External company employees - Permit administration

Company portrait

Degussa AG is a multinational company with a consistent focus on high-yield specialty chemicals. Six divisions are responsible for the operating business: Health & Nutrition, Construction Chemicals, Fine & Industrial Chemicals, Performance Chemicals, Coatings & Filler Systems and Specialty Plastics. The plant in Wesseling is one of the Group’s largest production sites: the 330,000 m² site, which employs around 1,550 people, houses 14 production facilities for the manufacture and processing of a wide range of products, which are primarily based on hydrocyanic acid or silica sand.

The project idea

Safety is the top priority in the workplace for internal and external employees at Degussa AG. Every employee first receives basic training in all safety issues. The training and instructions given to employees of external companies are documented in the passports. The pass is an important document as proof of the required instruction and training of an external company employee and is also part of the authorization to enter the factory premises and certain areas of the company. The aim of the project was to create software to replace the paper-based passes for external company employees working at the plant. Thanks to electronic recording and storage, access to the plant is automatically granted or denied based on the instructions given. This is intended to meet the requirements of
quality assurance systems and the obligation to provide evidence to the authorities. With the new application, all the necessary data on external company employees is now managed in a database. This application is the leading system for controlling the access authorization of external company employees at Degussa’s Wesseling plant.

The collaboration

The application implemented by PTA for the management of external company employee passes fully meets the increased requirements of the quality assurance systems and the obligation to provide evidence to the authorities due to the documentation of the activities of external company employees at the Wesseling plant. PTA GmbH's many years of experience in software development and the in-depth technical know-how of the Degussa employees, combined with the great commitment of all those involved, have led to the success of this project.

The requirement

The requirement for PTA GmbH was the realization of an application for the administration of external company employee passes. This should also control the access authorization of external company employees via an interface to the access control system. The aim of the application is to contribute to improved documentation and increased safety. It should be possible to electronically record, process and evaluate the passes of external company employees, which were previously available in paper form. In addition, access to the factory premises for an external company employee is to be controlled via the application. The application should also meet the increased requirements for documenting the activities of external company employees in the plant by implementing a sophisticated authorization concept. In close cooperation with the employees of Degussa AG, PTA GmbH initially implemented the existing requirements in a prototype. The application was then technically analyzed on the basis of this prototype.

Cost-conscious and efficient

It was important for Degussa to use the existing application infrastructure (already licensed applications and operating systems). This is intended to avoid additional license costs.
Due to the existing Microsoft licenses, PTA GmbH recommended exploiting the possibilities available there. In addition, the customer’s existing know-how for Microsoft products can be used. Of the remaining options to develop the application as a web or Windows Forms application, the Windows Forms variant was given preference due to the greater user convenience and the simpler, more cost-effective and faster development. At the same time, care was taken to design the architecture of the software in such a way that a changeover to the ASP.NET platform using the Microsoft Internet Information Server is possible with relatively little effort.

Project ID: 1136

You can also find this project in our project database.

The solution

The application is operated at Degussa as a client-server solution and on a terminal server. Access to the application via the terminal server is set up for each client in the factory. For this purpose, the terminal server client was distributed to all PCs in the plant. This means that every user can start the application – provided they are registered as authorized for the application.

The second way to use the application is to install the application on the client. In addition to the application, the .NET framework, the Oracle client and an Acrobat Reader must be installed on this client. This variant is set up for users who frequently work with the application. This is also the preferred installation if the client communicates with a badge reader terminal of the access control software.

Customer testimonial

“I am very satisfied with the implementation of the task and am happy to make contact with interested parties.”

Alfred Leufgens, external company management representative

Have we sparked your interest?

Ole Knudsen

Key Account Manager

Jetzt Kontakt aufnehmen

Contact now

Download file