Streamlining Operations: Idemitsu Australia’s Journey to Efficient Data Management
Simplified Data Access and Reporting by Consolidating Legacy Systems into a Centralised Platform
Idemitsu Australia, operating since 1978 as a subsidiary of Japanese company Idemitsu Kosan Co. Ltd., proudly spent over 45 years producing resources that supported local communities, contributed to economic growth, and assisted customers in achieving their goals.
The company has a long-standing coal mining history and a strong commitment to regional economies, operating Boggabri Coal Mine, and previously operated Muswellbrook Coal Company, which ceased active mining in 2022. Continuing to meet global energy demands, Idemitsu Australia supply high-quality metallurgical coal for steelmaking while actively diversifying and decarbonising its energy portfolio in pursuit of a more sustainable future.
Deeply committed to sustainability and innovation, Idemitsu Australia are proud to invest in sustainable energy development and are currently exploring the diverse natural resources of sunlight, water, wind, waves, geothermal heat, and biofuels to assess renewable energy development. The Australian operations are focused on enhancing corporate value while remaining a sustainable business, observing comprehensive environmental, social and governance (ESG) priorities.
THE CHALLENGE
Before engaging TechConnect, Idemitsu Australia faced the challenge of managing and consolidating data across several disparate systems and spreadsheets. This created several key issues:
- Data Silos and Fragmentation: Production data was spread across multiple legacy systems, requiring manual data extraction and consolidation for reporting. This fragmented approach meant that different users had access to different datasets, which led to inconsistencies and a lack of a unified view of production performance.
- Limited Accessibility and Reporting: Access to critical production data was cumbersome and required significant time and effort from employees to generate both ad-hoc and recurring reports. Many of these reports were manually created, consuming resources that could have been better spent on analysis and decision-making.
- High Licensing Costs and Complexity: Each legacy system requires separate licenses for multiple users driving up costs and operational complexity. Users had to navigate various systems to obtain the necessary data, leading to inefficiencies in both data consumption and system maintenance.
- Limited Supportability of Legacy Systems: Certain legacy systems are nearing or have reached end of support. Systems are incompatible with modern browsers, feature requests are not supported, and applications cannot keep up with evolving user requirements or risks.
THE SOLUTION
To address Idemitsu Australia’s challenges with data fragmentation, accessibility, and reporting inefficiencies, TechConnect implemented a production analytics system. The solution is designed to consolidate data from multiple legacy systems and spreadsheets into a unified platform powered by Databricks and Amazon Web Services, creating a centralised “single source of truth” for data consumption and analytics. Idemitsu Australia needed a partner with expertise in data platforms, mining and experience in migrating legacy systems to modern and scalable cloud-based solutions.
TechConnect took a phased approach to the project, ensuring that each step was aligned with operational needs and business goals:
- Stakeholder Engagement and Requirements Gathering: TechConnect conducted a series of workshops, interviews, and data-gathering exercises to understand the specific requirements of end-users across the production site (Boggabri) and head office. These sessions helped to map out the critical reports, data sources, and user needs, providing a foundation for the solution’s design.
- Data Ingestion and Migration: The next phase involved the ingestion of key production reports and datasets from legacy systems and spreadsheets into the new data platform. These included reports related to production outputs, equipment performance, and operational KPIs. The goal was to automate and simplify data flows, reducing manual processes and data silos.
- Platform Development and Integration: Leveraging the Databricks technology, the new data platform is designed to provide multiple options for data consumption. The system is built with a modern architecture that supports data governance, security, and scalability, allowing them to easily manage and access data from one central point. A browser-based user interface was developed to facilitate administrative tasks, limited data entry, custom workflows relating to report sign-off and freezing data once reported.
- Report Automation and Customisation: TechConnect worked closely with Idemitsu Australia to automate recurring reports, reducing the burden of manual report creation. Custom dashboards and live alerts are also implemented, tailored to the specific needs of production data consumers, whether on-site or working remotely.
- Training and Enablement: To ensure a smooth transition, TechConnect provided training sessions for users, focusing on how to access, analyse, and generate reports through the new data platform. This helped to upskill employees, enabling them to make better use of the new data platform’s capabilities. An ongoing managed service focusing on observability and maintaining the platform’s well-architected posture was implemented.
The Deliverables:
- Data Platform: A modern, centralised data platform that consolidates data from multiple legacy systems and provides users with a single point of access for all production-related data.
- Data Ingestion: Migrated critical reports and datasets from legacy systems and spreadsheets into the new data platform, enabling seamless access to real-time and historical production data.
- Custom Reporting: Automated report generation and created custom dashboards tailored to the needs of the production sites and head office teams.
- Training and Documentation: Delivered comprehensive training to ensure that Idemitsu Australia’s team could confidently use the new data platform and leverage its full functionality.
- Ongoing Managed Service: TechConnect continues to provide an infrastructure managed service for the new data platform, ensuring that it runs smoothly on Databricks and Amazon Web Services. This includes ongoing monitoring, optimisation, and support to guarantee high availability, scalability, and performance.
THE OUTCOMES
TechConnect’s proposal to implement the production analytics system—the new data platform—was aligned with Idemitsu Australia’s vision of creating a single source of truth for data analytics. This simplified data access while also enhancing the decision-making process by delivering timely, accurate data in a centralised platform.
Customer Problems Solved:
- Simplified Data Access: With the new data platform, employees can now access production data from a single platform, removing the need for manual data consolidation. This has significantly reduced the time and effort required to generate reports, making data more accessible across different departments and locations.
- Streamlined Reporting and Analytics: The new data platform enabled users to quickly generate reports, dashboards, and live alerts without having to extract data from multiple sources. By automating report generation, it has freed up employee time, allowing them to focus more on analysis and decision-making rather than data collection.
- Improved Data Consistency and Accuracy: The new data platform provides a unified view of production data, ensuring that all users access the same, consistent information. This eliminates discrepancies between reports and reduces the risk of data errors, leading to better operational insights and decision-making.
- Improved Performance: Performance of some legacy systems was prohibitively slow when generating complex reports for longer reporting periods. The new data platform performs well under these conditions.
- Reduced Licensing and Operational Costs: By consolidating data into the new data platform, Idemitsu Australia has been able to reduce licensing costs associated with multiple legacy systems, while also simplifying data governance and maintenance. The centralisation of data has also allowed for the scaling of reporting needs more efficiently without the overhead of managing disparate systems.
