Integration of an Inventory System : how to control your stocks & master safety and compliance?

BrightlandsChemelot Campus Presentation

Brightlands Chemelot Campus (BCC) is a major European industrial campus located in the  Netherlands.

Bringing together 30 companies – big players as well as promising start ups – BCC boosts innovation and business growth by giving tenants access to talent, knowledge, infrastructure and entrepreneurship.

Needs and project scope

When Brightlands’s Central administration came to us in 2019, their project was three-folded:

• centralizing the chemical products management,
• maintaining the EA Permit ( Environment Agency Permit )  related to industrial processes and waste management activities, through the compliance to standards and evolving norms
• guarantying the data security of the site, securing complete separation of data between companies.

In this context, Tim Hoolsteens, Project Manager for BCC, explains how they decided to consult several companies in order to implement a software solution that could support their needs and meet their requirements:

“ Our system was old and used outdated infrastructure. We needed an innovative, cost-effective and flexible solution, allowing to migrate our data and work on an easy-to-use system.“

On the campus, each company and research center worked independently, which brought complexity to the global requirements: absolute separation between sites was mandatory to guarantee data security & integrity.

” We choose to work with RITME to implement the software solution FindMolecule because the solution was highly flexible and fulfilled our needs. For security concerns, it was decided to implement to solution as a cloud-based solution, hosted by an European supplier (OVH).“

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Project Management & Agility

The timing was very short : 5 months to set up the environment, customize the software, test the new features, bring corrections and go live. On top of that, new ideas and problematics emerged during the development phase, making it necessary to conduct the project in an agile manner.

This is where RITME’s methodology proved to be very effective: offering a structured, holistic and agile approach when implementing new tools such as the chemical inventory management software elected on this project: FindMolecule.

RITME sustains a genuine collaboration on all aspects throughout the different steps of the project:

• Field Application specialists, so that the needs of each Unit & profession are studied and taken into account,
• A product Owner, to  guarantee the quality of the developments,
• Key users, who need to be listened to and guided to embrace the project,
• A Project Manager to maintain the framework.

With this method, RITME, FindMolecule and the customers conducted a deep customization of the solution to adapt it perfectly to BCC’s processes, especially with the implementation of exportable dashboards, required for the EA Permit and the security of the site, which was successfully maintained.

“The proposition was very creative and solutions were always found. When an issue occurred and problems were encountered, they were addressed the day after. Without this framework, it would have not been possible to do it in this timeline. The resolutions of problems and the developments were unbelievably fast!“

To facilitate deployment, RITME and FindMolecule adapted the login distribution method : each key user validated the system for his own company, and then accept the login distribution to their end-users. To facilitate the change management, out team provided several training session for key-users, in charge of the skills transfer internally afterwards.

“RITME deployed an agile method which allowed a scalable integration and the respect of deadlines.“

After the successful deployment of the solution, specific needs emerged to adapt to the evolutions of each equipped company. Indeed, key users proposed additional functionalities they wanted to see implemented in the system.

To make the solution evolve over time, RITME organized regular meetings to design and direct the optimization of the solution. Six new waves of development were completed in the following months. The ability of RITME and its partners to follow the project allowed the end-user to fully embrace the capabilities of the solution and integrate it seamlessly into their workflow.

“I get a lot of compliments on how easy it is to access the components and find molecules information back.“

R&D activities and related regulations tend to evolve a lot, and more and more quickly. It is therefore necessary to continuously adapt solutions and integration methods, a mission that RITME is fully committed to assume, in order to support its customers.