ThyssenKrupp Marine Systems

TKMS is by far our largest client (enterprise wise, not revenue). Then are more than 2.5 times the size of Microsoft global, with over 200,000 employees and $46b in revenues.

Overview

TKMS Canada was looking to build more presence in Canada, mainly due to the billion dollar JSS (Joint Support Ship) project. They needed a website which would also become an application platform for on-demand web services… as they had an immediate requirement for a Procurement Management System / Supplier Extranet.

They invited several reputable development firms to bid on the project, we were short listed… and won the bid after our presentation. Our Plone experience and demonstration was the key factor for them… as they use Plone quite extensively throughout their global operations.

Project Highlights

We established a Plone shared hosting account, and designed a skin for Plone 3.0 “centered with a 1024p width”. We gathered content with client, and posted for them. The site was live within 1 month.

We developed the Procurement Application from the ground up, using UML modeling with Plone framework. The application is 100% self contained within Plone. Supplier self-registers, supplier is auto email notified with NDA attachment. TKMS administrator is also auto-notified, a single click approval enables the Supplier account and a workflow process is triggered which sends a welcome email to the supplier… inviting them to set their password (true to best practice, passwords are never included in emails or set by our client). Supplier instantly sees list of RFP, and can bid only on the section he was given access to. (Supplier has a “My Bids” area where they can specify their intent or formal proposal submissions).

• Single click approval action, and supplier access limitations.
• Import PBS (Product Breakdown Structure) from their ship building application (e.g. over 320/ship). This import automatically built RFP’s for our client, segregated them by supplier access, and even attached associated documents in one simple swop.
• Client had a generic Terms and Conditions area which could easily be updated, or they could override any document or term on an RFP by RFP basis (saving hours per RFP).

We build a User Guide for supplier and an Administrator Manual, and we provided on-site group training to a team of 6 people.