Vale: how Stratws sustains routine management at global scale

Before Stratws, routine management at Vale depended on processes that weren’t well systematized, with rework and manual data consolidation. Today, more than 13,000 users track indicators inside a single system, at global scale.

Vale is one of the largest mining companies in the world, with 78 years of history. The company, privatized in 1997, has been a Siteware partner since 2005 and is now also the country’s largest logistics operator.

• 15 years

  of partnership between Vale and Siteware

• +13,000

  active users on Stratws

• +27,000

  indicators registered in the system

What challenges did Vale face before Stratws?

Vale’s main challenge was managing its routine in a systematized, collaborative way, with as little rework as possible. The company also needed automated data consolidation, one that could sustain productivity and management maturity.

André Horta, a Vale employee for more than 10 years, says the company evaluated other systems on the market. None of them, he says, had Stratws’ dynamism or its results-driven management purpose.

How did Stratws roll out at Vale?

Adopting a new tool is never instant, and the response was no different among frontline users. Over time, though, employees started to see the benefits, the improvement opportunities, and the productivity gains an integrated management system brings.

Vale’s senior leadership played an important role in that adjustment, bringing information and training to the teams. That follow-through helped Stratws take on a strategic role inside the organization.

Pushback is something that will always exist. But once the benefits are laid out clearly, the user stops seeing it as a problem and starts seeing it as a solution.

What results has Vale seen with Stratws?

Consolidation, reliability, and on-time data updates are among the main gains André points to. Stratws also sustains the link between the data presented and the action plans built from them, from handling deviations to spotting improvement opportunities.

The gap in management maturity between areas that use the system and those that don’t is visible, according to André, and it became even clearer as the global rollout progressed.

Vale also recently moved the system to the cloud. Since then, the company has had automatic updates, more tool availability, and access to features it didn’t have before.

Vale’s experience shows what changes when routine management at a global operation stops depending on manual processes. Indicators and action plans start running connected, inside a single system.