RHI Magnesita partnered with Autodesk through a Business Success Plan to centralize engineering data, improve Vault adoption, and connect design workflows with business systems. With expert coaching, peer insights, and in-house automation, the company optimized licensing, reduced costs, and turned digital complexity into clear, data-driven decisions at a global scale.
RHI Magnesita is a global leader in refractory products, systems, and services—materials engineered to withstand extreme heat and stress in industrial processes. From furnaces and kilns to reactors and crucibles, its products keep the world’s high-temperature industries running safely and efficiently.
Every year, the company produces around three million tons of refractory materials across 65 main production sites (including recycling facilities) and 12 raw material sites , supporting operations in more than 170 countries. Its portfolio of over 120,000 products serves customers in steel, cement, lime, non-ferrous metals, glass, paper, energy, chemicals, and other industries.
For the design and engineering function of such a large, complex business, data plays a vital role. “We create a lot of data, and we needed a very structured way to deal with that,” says Marco Vasconcelos, digital transformation expert in the Engineering Global Governance team.
RHI Magnesita had implemented Autodesk Vault to manage its design and engineering files, but adoption lagged. Vasconcelos and his team wanted Vault to serve as a connective backbone across systems. “We wanted to make Vault the central hub for our engineers—connected to CRM and other business tools,” he says.
The company also wanted to develop the infrastructure in-house, rather than hiring a third-party vendor. With infrastructure still under development and global server setup posing a hurdle, the team needed guidance from someone who had already navigated similar terrain. “We were still creating our infrastructure,” Vasconcelos explains. “We weren’t sure how to set up servers globally, and we needed insights from someone who had already done it.”
RHI Magnesita partnered with Autodesk through a Business Success Plan. Working closely with Customer Success Manager Eva Zwifl and Autodesk’s expert coaching and deployment teams, the company tapped into a network of shared knowledge and experience
“We wanted to see a real case in our area,” says Vasconcelos. “So we asked: can you connect us to a company that uses Vault in a way that matches ours?”
“I saw the chance to connect RHI Magnesita with another customer using Vault heavily,” Zwifl says. “They have a similar setup. They also have engineering pools all over the world.”
That connection proved invaluable. Through peer insights and expert guidance, RHI Magnesita was able to refine its infrastructure and drive adoption across its global operations.
—Marco Vasconcelos, Digital Transformation Expert, RHI Magnesita
While data management was one part of the transformation, RHI Magnesita also improved how it manages and scales its engineering environment.
With Autodesk’s support, the team adopted a more flexible approach to managing user access, aligning tools more closely with actual usage across engineering teams.
Vasconcelos took that concept further. With the help of expert coaching, he developed his own in-house automations to manage licenses dynamically using Autodesk’s reporting API. “With help from Autodesk coaching, I created a tool that automatically switches users between Flex and subscription based on their real usage,” he explains.
What was once a manual, time-intensive process is now automated. “We’ve calculated €13,000 per year saved from automating what used to be manual work,” Vasconcelos says.
By leveraging Autodesk’s SDK and data APIs, the team has built internal tools that reduce reliance on third-party vendors.
Convincing engineers to change long-standing habits can be one of the hardest parts of digital transformation. RHI Magnesita tackled this challenge by showing teams how Vault makes their work easier—not harder.
“We have engineering pools all over the world,” says Vasconcelos. “Some are easier to onboard than others. But when people see that Vault helps them in their daily work, adoption comes naturally.”
Through plug-ins and integrations, engineers can now access Vault without leaving their design environment. “They can connect directly from CAD, manage projects, create bills of materials, even link with CRM for quotes—all without switching tools,” he says.
That integration has turned Vault from an extra step into a time-saving asset. “We wanted to streamline their daily work—and that’s happening,” Vasconcelos adds. “That’s why there’s not much friction anymore.”
“We’ve learned so much through Autodesk’s expert coaching and API training,” says Vasconcelos. “Many of our automations—connecting CRM, Outlook, and Vault—were inspired by what we learned.”
For Zwifl, the partnership was more than a support engagement—it was a shared journey and a true exchange of ideas: “It’s not just Autodesk as a vendor and RHI Magnesita as a buyer,” she says. “We’re solving problems together. We look at where they want to be in two, three, five years—and we act as an accelerator for them.”
Vasconcelos agrees. “At first, Autodesk was a vendor. Now it feels like a strategic partnership.”
With Autodesk’s support, RHI Magnesita has driven meaningful, measurable impact:
Increased Vault adoption from ~20% to 80%+, embedding it into daily engineering workflows
Enabled faster, more reliable decision-making with centralized, trusted data
Reduced manual effort through automation, saving €13,000 annually
Strengthened alignment between engineering and business data across systems
