Value Engineering Meet at Saudi Aramco
Saudi Aramco, one of world’s largest producers of oil, invited its key suppliers of valves for a ‘Value Engineering Meet’ to Dammam-Saudi Arabia. This was held between 8th and 10th June 2009.
In this meeting, Saudi Aramco reviewed its existing specifications for valves (SAMSS specifications) in consultation with its key suppliers and this Value Engineering Meet was a forum for suppliers to put forth their suggestions and observations.
Mr. Girish Natarajan, Manager Middle East (fourth from the right) represented L&T Valves Business Group at Dammam. Girish added a lot of value in the forum by presenting a few suggestions that were well appreciated by Saudi Aramco.
L&T Connect – Information any time, anywhere!
In the current Information age, every client expects status updates from his vendors on ongoing projects and the valves business is no exception. Continuous and meaningful engagement with customers can help gain competitive edge over others.
Process Automation is therefore vital in fulfilling growing client demands and is a helpful tool in minimizing errors and delays on providing fast and meaningful information.
At the Valves Business Group, we have developed numerous internal IT enablers that can help in improving business processes. One such initiative is L&T Connect – a platform designed to provide customers real time information at the click of a mouse!
L&T Connect aims at providing dispatch plans of supplies for ongoing projects to customers. It is an authenticated site that shows the required details on entry of a registered username and requisite password. The site runs on .Net platform providing high end web pages with the intended security features and a user-friendly interface. The sales engineer uploads the dispatch plan as an excel file related to every project of the customer. The uploaded excel file gets compiled in the site and reflects as a pie chart to the customer. The customer can also download the compiled details as an excel file. The site also provides a repository to upload project related documents and pictures. The site is updated based on the contractual agreement signed between the customer and L&T.
- Launch ceremony in Chevron at Houston, USA.
L&T Connect was initially launched for Chevron in November 2007 for all their ongoing projects. The attempt was seen to be useful and highly appreciated by Chevron. Several features have been added upon the customer feedback such as new user registrations, mailing options through the site etc. The site was then re-launched after improvements in Oct 2008. A live demonstration of the same was made to our European distributors – Transmark, HSP and Econosto during their visits to Chennai.
Currently, there are about 40 customer registrations on L&T Connect and the growth has been very healthy. Going forward, we foresee L&T Connect expanding its horizons to all VBG’s clients in both the International and Domestic markets.
What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the master calls the butterfly!! L&T Connect is not ‘the’ end; it is a beginning to more successful and fruitful IT initiatives for the future.
