value is only unlocked through effective and strategic change management- something that Abdulbary Atassi is an expert in.
Introducing Zamil Industrial
Abdulbary is CIO at Zamil Industrial, a leading provider of products, materials and services for the HVAC, steel, construction, installation and development sectors.
Established in 1998 with the merger of several family-owned companies in Saudi Arabia, Zamil Industrial is one of the nation’s most influential manufacturing giants, producing products used across agriculture, aviation, military, industry and public infrastructure.
Since going public in 2002, Zamil Industrial has expanded worldwide, building an international presence and supplying its products to over 90 countries around the world.
Abdulbary oversees IT operations for the manufacturer and its clients across domestic and international industrial sectors.
“I lead a team of around 100 consultants and technical specialists around the world in order to make sure that we're bringing the best technology and the best services to our affiliates,” he explains.
“We have plants in our core operation in Saudi Arabia, we do business in Egypt with two steel fabrication plants, we have two more in Vietnam and one factory in India.”
With a BA in Computer Engineering from Alexandria University in Egypt and a MA in Computer Science from Boston, Northeastern University, Abdulbary began his career as a technical consultant.
Consulting for Oracle’s ERP & Business Suite, Adbulbary then worked across a diversity of industries including manufacturing. After this, he earned a degree in Project Management and worked as an application manager.
Soon he became CIO at Enzyme Industrial, a chemicals manufacturer, building the expertise he brings to his current role at Zamil Industrial.
“This is what I like about this industry, the inventions and technological advancement never end,” Abdulbary says.
“Every time we build something new and experiment with a new piece of technology, every time we discover new ways to create better products and higher customer satisfaction, we see the benefits.”
Abdulbary plays a critical role at Zamil Industrial, an organisation that is highly IT-driven as opposed to being IT augmented. He understands the necessity of this, saying that for businesses today: “Staying the same is not an option. It’s either change or die.”
Not IT augmented, IT driven
Running parallel to the importance of change management in Abdulbary’s role is the kind of manufacturer that Zamil Industrial is. Many manufacturers- especially in heavy industry- continue to be OT first, IT second in terms of how they plan and operate. This is partially why siloed data and projects remain such a formidable problem.
Zamil Industrial meanwhile takes a different approach. The company prides itself on its capacity to offer a complete construction engineering package. With operations across construction, steel, AC/HVAC, construction, insulation and concrete the company boasts a portfolio capable of providing complete turnkey solutions.
But what truly ensures this is the case is how Zamil Industrial conceptualises itself as IT-driven.
“We think of ourselves in terms of IT, not as a service centre,” explains Abdulbary.
“We’re shifting away from the old style of IT service centres where we just take requests from the business and are instead digging deep into the business process and operation, understanding their needs and the technological opportunities of the market.
“We position ourselves as innovators, guiding on new technologies.”
This approach is deeply rooted in the company’s legacy.
While Zamil Industrial was formally founded in 1998, the industrial companies it brought together have been around far longer.
Zamil Steel was established in 1977 and remains one of the world’s leaders in the engineering design and manufacturing of various steel products and components.
Likewise, Zamil Air Conditioners was founded in 1974, having a profound impact on the development of the Saudi Arabian air conditioning industry.
With this legacy comes insight and adaptability. The company understands the needs of industrial clients across these sectors are nuanced and undergoing constant evolution. Solutions must be future-proofed and individually tailored, and the approach to ensure this comes down to assessment.
“We always start with assessment,” Abdulbary explains.
“We assess our current process, we identify the area of improvement, we measure how we are improving in the KPIs and then we look into the market to identify the best technology to enhance them.
“We build a plan, we use benchmarks to identify where we want to go, and then we start the implementation. Then after going live and stabilising, we start measuring the outcome of this and see if we’ve achieved our return on investment or not.”
A critical example of this is Zamil Industrial’s digital transformation of its HVAC and AC sector offerings. This began with a project to enhance, connect and reduce the company’s in-house applications.
This was achieved by increasing its adoption of Oracle’s ERP and MES applications from just the core modules to 40.
Following this, Zamil Industrial evaluated the use of its design software - PTC Windchill - used to create central AC and larger-scale units.
“We made a major aggregate, enhanced the overall process, and took it to the cloud,” Abdulbary continues.
“Then we started talking about how to have a seamless integration between both applications to get a fully automated process.
“Later on with both applications in the picture, we started harvesting the benefit that we're adding through implementing our analytics platform.
“So the primary ERP and design software connected, enabling all the relevant data to be extracted and sent to the platform for analysis.”
In addition to this Zamil Industrial has recently introduced a new e-commerce platform and is adding more services to this for its PC and B2B customers.
The company is also pursuing broader integration with its trading partners in terms of banking facilities, using technology to help automate and streamline various processes.
Thanks to these advancements, Zamil Industrial is experiencing greater productivity, efficiency and cost reduction.
As the number one producer of AC and HVAC systems in the Middle East, Abdulbary points to the innovation they have achieved in this area as a shining accomplishment for Zamil Industrial, one likely to influence others.
The success of the project is already shaping further transformative initiatives at the manufacturer.
Zamil Industrial is also pursuing an ambitious programme to holistically implement Industry 4.0 in its steel division, which will include moving to Tela, an advanced detailing solutions software.
“We’re talking about investing in new machinery, robotics, a new MBS and also pursuing that same integration with our Oracle Fusion, ERP and analytics applications,” Abdulbary adds.
“Within Saudi Arabia and internationally in India, Egypt and Vietnam we have steel fabrication companies where we’re also looking at automation.”
Another area Zamil Industrial is exploring, and a development Abdulbary identifies as the biggest emerging trend in the company’s industry is generative AI.
“We’ve started exploring how it can fit within our business process,” he explains.
“We started utilising some of the new AI features that have come from Oracle Fusion.
“Oracle has introduced a lot of artificial intelligence and machine learning features within their modules and financial purchasing.”
AI could complement Zamil Industrial’s dominant focus on IoT, which is critical to their plants and the integration of their machinery and backend system.
This aligns with Abdulbary’s conviction that the next step for Zamil Industrial in its digital transformation journey is increasing automation, taking the technology beyond design, engineering and the supply chain to the physical shop floor.
Valuing partnership & people
Digital transformation is rarely a solo journey. Collaboration is vital - between companies, providers and people - to ensure strategic alignment, technological quality and business harmony.
IT is rarely conceptualised as being a people-driven field. But technology, from its use to its development, always comes back in some regard to fostering greater human connectivity.
Abdulbary, who asserts his role is 90% communication, certainly agrees with this.
“We work in a big company where there are many stakeholders and many of them have spent a long time in the business,” he explains.
“It's very hard to change their mindset and try to push them to pursue new trends or new standard business processes.
“So a huge part of my role is resolving conflicts and fostering dialogue between us who are more on the technology side and those on the business side.”
Abdulbary is well-placed to resolve these conflicts, as someone who takes a collaborative and even-handed approach to management.
“I don't believe in micromanaging and I think delegation is very important,” he says.
“I really believe in giving free space to everybody to share their opinion and come up with new ideas.”
In saying this, he references the now iconic quote by former Apple CEO Steve Jobs: “It doesn't make sense to hire smart people and tell them what to do; we hire smart people so they can tell us what to do.”
This attitude of openness to others' insights and expertise is part of why Zamil Industrial continues to excel within its partnerships.
The manufacturer has partnerships across a multitude of different technological domains, including CAD software and cybersecurity. However, it has several main partners that support its industrial digital transformation work.
These include Oracle, the company’s main ERP provider which the manufacturer has been working with since 1998, first on their E-Suite and databases and later on in their fusion cloud application.
There’s also PTC, which provides Creo, the company’s primary CAD design tool and the main PLM for its central AC and chillers.
“We used to have their on-premise Windchill application and last year we moved to their Windchill plus SaaS application,” Abdulbary explains.
“We're using Creo for the design and it plays a big role in this.”
Zamil Industrial also partners with MasTec, an infrastructure leader which works as its main system integrator and Incorta, a start-up that provides a cutting-edge data analytics platform.
Abdulbary praises the strength of all these partnerships, noting how critical they are due to rapid technological evolution.
“Technological change is not easy these days,” he says.
“We need to ensure that when we’re pursuing implementation and spending a big budget on it that this solution will service for at least ten to fifteen years.”
With Incorta, the organisation saw the opportunity to pursue a data analytics solution more advanced than alternatives available on the market.
“Incorta provides extremely unique features that convinced us to step away from traditional business intelligence and analytics technologies to adopt their offerings,” Abdulbary explains.
“The partnership is going very well and we have high hopes for how it will continue to develop in the future.”
These partnerships and Zamil Industrial’s commitment to digital innovation will ensure it remains a competitive leader in the global construction & manufacturing sectors.
As CIO, Abdulbary Atassi will continue to ensure this competitiveness, harnessing IT to lead his team and the company to greater growth and success.
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