Case Study: Pipetech uses VARCHART XGantt for rough project planning

Projects tie up resources in different departments. If many projects are running simultaneously in a company, as is the case with R&D companies, for example, the management of projects and resources is essential for the efficiency of the company. Free capacities have to be occupied if possible and overcrowding has to be avoided

With Kapa^Plus, the company Pipetech, located in Ratingen, Germany, provides a software solution for project-oriented companies that is used for visualizing the resources' capacities for different decision levels and thus allows to schedule them. Kapa^Plus calculates the resources that are needed in a project and contrasts them with the base load and customer orders, selecting by project ideas, medium-term plannings and approved customer projects. Hence it is a rough calculation of resources that can be complemented with a detailed view if needed.

With the help of a central project data base that can be quickly integrated into the IT landscape of the company, a very transparent overview of the state of data is created, keeping the responsible project and division managers informed and at the same time providing the business management that is used to more compact planning sheets with relevant data.

The planning's results are visualized in clearly-structured Gantt charts that Pipetech realizes by using VARCHART XGantt ASP .NET. Manfred Nutz, IT Consultant with Pipetech, gives reasons for the decision to use the NETRONIC component: "With NETRONIC's VARCHART XGantt ASP .NET we rely on a largely platform-neutral software component for the integration of professional project and resource planning functions in our application development. Due to the seamless integration of graphical planning and reporting functions in our sectoral and trade-specific data base applications, planning activities in the project workflow are being supported in an optimal way. Furthermore we are thrilled by the outlook of constantly enhancing this component by using the respective technologies."

Rough planning is essential, e.g. in the tender phase, to recognize possible resource bottlenecks in advance as is illustrated by a red bar in the following planning table. Possible project end dates can also be reliably deduced from the chart:

By being a web-based solution, Kapa^Plus is available also to local teams and allows an easy rough planning of resources. Kapa^Plus is based on the Microsoft ASP.NET/AJAX technology and uses a state-of-the-art user interface for displaying the production schedules created with VARCHART XGantt in the browser, consisting, amongst others, of:

• undo/redo mechanisms
• modal popup-dialogs for the controlling of the planning tables
• global and user-specific layouts for the planning tables
• project-related versions of the planning tables simulation
• rough-planning-compatible resource-scheduling assistant