Case Study ► MINING
Lithium Americas: Reinventing the Future of Mining with Next-Gen Technology
Overview
Lithium Americas Corp. is a mining company focused on advancing lithium projects in Argentina and the United States to production. Caucharí-Olaroz (Argentina) is advancing toward production as the largest new brine operation in over 20 years, while Thacker Pass, the largest-known lithium resource in the US, is under construction.
Lithium Americas wanted to replace its multiple legacy systems and applications with a modern ERP solution that would improve integration of production, logistics, and management processes and provider better, clearer visibility across the business. They chose SAP S/4HANA to achieve these goals and support the Company’s growth going forward.
Customer Profile
Name: Lithium Americas
lithiumamericas.com
Location: Vancouver, Canada
Industry: Mining
Products & Services: Lithium Mining
Featured Solutions & Services:
SAP S/4HANA
global manufacturing plants operate across languages, time zones, and currencies
countries in seven continents integrate Laticrete materials into iconic designs
third-party integrations required during migration for systems interfacing with ERP
required system availability to support Laticrete’s global operations
Solution & Approach
Leveraging AWS Premier and Oracle competency partner Syntax, Laticrete determined the best path forward was to combine an upgrade and modernization of JD Edwards ERP with a migration to AWS. This transformation project included a replatform from IBM i (AS400) to Windows/SQL, an AWS high availability (HA) architecture conforming to the AWS Well-Architected Framework, and a JD Edwards ERP upgrade.
Advancing to a Modern Platform
AWS offered a mature cloud ecosystem to provide Laticrete with a costeffective, scalable, and secure environment that was both flexible and customizable, establishing a platform for future innovation. Though Laticrete had no prior experience with AWS, Syntax brought extensive experience with both AWS and Oracle JD Edwards, including a track record of successful migration and transformation.
Refactoring for a Smooth Transition
Syntax chose refactoring as the migration approach, which involved a change in the platform and database server in addition to a complete Oracle JD Edwards ERP upgrade. Pairing the move to AWS with an ERP upgrade facilitated the testing process by creating a duplicate environment where Syntax and Laticrete could perform platform and database conversions, ERP upgrade, and end-to-end integrated testing—including 19 interfaces with third-party systems—without impact on production.
Orchestrating Operational Control
Adopting the AWS Well-Architected Framework, Syntax enabled high availability (HA) at both the infrastructure and application levels by distributing the load across multiple availability zones and rearchitect the ERP software. The resulting application runs 24/7/365 to meet the needs of Laticrete’s global organization. Syntax deployed AWS services, including Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) for compute, Elastic Load Balancing (ELB), and Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3), to deliver a modern platform with digital capabilities to leverage throughout the business.
Upgrading, modernizing, and migrating the JD Edwards environment to AWS enables Laticrete to accomplish their continued modernization and business continuity objectives, transform the user interface (UI) for a better user experience (UX), and prepare for future initiatives including data lakes and machine learning. With real-time scalability and lower financial barriers of public cloud infrastructure, the company and product lines can grow exponentially.
Transforming a system of record to a system of enablement
– More flexibility, lower financial barriers vs. hosting
– Faster innovation for customers and users
– Real-time scalability for exponential growth
– Modernizing and automating core business processes
– New digital enterprise tools for smarter decisions