Project management software in mechanical and plant engineering
Like a well-oiled machine - Projektron BCS in mechanical engineering
With Projektron BCS, you not only plan and control mechanical engineering projects according to your preferred project management method and your individual project guidelines, but you also optimize the business processes of your entire company: By what date should an expensive component be ordered so that it doesn't sit in stock unnecessarily? Is the realization period that a customer wants realistic? With BCS, you plan materials and resources with foresight, implement projects of any size on schedule, store your design data centrally and control your communication with suppliers and customers. BCS is a well-oiled machine in which each cog meshes with the other.
What if your project management software...
➤ combines all business processes under the umbrella of one tool?
➤ is flexibly adaptable to your methods, requirements, and PM guideline?
➤ manages all your employees, resources, inventory items, suppliers, and customers?
➤ creates clear structures and clarity in complex multi-project management?
➤ enables you to react to resource bottlenecks at an early stage?
➤ actively supports you in scheduling and personnel deployment planning?
➤ allows you to record project effort directly on the project?
➤ maps the entire customer communication from quotation to invoicing?
➤ helps you to continuously optimize your processes and workflows on the basis of data?
➤ automates your reporting?
➤ provides you with reliable target/actual analyses and real-time project data?
➤ is low-effort in installation and maintenance & integrates seamlessly?
"Complexity arises from the high vertical range of manufacture, but above all from the interaction of the most diverse activities in the departments. Projektron BCS provides, on the one hand, the possibility of standard-compliant processing of development projects according to the critical path method and, on the other hand, a "toolbox" for project communication that meets the needs of the most diverse departments. In addition, BCS integrates excellently into the existing software environment."
Head of Central Project Coordination, AIM Infrarot-Module GmbH, Heilbronn
"We were looking for a software that could map the approach of our project management guide. With BCS we found a good solution because the software could be flexibly adapted. Today, BCS provides us with a very good overview of our project landscape. Personnel bottlenecks as well as delays in the project are detected very quickly and we can take countermeasures at an early stage. For our project managers, the software is thus a very important tool."
Eva Klama
Project Management Office, Hörmann KG Antriebstechnik, Steinhagen
Projektron BCS - Project management software for mechanical engineering
Projektron BCS has already received several awards as ERP system of the year and also the Process Solution Award. The award was given not only for the diverse and open-method project management functions, but above all for the focus on process automation. BCS supports your management and your entire company in digitizing and largely automating internal and external business processes.
Meet deadlines, reduce costs, create synergies, achieve project and company goals - with Projektron BCS in mechanical engineering.
Project management and resource planning: Achieving goals
Wizard-supported project planning according to various methods
Visual time and resource planning in the interactive Gantt chart
Project preparation with risk management and target definition
Multi-project management and portfolio management for full overview
CRM: contacts & communication (customers, suppliers etc.)
Project controlling: analyses, target/actual comparisons, forecasts
Forward-looking resource and personnel scheduling
Vacation management: resource planning takes absences into account
Efficiency and quality: All processes optimally supported
Quality assurance: Templates, standardized checklists, workflows
Freely definable workflows and processes according to BPMN 2.0
Quotation and invoice generator with dispatch directly from BCS
Document storage: Store design data centrally and securely
Contract management and inventory management
Effort & expense recording task-, customer-, project-related
Qualitative & quantitative evaluation measures for goals freely definable
Ticket system with communication history e.g. for change requests
Simply integrated, boundlessly operational
Web-based software: access anywhere, anytime
Numerous collaboration tools: cross-location collaboration
International collaboration: multi-language & multi-currency capabilities
For your customer service: customer support portal via ticket system
Low installation and maintenance effort
Modular structure: Functions can be deactivated individually
Multiple interfaces to common tools (Jira, DATEV, Exchange, etc.)
Can be seamlessly integrated into your existing software environment
Open methods, flexible and adaptable
PRINCE2, PMI/PMBOK, Scrum, Automotive SPICE, V-Model, etc.
Supports hybrid project management methods
Mapping of your project management guidelines and role concept
Fine-granular rights concept according to your organizational structure
Customizable kanban board with drag-and-drop operation
Customizable: highly adaptable to your own requirements
Freely designable templates reports and evaluations
Individual dashboards with personal task overviews
You would like to get to know BCS as software for machine and plant engineering better? Take part in our free demo presentation now and start your non-binding test!
Why is BCS the ideal software for mechanical and plant engineering?
Projektron BCS is the ultimate project management software for companies in mechanical and plant engineering of any kind:
Mechanical engineering Plant construction Automotive engineering Drive technology
Electrical engineering Technical services Aerospace engineering
Special mechanical engineering Measurement and control technology
What was important to the managers of these mechanical engineering companies when selecting Projektron BCS and why do they still rely on the web-based project management and business coordination software Projektron BCS today?
"We use Projektron BCS software throughout the entire project lifecycle, starting with the pre-project phase, followed by bidding and project processing, and ending with invoicing. In project processing, we use different tools in BCS depending on the project complexity. In any case, time or activity recording is a central component in every project. Therefore, we use BCS consistently in all our projects."
Franz Essl
IT Administrator, Bitter GmbH, Sierning, Austria
"The functional scope of Projektron BCS is very close to our expectations. We can use it to effectively support our project management. The main functions for us are project planning, time recording, project-related and summary evaluations. The web-based functionality suits us very well because of the manageable installation effort."
Ivo Karrasch
Managing Director, Ahlberg Engineering GmbH, Berlin
"We no longer wanted to maintain our projects using an Excel list, but instead wanted to map complex project planning with effort, employee deployment and scheduling. Over the years, we have established BCS in various departments and areas of our company and manage cross-departmental project planning. We use the ticket system internally for requests in IT, among other things, and now have a good overview, great tracking and good evaluations."
Nina Belau
Project Management Central Development, Viscom AG, Hannover
"The flexibility of the software was the decisive factor. Our project management guideline was easily mapped with BCS. For example, the project classifications were customized for our needs, the standard priorities low, normal, high, very high and maximum were adapted to our levels 1-4 and later 1-6. We also had our project management roles, such as steering committee or work package manager, mapped in the software. As a result, our colleagues also found their way around the software immediately."
Eva Klama
Project Management Office, Hörmann KG Antriebstechnik, Steinhagen
"We use BSC for the scheduling of the complete project execution. This also includes the internal and external work in production and service. BCS is our tool for on-time production of our plants, so we can always give the customer meaningful and reliable deadlines."
Dario Britt
Head of Production, TechnoWood AG, Alt St. Johann, Switzerland
Erfahrungen aus erster Hand:
Anwenderberichte von Unternehmen im Maschinenbau, die seit Jahren mit Projektron BCS erfolgreich sind
The advantages of Projektron BCS as software in mechanical engineering and plant construction
One gear meshes with the next: All information centrally available
To ensure that all components are available at the right time in tightly timed product development cycles in mechanical engineering, it is not only the internal organization that is crucial, but above all the complex network of relationships with a network of different suppliers and customers. With Projektron BCS, you make all information available centrally and up-to-date for all stakeholders by creating a perfect image of your internal organization and your external relationships and making any information available at the right place.
| You plan your projects in Projektron BCS according to your individual project management guidelines. BCS supports agile and hybrid methods in addition to classic project management standards (waterfall model, GPM/IPMA, PMI, V model PRINCE2). Once you have created a project, you can save it as a template and use it as a standard for future planning. |
| You map your processes in BCS with integrated workflows and checklists or with the BPMN module for business process modeling. You can flexibly define and automate processes for all your project and business activities, for example complex inspection processes, production processes, invoice works, procurement and purchasing processes or even approval processes for vacation requests, etc. BCS informs each person responsible for a process step what they have to do and by when. |
| You manage your customers, suppliers, service providers and contacts centrally with the CRM function of Projektron BCS. Once created, the communication history for each stakeholder is stored here, and contracts, offers, invoices, documents, data on joint projects and appointments are linked to the respective person or higher-level organization and made centrally accessible. |
| Your internal organization is completely mirrored in BCS, both the organizational structure of your company with all locations and the project organization. Employee information is stored in digital personnel files with function, skills, areas of responsibility, departmental affiliation, working time model, payroll information and vacation management and made available for resource planning. |
| Your assets, means of production, machines and other inventory items are also recorded in BCS, linked to associated contracts and documents and can thus be scheduled as material resources in projects. |
| You centralize your communication with Projektron BCS. Every process is imported into BCS via mail import and CTI interface. With project tickets, you assign concrete tasks and collaborate across locations worldwide thanks to multi-language capability. The entire communication of ticket agents and representatives as well as the recording of working hours on tickets goes into the superordinate project. For planning your external project communication, the full functionalities of tasks, tickets, workflows with checklists and deadlines are available in BCS. This allows you to plan project communication as an integral part of the entire project right from the start. Via guest licenses, which can be flexibly defined by means of detailed rights assignment, you can include external stakeholders and offer them direct insight into the project progress or even grant them co-determination rights regarding certain views and aspects. |
| You upload your documents directly to tasks or deadlines. Documents are stored in a uniform filing structure so that they can be found again. Authorized employees always have access to relevant information from anywhere. Team collaboration is facilitated because all members have access to the latest document version and changes are traceable. There are no more duplicates or outdated versions of documents. Search and filter functions facilitate knowledge transfer and research. |
| Not only do you organize and manage your contracts in BCS, but you get a powerful tool for your entire contract lifecycle management (CLM). Link your contracts to people, organizations, tasks, workflows, project groups, projects, items in your inventory, offers, invoices or other contracts, or integrate them easily into work and approval processes. Use the integrated contract generator to create new contracts according to your individual requirements. |
| Projektron BCS can meet your individual requirements for the scope of functions, mapping of your business logic and corporate language up to the corporate design by means of high-level customizing options. |
Efficient communication processes and the immediate availability of all relevant information and materials are the keys to keeping development and production costs as low as possible in your mechanical engineering company and reliably meeting deadlines in your product development cycles. Projektron BCS is your central platform on which all this information flows together and is intelligently networked.
"Personnel planning as well as hourly bookings have been completely transferred from Excel to BCS. Interfaces to our time recording/absence software and to our main ERP system are being planned. Thanks to BCS, we have managed to get a good overview for everyone involved in projects. Our requirements were implemented quickly and conscientiously by Projektron's support team."
Nina Belau
Project Management Central Development, Viscom AG, Hannover
"Due to the many parallel projects - we currently have about 40 projects running at the same time - and cross-departmental work, multi-project controlling in BCS plays a major role at Hörmann KG Antriebstechnik. Here the resources of all projects are monitored by BCS, free resources are distributed to the different projects in the best possible way.
By using BCS, the overview during the course of the project has been significantly increased. We can now make more qualified statements about when a project is likely to be completed. In addition, we are informed at an early stage about delays in the project process and their reasons. We can see exactly who is doing what and where additional staff is needed to relieve the workload."
Eva Klama
Project Management Office, Hörmann KG Antriebstechnik, Steinhagen
Think and plan projects holistically
Projektron BCS supports you throughout the entire project lifecycle, regardless of the method or standard used. In addition to classic methods such as PRINCE2, GPM/IPMA or PMI and agile methods such as Scrum, BCS also offers all the tools, functions and wizards required to apply hybrid project management methods and industry-specific standards such as Automotive SPICE.
In plant engineering, where projects are often very extensive and complex because they involve many trades and technical disciplines, BCS supports you with high flexibility and maximum adaptability to map your individual project management requirements.
With the help of BCS you can get informative schedule and deployment plan overviews for research, development, investment projects in mechanical and plant engineering. BCS supports project managers in all phases of the project, from initiation and planning to controlling and closing. You can generate project proposals from ideas, compare them and use BCS' PPM tool to compile project portfolios on different focal points to decide which projects to implement.
BCS' multi-project controlling helps you keep track of all projects with their current status and resource utilization. With project-specific and cross-project evaluations, you can analyze not only planned and actual values, but also the remaining effort estimated by the individual project teams.
The project team documents all efforts continuously and directly on the project and makes them available for invoicing at any time.
"In the meantime, Projektron BCS has become well established at Kendrion Automotive and is used daily at almost all locations. In addition to the aforementioned topics of project planning and resource management, the tool is used for regular project reporting (individual and multi-project reporting), monitoring project budgets and for change management. The feedback of hours in daily or weekly bookings is now routine for our colleagues."
Nicole Baumann
Project Management Excellence, Kendrion Automotive Group
Moving more together
Projektron BCS, a web-based project management software, enables your company's development or production teams in mechanical or plant engineering to work together efficiently, regardless of location. The software offers integrated collaboration tools and central access to projects and documents, enabling all project participants to be connected on one platform. International collaboration is possible without barriers, as the system supports multiple languages and currencies. For example, your German site can work in German and bill in euros, while your development service provider in Budapest can use the Hungarian user interface and currency. Your supplier in China can even communicate in Chinese and invoice in Chinese Yuan, which is automatically converted by BCS. A total of ten different language versions are available in Projektron BCS.
Your employees can access Projektron BCS from anywhere by simply using a web browser. Not only your internal teams from different development and production sites, but also your customers and external project staff can be actively involved, thanks to browser-based access, a suitable license structure and detailed rights management. Project participants with the appropriate rights can access the same central database regardless of location and keep an eye on tasks, deadlines and schedules.
The integration of your customers creates transparency and informs them about the current status of the project work as well as resources, efforts and costs. Approval processes can be accelerated through direct communication via BCS, which leads to trusting teamwork as well as time and cost savings and has a positive impact on all parties involved.
"Colleagues notice that Projektron BCS makes their work easier - that it helps them, for example, to be able to classify what role their work plays in the realization of an order by looking at the project plan. There is another point where Projektron BCS has helped us a lot: security and reliability in dealing with customers when negotiating realization times or changes at the customer's request within project realization."
Dr. Simon Kimme
Head of Mechanical Engineering and Project Management, Laservorm GmbH, Altmittweida
Ticket system in BCS - Versatile for task assignment and external communication
The ticket system in Projektron BCS opens up several options at once:
| Customer communication and communication with external service providers and project participants. | |
| Internal task allocation and work organization within the scope of project tasks and line activities (Kanban board) | |
| Flexible task- and project-related effort recording for precise billing | |
| Exchange and documentation of communication within the scope of collaboration (also across locations) | |
| Change management via open items and tickets in which you escalate releases and changes directly to the steering committee. |
Not only can you document your entire communication process on a ticket and attach documents required for processing a task, but you can also directly record the processing effort.
"Looking back, we can say that choosing Projektron BCS was the right decision for our company. For us as a project-oriented technical service provider, BCS is the optimal tool to successfully implement demanding design and development projects for or together with our customers. Our internal activities and processes are optimally supported and our company's further growth is facilitated."
Franz Essl
IT Administrator, Bitter GmbH, Sierning, Austria
Quality and transparency
Quality management: Sources of errors dry up
Projektron BCS supports you in checking your quality management measures with a wide range of evaluation options. By using the ticket system from Projektron BCS, you can easily gain important information for your quality management, such as identifying frequent product defects.
Thought of everything? With standardized checklists, you map known error sources and support your employees in efficiently improving quality. Projects, tasks, workflow steps and milestones: In Projektron BCS, you benefit from the proven inspection method at numerous points.
Whether in tasks, workflows or projects - you can save your valuable experience quickly and easily in the appropriate comments fields for future work. The course of the project can be efficiently documented in Projektron BCS. This allows you to contribute to well-founded process analyses already during the project work and to promote continuous quality improvement.
"We have strongly standardized the procedure for creating our offers and often work with our own project templates. Program managers create the master data as a project in request status and assign a project manager. The customer then receives an e-mail generated from BCS as a request confirmation. The project manager creates and sends a quote via BCS. When the customer orders the project, effort and structure planning begins with a fixed end date.
The project manager plans tasks and deadlines bottom-up and documents the progress in BCS during the project. Checklists help to comply with quality assurance requirements. After project completion, the findings flow into the templates as lessons learned and complete them with the effect of becoming increasingly error-proof."
Christian Schmelzing
Senior Manager Production and Assembly, ZF Friedrichshafen AG, Schweinfurt
Product management with BCS
In Projektron BCS, you organize your products in the "Products" workspace in a hierarchical structure of product structure elements. This hierarchy can be as deep as you like and is visualized by a graphical network diagram. Related products are shown by predecessor-successor relations and with hierarchies. You can also represent your own relations. A click on a product allows a detailed view, where the predecessor-successor relations are even more clearly visible.
Transparent performance: Reports
When working with external business partners, your mechanical engineering company benefits from the customizable reports you can create in Projektron BCS: A project preparation report, for example, creates a common project understanding, effort reports on projects and tickets increase transparency and secure the trust of your clients and customers.
Would you like reports that are precisely tailored to your company? Thanks to the interface to the open source report designer BIRT, you can design completely individual reports. You want to provide your customers with regular reports? You can create project status reports with statements on the current production status, the stability and quality of the project results, risk assessment and deviations from the original planning at the push of a button using the reporting function in BCS. You can do this efficiently using report orders with an integrated e-mail function: In the ergonomic wizard, you create all the required information on the report, output interval and recipient once, and Projektron BCS takes care of everything else for you automatically.
"Projektron BCS is our platform for the timely recording of project efforts. With the software, we have an overview of our projects at all times. Reporting is largely automated by Projektron BCS. This leaves more time for the essentials: project work. A big plus is the browser-based operation, because installation and maintenance are thus limited to the server."
Dieter Schmidt-Bätz
Head of Project Management, Herkules-Resotec Elektronik GmbH, Baunatal
Runs like clockwork: Automate and optimize processes
With the BPMN process designer, Projektron BCS offers your company in plant engineering or mechanical engineering the possibility to model your individual production, sales and business processes. As an internationally recognized notation standard, BPMN is a central component of business process management and enables you to visualize and optimize your business processes and workflows. Furthermore, it creates more transparency about the processes within your company and towards potential customers.
BPMN processes enable you to assign tasks in a transparent and clearly defined manner in teamwork and in collaboration across departmental boundaries, hierarchical levels and locations.
Typical application cases and use cases for BPMN processes are:
complex verification processes
invoicing workflows
procurement processes/purchasing processes
approval processes with approval workflow (vacation request, request for business trip, home office, time off compensation, expense reimbursement, etc.)
The BPMN Designer enables the design, modeling, execution, monitoring, documentation, evaluation and optimization of processes within Projektron BCS. This supports business process management and automates the execution of frequently repeated business processes and workflows. Every employee has an immediate overview of exactly what they have to do, when and by when, and to which goal they are contributing.
License purchase or SaaS model - the choice is yours!
Projektron BCS is designed as a central tool that supports all important work processes in your mechanical engineering company from quotation to invoice - not just project work! BCS is individually scalable and adapts easily to your requirements thanks to versatile customizing options.
The structure of Projektron BCS is modular. This allows you to put together your individual ERP software for your mechanical engineering company module by module. You only pay for the functions that you really need and use. Your system remains updateable and flexible, so that you can map extensions quickly and easily.
You have the free choice between the on-premise and SaaS (cloud) variants of BCS. Projektron BCS has been developed by Projektron GmbH in Berlin since 2001. Thanks to continuous further development, you can expect a new release four times a year. As a German provider, we host your data in Germany according to the highest data protection and security standards.
"BCS was able to convince us with its focus on projects, the best coverage of our requirements, the good price-performance ratio and the modern web interface. After the decision, we planned the implementation together with Projektron. Several joint workshops were held to define the configuration, specify necessary adjustments and plan the transfer of inventory data. Here, we had a competent and committed technical account manager from Projektron at our side, who helped us to set up BCS in the best possible way for our requirements."
Franz Essl
IT Administrator, Bitter GmbH, Sierning, Austria
"We were particularly attracted by the fact that Projektron BCS is server-based and therefore does not have to be installed individually on each computer. The user works with the web browser he is familiar with. This makes the entire system user-friendly and independent of the operating system. As a growing company, we also liked the fact that BCS can be flexibly expanded through various licensing models."
Dr. Simon Kimme
Head of Mechanical Engineering and Project Management, Laservorm GmbH, Altmittweida
"We were particularly impressed by the software's ergonomics, which we hoped would lead to high user acceptance, and the browser-based approach, thanks to which local installation at individual workstations is no longer necessary. The options for individual customizing also weighed heavily in our decision, because BCS allows us to map our own organization without having to make any compromises."
Christian Schmelzing
Senior Manager Production and Assembly, ZF Friedrichshafen AG, Schweinfurt
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References: These mechanical engineering companies already rely on Projektron BCS
Were you convinced by the use cases and experiences of the mechanical engineering companies with BCS? Arrange your free demo presentation now and start the non-binding test phase!
Learn more about software selection and software implementation
Enterprise software implementation is a complex task for managers and team alike. The purpose of a software implementation is to successfully implement a new software, such as a project management tool, to improve business results, increase efficiency and productivity. What are the implementation strategies? Which strategy is suitable for which situation and for which purpose? What factors influence which strategy is the right one? With this knowledge, you as the person responsible for project management in mechanical engineering will lead your software project to success.
Get an overview in a simple way: We compare 13 of the most popular and best project management software solutions. Are you looking for a project management software for agile working digitally, a functional giant for project management in mechanical engineering or a PM software well suited for various tasks in multi-project management? Start here on site, discover the market and compare BCS with factro, Wrike, awork, InLoox, Trello, Asana, Jira, Monday and other PM tools.
If your mechanical engineering company is about to select software for project management, you probably don't know where to start looking for the right PM tool for you. The jungle of international and national providers, software and tools initially seems deep and impenetrable. This guide paves your way phase by phase through the project management software market, provides managers and project managers with a plan and accompanies you in nine steps to the right decision.
