“Within Solvay Pharmaceuticals, TPS (Technology and Product Support) was a recently created entity, with mission to provide technological support to Manufacturing and Supply sites, and industrialize products from the R&D pipeline. As many activities needed to be organized as projects and there was no standard yet, a project was launched to define and implement Project Management standards and tools. We soon discovered that Nicolas De Dobbeleer, at that time a Solvay employee, could provide a platform based on MS Project server that fitted perfectly in our concept: collaborative, customizable, enabling individual project follow up as well as portfolio consolidation. There was even a standard dashboard available, created by Nicolas; however for internal reasons we did not use this option. In the design and implementation of our solution, Nicolas provided useful guidance and support to properly install the "architecture" part of this solution. We launched the solution 8 months ago. It includes processes based on PM best practices (phases, workflows, roles and responsibilities...), MS Office-based tools for project lifecycle monitoring, and the MS Project server (supplied by The Project Gold Mine) as backbone for collaboration, planning and portfolio overview. We made a tour recently on the plants to collect feedback from users. The outcome is good; of course like in any new system & process, several items need further improvement, but general comments are positive, and the appropriation of the solution is increasing at a good pace. Especially, unique and structured process, increased collaboration, and transparency of information were quoted as important improvements. We are confident that we will make a success out of this solution.” Fabrice Miharan, Projects Support & Systems manager, TPS, Solvay Pharmaceuticals, Châtillon, France
