SDL International, the world’s leading provider of global information management (GIM) solutions, announced that its client SMS Demag, a member of the SMS group and the market leader in building metallurgical plants and rolling mills, improved customer satisfaction by using its SDL global information management solution for the translation of engineering and operations documents. With SDL, SMS Demag accelerated and improved the information it produces for customers worldwide, also ensuring compliance with international regulations.

SMS Demag designs and builds plants and machinery – from entire steel mills to finishing lines – for steel, aluminum, and non-ferrous metals manufacturers worldwide. Its customers include the world’s largest metallurgical manufacturers.  With over 9,500 employees worldwide, the SMS group recorded 2.2 billion euros (2.8 billion U.S. dollars) in 2004 sales, 90% of which is generated from outside its home market in Germany.

With large international sales, SMS Demag is contending with a massive volume of localization work under intense time pressure.  Further, each design is unique and required by regional regulations to include all supporting documentation published in the native language. To address these requirements, SMS Demag must author and translate large amounts of information, requiring precise technical attention over an overwhelming amount of materials such as: engineering drawings, specifications, installation instructions, compliance documents, best business practices, plant operating manuals, and many other documents and manuals.

The many labor-intensive steps in this process opened the door for errors. In addition, SMS Demag’s translation teams were dispersed across several geographies. The company needed to tighten collaboration among its teams and integrate their work in order to correct a disjointed workflow that was contributing to quality and time problems.

SMS Demag executives recognized that they needed an effective global information management solution to optimize the flow of communications and product content to international customers. With SDL, the company can leverage all its multilingual assets and has an open platform that integrates all three of its content authoring environments – Microsoft, Autodesk, and a proprietary system. Further, SDL optimizes its entire globalization process from the content creation stage to localization and finally to publication. 

SMS Demag is now able to automate and manage its considerable translation workload that was prone to quality issues, finishing its projects even faster and at a lower cost. As a result, with SDL the company is increasing customer satisfaction as well as simplifying requirements for localized content with a streamlined and controlled workflow that ensures accuracy at every step.

“SDL gives us peace of mind in meeting our key challenges in compliance and customer service,” reported Antoine Boy, Head of the SMS Demag Translation Department. “Its open platform was exactly what we needed to integrate and optimize our fragmented translation processes. We could not have achieved this without SDL’s domain expertise and best practices in working with us, together as one team to identify and resolve the issues. Given all the rapid benefits we achieved, we are pleased that our SDL investment paid for itself in just a short time.”