February 3rd, 2010, Chippenham, UK

Preactor International, the world’s leading specialist planning and scheduling Software Company, announces a major business win Vulcan Industrial Engineering Company Ltd (VIECL), a leading Indian provider of standard and customized engineering services and products for core industries including mining, cement, steel and energy.

With a turnover currently approximately £22m, the global company with operations located in multiple countries has ambitious plans to increase this five fold over the next 5 – 7 years. VIECL sees its investment in Preactor production planning and scheduling technology as a vital part of this strategy. Ankit Gandhi, VIECL’s Production Project Manager explains why.

“We had talked with Preactor previously and it was clear from our earlier discussions that they had a thorough understanding of our business in addition to a thorough analysis of what our production planning and scheduling requirements were.”

He continues, “We recognised the cost savings Preactor could bring to our business and we estimate that these savings will directly help us to invest in an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system which will further benefit our business.”

VIECL works extensively on custom projects which require bespoke routings for each new project and Preactor will enable VIECL to accurately plan each new routing as well as monitor the progress of each project. The company also receives castings from a number of different suppliers which in the event of having to reject one can seriously impact the rest of the assembly processes. Preactor’s “what if” capabilities will enable VIECL to see the impact of each decision and by doing so empower them to take the best decision for the company.

The implementation is currently underway and being handled primarily by Preactor Software India, a subsidiary of Preactor International. P J Yogesh, General Manager of Preactor India comments on the business win.
"In addition to the proven pedigree of the Preactor solution, it was the demonstrable experience and expertise that our partner (SNIC) has that gave our customer the solid assurance that this was the best way forward. With so many successful implementations, Preactor is the only solution that our customers can have complete confidence in."

Johnson Mathews, Manager (Operations) of Preactor Software India comments on the implementation challenges. “Perhaps the biggest challenge is the fact VIECL has no system in place at all so we will need to do extensive training to help the workforce understand how the system works and to see for themselves the benefits it will bring to the company and to their daily work. We are also customising the User Interface to reflect VIECL’s route setting requirements which is made possible thanks to Preactor’s powerful and flexible customisability.”

The project is due to go-live and start delivering immediate benefits in March 2010.