76
Tube ProducTs InTernaTIonal January 2012
f i t t ings
& valves
900mm PE pipe being installed
Valve company plans for growth
Velan Inc is a manufacturer of industrial
valves, operating 13 plants in eight
countries. The company has chosen
Ortems to support its growth by
maximising its operational excellence.
Velan SAS France is a subsidiary
of Velan Inc that specialises in the
design, manufacture and maintenance
of valves and taps for the nuclear and
cryogenics industries.
In light of its strong revenue growth
(€35mn in 2008, €70mn in 2010 and
€80mn forecast in 2011), Velan SAS
France decided to acquire a planning
and scheduling solution for several
important reasons: to improve the
visibility on project status and related
forecast completion lead-time; to
assess plant workload over several
months based on order backlog and
identify necessary CAPEX to drive
its strong growth; to plan shop-floor
operations by scheduling short and
medium-term tasks to be carried
out based on prioritisation criteria
(urgency and importance of projects,
optimisation of launches, etc); to
assess subcontractor workloads and
negotiate framework agreements
with them; and to implement an easy
production output reporting system
from contract to customer delivery
stage.
Pierre Alain Eloy, head of project
planning at Velan, explained, “Velan
France specifically services the nuclear
industry and liquefied gas market,
which is subject to severe safety
constraints that oblige our customers
to check each part.
“These constraints have a strong
impact on our production lead-times.
As such, between the run time, which
often is only a week, and the final
delivery, sometimes up to eight months
can go by. Our objective with a planning
tool is to do a better job of informing
our customers in order to reduce these
lead-times and thereby improve our
productivity.
“In order to choose the best solution,
we worked early on with the SCA
Consult firm, which helped us during
the tendering phase and in choosing
the best solution.
We selected the Ortems solutions
because they were the only ones
that had a per-project management
solution with planning issues adapted
to our markets with long cycles and
18-month horizon.
“We also liked the tool’s thoroughness,
which allows us to supervise our shifts
closely, as well as the relationship
of trust that formed between our
companies.”
René Desvignes, Ortems chairman and
managing director, added, “This new
signingwill strengthenOrtems’ leadership
position in per-project management,
which requires real planning expertise
based on the workload/capacity match
as well as a powerful load balancing
functionality.
“As the market leader, Velan’s choice
demonstrates once again that our
solutions’ flexibility and modelling
power allow us to correctly address our
customers’ complex core business issues
in the engineering to order (ETO) process.”
Velan sas
– France
ortems
– France
