YCI is currently building a world-scale Mega Methanol® plant, with a nameplate capacity of 1.7 million metric tons per year, located in St James Parish, Louisiana. The project is expected to be in operation by the fourth quarter of 2020. By selecting Infor’s CloudSuite Solutions including Infor M3 Cloud for their ERP along with both CloudSuite EAM and CloudSuite HCM, YCI will be able to optimize the end-to-end operation of its business.
YCI evaluated a number of ERP systems, according to Pat Dennard, YCI’s IT Manager, who was tasked with selecting the ERP system. The start-up state of the business and the growth potential for the plant required a system that was scalable with evolving demand, yet manageable for a small IT staff. Dennard said, “After researching the top ERP solutions available, Infor was determined to be the best fit for our purposes in terms of capability, scalability, and ease of maintenance.”
When discussing other driving factors in the selection on Infor, Dennard explained that cloud deployment was a necessity. “I have a very small IT team – myself and two others – so an on-premises solution just isn’t practical. Being able to hand over the care and feeding of everything to Infor and AWS removes a large amount from our already crowded plate,” he said.
In addition to the ERP system, YCI will be deploying Infor EAM to manage the commissioning and turnover from the construction phase. Once the plant is up and running, EAM will provide the insight to minimize maintenance expenses of critical assets throughout the plant. YCI will also benefit from Infor’s CloudSuite HCM solution, which features advanced talent science functionality designed to help optimize recruiting, onboarding and retaining talent, essential today when shortages of skilled workers challenge manufacturers. The team said that they were glad to integrate these three major packages into the same product suite, because it makes things so much easier than having to work with solutions from different vendors. If there is a problem, then there is only one vendor to deal with – Infor.
Mike Edgett, Infor Director of Industry and Solution Strategy, said, “We have very strong functionality in our solution tailored for the chemicals industry. The manufacturing process is complex and requires numerous steps that must be carefully controlled, meeting strict compliance mandates. Our solutions are built to manage those with ease.”
