As Alabama transitions from a quiet southern state to a sweet home for foreign automakers' North American satellites, the competitiveness of its construction market has heated up much like a summer day. Naturally, the increase in construction activity has brought many material suppliers into the market, with ready mixed concrete no exception.

The face of ready mixed production in the Birmingham metropolitan area has experienced much change over the past few years as some suppliers expand through greenfield development and acquisitions, while others are absorbed or dissolve. Of the many suppliers, Sherman Concrete ranks as one of the top in both Birmingham and the state.

To help maintain its production and service edge, harmonize plant and vehicle communications, and standardize reporting among long-held and more recently acquired operations, Sherman Concrete recently upgraded from first generation central dispatching technology. The newly implemented platform provides customers, users and management information more quickly, and is capable of integrating with wireless and global positioning system-enabled tools to automate vehicle tracking and statusing.

On a major technology overhaul, Sherman used a needs-based and wish list-type matrix to help determine what systems warrant demonstration and final selection. “We interviewed users in each division to analyze our business needs. From the interviews, we developed a matrix of 99 criteria and used it as the basis for our research. We looked at over a dozen systems offering logistics and order entry, compared them against our list, then determined to test three systems,” explains Materials Business Analyst Keith Rickles, project manager for the implementation.

To test and further compare the three systems, Sherman Concrete ran each one parallel to an existing dispatch office for one week. “Being able to run the systems parallel really gave us a great perspective for narrowing down our selection to a single vendor,” notes Randy Johns, the primary IT resource for the implementation team.

Divided into six regional divisions, Sherman Concrete opted for Jonel Engineering's Access Unlimited because it was determined to be the system that best met user needs. The system build up began in January 2002 with the first go-live in March. A slow-paced project schedule of regional implementations was adopted instead of one large statewide roll out for several reasons: the implementation team was small; over 90 percent of the project was performed in house; and a rigorous training schedule included Windows and Access Unlimited instruction for 50 users. The project was completed in January 2003.

Each region is hosted in a dedicated database supported by clustered Microsoft SQL 2000 Servers. The configuration provides redundancy whereby crashes might slow functions for users throughout the regions, but will not disable them. It also supports six separate databases, eliminating the potential for a user in one region inadvertently corrupting another region. Citrix Servers provide the connectivity — hence, full screen emulation and application access, regardless of location — between divisions and Birmingham headquarters.

The regional dispatch offices had new equipment installed, too. Sherman decided to use the opportunity of new computer purchases to include dual flat-panel monitors for all dispatchers. “Dual monitors are useful for any system that requires viewing large amounts of data,” according to Rickles. “And the flat panel monitors are easier on the eyes of the users.” Dispatchers quickly adjusted to having two monitors, he adds, wondering how they survived with just one in the past

SWEET HOME

Birmingham serves as the headquarters for Lehigh South, a division of Lehigh Cement, Allentown, Pa. Lehigh South encompasses Sherman Industries; Lehigh Cement's Leeds plant, about 20 miles outside Birmingham; and, Continental Materials Florida, an integrated cement and ready mixed unit in Ft. Lauderdale.

Sherman Concrete is among several integrated companies that contribute to a concentration of producers that makes Alabama unique from a global cement production perspective. As shown on the accompanying map, four of the world's top five powder players are represented in the state: Lafarge Group, Holcim Ltd., Cemex SA and Heidelberg Cement (Lehigh parent). A fifth plant is owned by National Cement, the parent of Kirkpatrick Concrete and North American arm of France's Vicat SA. Alabama is also home to long-time aggregates top gun, Vulcan Materials.

Concurrent with a streamlining of concrete operators has been Alabama's establishment as the auto assembly capital of the south. After Mercedes set up shop in Tuscaloosa in 1996, Toyota, Honda and Fiat followed with their own assembly operations in Huntsville, Lincoln, and Sylacauga. Most recently, Hyundai is building a massive manufacturing facility in Montgomery. State officials estimate that the automakers have brought 10,000 jobs, in the main assembly plants and hundreds of support businesses.

Construction in Alabama has lagged in the past two years, at a level consistent or little higher than the 4-5 percent industrywide. The longer-term outlook remains strong, however, as residential and industrial development reflect a population growth trend of 1-2 percent annually since 1980.