Implementation in Pipelife successfully completed

Pipelife is a producer and seller of the plastic pipe systems. The company also sells systems for engineering networks produced by other Pipelife plants.

The company was using an outdated version of Exact information system, while their warehouse operations were managed by Megastore system, strategic and operational planning was supported by a proprietary system created in MS Access, with reports presented in MS Excel and Crystal Reports.

There was a requirement for a new information system to control all processes within one information system and to find a strong partner to complete the implementation and to be flexible in reacting to future needs concerning further development and maintenance of the information system.

NAVISYS with the information system Microsoft Dynamics NAV won the contest. The original project was divided into two stages. The first stage started on October 20, 2008 and it aimed to launch the system by January 5, 2009 in the most standardized way for all the key company departments, including the production and the storing facilities. The first stage was launched into operation according to the time schedule.

The second phase was focused on implementing the customer’s requirement considering the business, warehouse, transport planning, metrology and claims management. The important issue was to develop tools to support strategic and operative planning – both in finance and business/production, which are based on a sophisticated system, predicting the future demand.

In the production area, the system was complemented by specific requirements concerning the piping systems production – for example a register of technology data or the material consumption for entire production batch of several product types, and the subsequent division of the consumption on the individual products when the order is completed. The second phase was completed on June 30, 2009 and thanks to a strict following of the SureStep implementation method, the entire opening project was finished in the planned dates and the original budget was kept.

During the implementation, Pipelife Czech s.r.o. acquired the company INSTAPLAST spol. s r.o. and both companies were merged as of the September 1, 2009. It was agreed to add a third phase of the Microsoft Dynamics NAV implementation. This phase contained necessary steps connected with the merge, new users training and incorporation of the new production technology into current processes. The last phase was completed according to the schedule by the September 30, 2009, and the implementation of the new system was thus finished.

The project completion however does not mean the end of the Microsoft Dynamics NAV development in Pipelife Czech s.r.o. New activities are planned for the next year – advanced production capacity planning, technologic data collection automation, optimisation of the processes in the storage facilities, launching the company intranet based on Microsoft SharePoint with a close connection to Microsoft Dynamics NAV.

The commentary of Mr. Lukáš Bílek, Financial Analyst Pipelife Czech s.r.o.:

"Our goal with transition to the new information system was to integrate the company information environment into one system as much as possible, and also to create a reliable platform for future development visions. This goal is being met step by step. Compared to our previous system, we see a clear progress in reliability and flexibility when it comes to requirements of the new features. Cooperation with NAVISYS is very professional. They respond to all our requirements in a timely manner. The problems are quickly dealt with. The cooperation with their consultants helped us to improve some less efficient internal processes."