Aluminium giant honoured by Oracle for creative use of business intelligence applications
Dubai, United Arab Emirates: Reflecting the company's passion for innovation, coupled with a belief in leveraging technology to obtain maximum benefit, Dubai Aluminium Company Limited ("DUBAL") - Dubai's entirely state-owned enterprise that operates the world's largest modern primary aluminium smelter with a captive power station - has been awarded an Oracle Business Intelligence/Enterprise Performance Management ("BI/EPM") Innovation Award by Oracle - the world's largest business software company.
The award was presented to Ahmad M Almulla (DUBAL's Vice President: Information Technology) during Oracle OpenWorld 2009, held in San Francisco from 12 to 16 October this year. The event brought together thousands of strategists and developers from all over the world responsible for the products and services that can help a company achieve better results.
Clearly delighted at the honour bestowed on DUBAL, Almulla said, "We are honoured to receive this award. As a company that is striving for excellence in what we do, such achievements give us the assurance that we have made the right choices and moved in the right direction." The Oracle Innovation Awards recognise organisations for innovative deployment of Oracle Fusion Middleware - whether Oracle Application Grid; Oracle Business Intelligence or Oracle Enterprise Performance Management System. In particular, the Oracle BI/EPM Innovation Awards honour customers and partners that use Oracle EPM and/or Oracle BI creatively to optimise enterprise-wide performance.
"At DUBAL, we have harnessed the potential of Oracle's integrated and end-to-end product suites to help us simplify our computing environment, while still availing greater choice and flexibility," continued Almulla. "In particular, the Oracle middleware we have implemented (dubbed 'Smelter Analytics System') has not only given us a greater visibility and transparency to our operations, giving better management control, but has also helped contain costs, and reduce risks. The combination has given us greater competitive advantage through improved financial and proactive decision-making abilities."
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About Dubai Aluminium Company Limited ("DUBAL")
DUBAL is the world's largest modern aluminium smelter with a captive power station. It is also one of the largest non-oil contributors to the economy of Dubai. Built on a 480-hectare site in Jebel Ali, Dubai, UAE, DUBAL's major facilities comprise an 960,000 tonne-per-annum primary aluminium smelter, a 2,350 megawatt power station (at 30°C), a large carbon plant, three casthouses, a 30-million-gallon-per-day water desalination plant, laboratories, port and storage facilities. Employment is provided to more than 4,100 people, of whom approximately 24 per cent are UAE Nationals.
The company has the capacity to produce more than one million tonnes of high quality finished aluminium products a year, in three main forms: foundry alloy for automotive applications; extrusion billet for construction, industrial and transportation purposes; and high purity aluminium for the electronics and aerospace industries.
DUBAL serves more than 300 customers in about 48 countries predominantly in the Far East, Europe, the ASEAN region, the Middle East and Mediterranean region, and North America. The company holds ISO 9001, ISO/TS 16949, ISO/IEC 27001, ISO/IEC 20000, ISO 14001 and OHSAS 18001 certification; and has twice won the Dubai Quality Award in the Production and Manufacturing sector (1996 and 2000).
Driven by a quest for continuous improvement and ongoing innovation, DUBAL has invested substantial sums of money over the past 25 years in developing advanced reduction cell technologies that not only improve productivity but also reduce the operations' impact on the environment through improved energy efficiency and minimised emission levels. This has culminated most recently in DUBAL's proprietary DX Technology, which ranks among the best in its class. Developed in 2006, DX Technology has been implemented in a dedicated 40-cell potline at DUBAL's Jebel Ali smelter complex; and is being installed at the green-field EMAL smelter complex in Al Taweelah which, when completed, will be the largest single site green-field smelter in the world.
Entirely state-owned, DUBAL was established to aid in the diversification of the UAE economy by adding value to the country's oil-rich mineral resources. After a series of six successive expansions, accompanied by a regular array of operational achievements and independent awards, the company is today widely regarded as the industrial flagship of the UAE. Having begun to tap metal in November 1979, the company celebrates its 30th anniversary this year, i.e. 2009.
© Press Release 2009
