LODESTONE ENGINEERING
Engineering in Benoni

Mr. Des Heath bought the company in August 1967, and continued to expand the number of supplier companies and their products and services. The first major upgrade was the introduction in 1980 of a product brochure section to the book, which enabled Ezee-Dex to provide an invaluable link for all the products in the index section to a colour page, providing and illustrating much more information on the supplier company than was available previously. Copies of the new Ezee-Dex with substantially more information than ever before, were made available to buyers and engineers at no charge. However, in order to get copies, the companies were required to supply the names and positions of all the personnel wanting an Ezee-Dex. This was a major move in not only increasing the distribution but also in accounting to the advertisers with the name and position of every buyer and engineer receiving a copy of Ezee-Dex. A Distribution List is still produced each year and is supplied to each advertiser accounting exactly for each and every copy. In 1978 Ezee-Dex had started capturing and storing the product data on its mini computer system, which had originally been purchased to process and print the tender information. However, at the time, there was no other way of delivering the product data to the user, other than in book form. At this stage no cd-rom discs had been produced in South Africa, but the benefits and opportunities for Ezee-Dex were so great that in co-operation with EMI SA, the first cd-rom discs were pressed at the EMI facility in Wales. This single event changed the direction of Ezee-Dex for the first time in some 40 years. Up till this point, all company and product data had been generated from paid advertisers only, because of the limitation of the number of pages available in book form. However, a single cd-rom disc could accommodate the data and pictures of hundreds of books. Because there was now virtually no limitation on storage space available, Ezee-Dex created a research department that would now establish the products and services provided by companies, at no charge to the companies. At the same time there was an overwhelming growth of the Internet, and in 1998 Ezee-Dex developed a specialised product search engine on the Internet, essentially creating an electronic Ezee-Dex, with 46 000 visits recorded every month from buyers and engineers from South Africa and sub-Saharan Africa using our search engine to source suppliers. With the need for companies to increase their spend with B-BBEE companies, we have researched and integrated this information into the database, enabling buyers to always have alternative B-BBEE suppliers available. This technology has also been used to offer companies unique information for the management and rationalization and their vendors. This has proved to be an invaluable benefit in ensuring that vendor data integrity is maintained, and ensuring compliance of a Company's vendor policies. Each year companies spend millions of rands accessing the data on the EZEE-DEX SUPPLIER DATABASE & PROCUREMENT SYSTEM, either on their network or online. In 2010 Mr. Des Heath passed away and Mrs. Cathrin Heath, his wife who had worked side by side with her husband for 20 years, took over the running of the Company. At present Ezee-Dex employs a staff complement of 55 people, and has offices in Wynberg, Sandton, as well as offices in Durban, Cape Town, and Port Elizabeth. We have the resources, the knowledge, the technology and the will power to continue to provide a world class procurement service to the mines and industries in South Africa and sub-Saharan Africa.