Automatically Print, Collate, & Staple Complete Work Order Packages from Oracle EBS

About Barrick Gold Australia

Barrick Gold Australia, based in Perth, West Australia, is a regional business unit of Barrick Gold Corporation. It operates nine mines in the Australia Pacific Region. Barrick Gold Corporation, headquartered in Toronto, Canada, is a global leader in the gold industry, with 26 operating mines and significant land holdings on five continents.

The Problem

At the core of Barrick Gold Australia’s operation is a fleet of heavy- and light-duty machinery crucial for mining and production. The maintenance of these assets is managed through the Oracle EBS R12 Enterprise Asset Management (eAM) application. One of the key functions of Oracle EBS eAM is tracking assets and scheduling maintenance through work orders.

Barrick Gold Australia generates 300-400 work order packages daily across six regional sites. Each package includes a work order report and 12 or more document attachments in various formats, such as MS Office documents (.xls, .doc, and .ppt), formatted output (.pdf, .pcl, .ps), and image files (.jpg, .gif). These attachments contain essential information about past maintenance activities, safety guidelines, step-by-step instructions, and equipment diagrams.

The problem? The process of printing these work order packages was entirely manual, involving printing reports, opening attachments, and collating documents. Given the high volume, this task was highly inefficient, consuming 40 hours per week and incurring substantial costs for Barrick Gold.

The Solution: AventX for Oracle eAM

To address this challenge, Barrick Gold Australia turned to STR Software’s AventX for Oracle eAM, a solution that would automate the work order package printing process, eliminating manual steps. Chris Abbott, System Administrator at Barrick Gold Australia, discovered that AventX was the solution they needed.

AventX seamlessly integrates with Oracle EBS, enabling more than 600 users at Barrick Gold Australia to submit print requests as usual. AventX then takes over, automatically printing work orders and attachments, collating documents, and stapling them together. As Chris put it, “AventX is transparent in the Oracle experience and works so well that we forget it’s there.” He added, “The print function is easy, straightforward, and simply put, it works!”

AventX brought unexpected benefits as well. Barrick Gold Australia saw a 30% to 40% improvement in EBS printer utilization after implementing AventX. This is because AventX closes each concurrent request as soon as the data is generated, moving document translation and printing to the background. Previously, Barrick would process data generation, translation, and printing within the concurrent request, causing delays when multiple sites submitted requests simultaneously.

Additionally, AventX helped address Barrick Gold’s EBS database growth issue, which was accumulating 30 GB each month. With AventX for Oracle eAM, Barrick Gold references and prints work order attachments stored in Microsoft SharePoint, eliminating the need to upload large work order attachment files to the EBS database.

STR Software’s AventX Product Suite is designed to streamline, manage, and automate document delivery processes from Oracle E-Business Suite, enabling companies to reduce operating costs, minimize administrative demands, and maximize the value of their IT investments.