eEnabling

The explosion of new technology, particularly the Internet, is transforming the way L&T Hydrocarbon professionals transact and interact. To thrive in the e-economy, L&T Hydrocarbon is capitalising on the strategic advantages that come from speed and information and are taking steps to address all issues related to business. In a sector which has high potential risk and low margins controlling the cost and quality of far-flung projects involving hundreds of engineers, purchasers, managers, and contractors, L&T Hydrocarbon has exerted to leverage new economy tools to build up a world class EPC organisation. It has undergone a transition from stand-alone systems, towards integrating CAD, Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), project scheduling, and other systems over the time.

At the same time it has initiated fast-track deployments of online collaboration and project-management tools that shorten cycle times for designing and building projects. This platform enables electronic flow of documents, all of which are very technical in nature during design, procurement and construction phase of a project. It has also enabled procurement of direct engineering materials online from over 14,000 suppliers registered in the Vendor Master in the SAP R/3, E&C Division's ERP system running at the backend.

L&T Hydrocarbon  has created various web based platforms eAlps, Centenary, EnCorr to help business act faster and monitor and control the quality and cost of the project.

The key business critical applications L&T Hydrocarbon uses are:

SAP ECC 6.0

The SAP R/3 enterprise has been implemented in all Strategic Business Units of L&T Hydrocarbon. It carries the newest version of SAP ERP ECC 6.0 Technologies and infrastructure enhancement (SAP web application Server).

The modules implemented cover functions such as Finance/Controlling with Profit Centre Accounting, Materials Management, Warehouse Management, Production Planning, Quality Management, Sales & Distribution, CIN - Country India Version, Project Systems, Plant Maintenance, and Environment Health & Safety & Business Warehouse 7.1 (Reporting Tool). This ensures that collaborative design, engineering and project management bring measurable benefits in terms of reduced transaction cycle time and better service levels.

To get actionable analytical reports from the SAP R/3 System, L&T has deployed the SAP Business Warehouse (B/W). SAP B/W ver 7.1, business intelligence analytical online processing software, takes care of strategic reporting needs and offers flexible and easily accessible reports from SAP R/3 and other data resources.

eProcurement – To extend ERP application, a web based application, eProcurement, has been developed which enables L&T Hydrocarbon buyers to carry out online procurement transactions with its business partners (suppliers) using SAP ECC 6.0 as the backend. The system enables authorised suppliers to view the Request For Quotations (RFQs) along with attachments, submit their offers along with attachments, access purchase orders and give order acceptance remotely using this website. All the transactions being role based, it can be viewed and accessed only by the authorised users only. This web site incorporates security features which ensures confidentiality of data.

PRIMAVERA

L&T Hydrocarbon has standardised on the software Primavera for project planning, scheduling and control. Primavera is a project management software that reflects the very nature of the business model in the way the project information is stored. It allows management and exchange of information for a project between disparate locations through a web-site based interface. Apart from proper resource usage, it also allows project tracking, report generation and resource scheduling. The project website can be published on the Intranet and usage can be restricted at different levels like Enterprise level or project level.

The use of Primavera as a project management tool allows L&T to easily roll up project information and make this information available faster between different units working on the project. Consequently, the impact of a particular project's performance is visible across all units and projects thereby improving the scope for efficiency and eliminating delay factors.

Integration of SAP Project System (PS) module with Primavera -  L&T  has developed an in-house tool “Inspire” to integrate the PS module of SAP with Primavera. This provides synergy of cost data, materials data and physical progress in real time project environment. The project team which has created project data in Primavera now do not have to re-create it in SAP.  The integration also aids in keeping track of financial health with respect to physical progress of project like Earned Value analysis, return analysis, etc., in SAP together with analysis of delay and associated costs. Apart from tracking the actual cash flow of projects, retrieving Business Warehouse (B/W) reports for profitability analysis, risk analysis and procurement related activity is also possible.

KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT

L&T Hydrocarbon  has standardised on the software Primavera for project planning, scheduling and control. Primavera is a project management software that reflects the very nature of the business model in the way the project information is stored. It allows management and exchange of information for a project between disparate locations through a web-site based interface. Apart from proper resource usage, it also allows project tracking, report generation and resource scheduling. The project website can be published on the Intranet and usage can be restricted at different levels like Enterprise level or project level.

The use of Primavera as a project management tool allows L&T to easily roll up project information and make this information available faster between different units working on the project. Consequently, the impact of a particular project's performance is visible across all units and projects thereby improving the scope for efficiency and eliminating delay factors.

Integration of SAP Project System (PS) module with Primavera -  L&T  has developed an in-house tool “Inspire” to integrate the PS module of SAP with Primavera. This provides synergy of cost data, materials data and physical progress in real time project environment. The project team which has created project data in Primavera now do not have to re-create it in SAP.  The integration also aids in keeping track of financial health with respect to physical progress of project like Earned Value analysis, return analysis, etc., in SAP together with analysis of delay and associated costs. Apart from tracking the actual cash flow of projects, retrieving Business Warehouse (B/W) reports for profitability analysis, risk analysis and procurement related activity is also possible. Knowledge Management is an art of creating value from an organisation's intangible assets. It involves an integrated approach to the creation, capture, retention, accessing, sharing and leveraging of an enterprise's information assets for business gain.

Knowledge Management is one of the major Business Specific Initiatives (BSI) undertaken in L&T Hydrocarbon, meant to harness the knowledge and experience of its people. It encompasses a very massive task of integrating the vast resources of explicit knowledge and the tacit knowledge in L&T Hydrocarbon. The integrated Knowledge Management system of L&T Hydrocarbon is called KnowNet and is used for harnessing the tacit knowledge and experience of the personnel involved in hydrocarbon project execution. It has following modules with focus on specific aspect of Knowledge Management.

Knowledge On Line (KOL) - KOL is an application developed in-house with focus on becoming a central repository of all project / proposal specific experiential learning and has the prime objective to minimising efforts dissipated in re-learning, i.e., Learn once, Converting personal knowledge to organisational knowledge and  Leveraging organisational knowledge in delivering business advantage to customer.

DocNet -  L&T Hydrocarbon has a reliable document management system in DocNet based on MOSS 2007 platform, which runs on an enterprise server. This web-enabled document management system helps the various project teams to store their project specific documents including drawings, specifications, manuals and correspondence in a secured environment. The document management system helps users in the entire life cycle of the document right from creation to the archival of the document. It is enabled to collaborate with Vendor, Client,Licensor, PMC or any agencies who are outside the network of L&T Hydrocarbon.

Innovation Channel – This is a medium that gives opportunity to the people of L&T Hydrocarbon to bring forth new ideas / suggestions based on what they have observed elsewhere or read about in the areas of emerging technologies or just better ways of working.

Community Of Practice (COP) - A CoP is a team of people who are practitioners of a well-defined knowledge domain who come together to capture, create and share relevant knowledge, in pursuit of business excellence.

PROJECT CORRESPONDENCE APPLICATION (EnCorr)

The Lotus workflow based project correspondence module designed and implemented by L&T Hydrocarbon, is a unique solution that takes care of all internal and external correspondence records like letters, faxes and emails prepared by the project team members.

It is designed to automate the process of creating correspondence speedily, and simplify the task of searching for specific correspondence records based on a wide variety of search criteria like addressee, date of letter, project reference, or even phrases contained in the body of the letter. Encorr is a web based system and can be accessed globally.

eALPS+ (SITE/CONSTRUCTION MANAGEMENT)

Activity Level Planning System (eALPS+) is a proprietary web enabled software developed for construction management with the tight integration of SAP to achieve proper data integrity and consistency. This application is used for micro planning, tracking, control and integration of construction activities at all project sites. It is a seamlessly integrated solution, which is capable of tracking the material, right from release of purchase order, tracking individual material flows including to sub-contractors  to usage of materials at site to provide “Real Time” status.

It maintains and updates correct drawings with their latest revisions, purchase orders including their latest amendments.  It maintains Stores Master Data covering receipt and issue of materials. It also covers quality management aspects such as test specification maintenance, inspection process and welder master maintenance.

It generates various reports such as Material Usage Reports, Inspection Reports, Stock Reports, Shortage Reports and has a MS Excel export feature.

L&T Hydrocarbon  has developed an in-house application easyTrack to track the movement of the material right from the time of the release of the purchase order to the stage that the material reaches site. It has built-in functionalities like expediting, pre-dispatch inspection clearance and dispatch clearance to have a visibility on the status of the material at any stage.

CENTENARY

Centenary system automates the processes of QA&I department where all the information related to a project is available on click of a button, e.g., Bid Documents, Project Quality Plan, Inspection Methodology Documents, Inspection Requirement Table, QAP, Inspection Schedules, etc. The previous project information is considered as a guideline for new projects hence saving considerable time and enhancing productivity and ensures error free documentation.

Interfaced with SAP to fetch IMIR Punch Points and also display PO information.

Centenary also automates the process to the commissioning and pre-commissioning department. The Mechanical Completion & Commissioning Module caters following functions of all hydrocarbon upstream projects from mechanical completion till handover phase of the project:

Project definition ( Hierarchical Systems Approach) Itemwise (Tagwise) work assignment  Real time progress monitoring of mechanical completion & commissioning Standardised documentation and document handling from multiple storage locations Cross reference to past and contemporary projects Auto compilation of dossiers and manuals

This module serves as common umbrella for both the teams (construction and commissioning) hence facilitating seamless transfer of custody.