Acsian Strikes Programme Management Software Agreement with Rolls-Royce

Bristol, UK, Wednesday 27th July, 2006

Programme management software company Acsian, a University of Southampton spin-out, announced today it has entered into a four-year collaboration agreement with Rolls-Royce. Acsian’s new programme management software, Plexus-Suite^TM, provides unique flexibility for timeline and material changes that arise in complex engineering development projects, which can lead to spiralling costs, missed milestones, or costly project failures. 

Lisa Laughner, Vice President of Corporate Ventures, Rolls-Royce, has said that Acsian’s Plexus-Suite^TM has already undergone an initial pilot. “During the trials Rolls-Royce staff members found Plexus to be a highly disciplined, good visual method of mapping complex processes across many dimensions, which aids process communications and targeted process improvement 

"Rolls-Royce sees potential in Plexus-Suite^TM for achieving substantial improvements in programme performance, timeliness and cost control.”

David Edwards, CEO of Acsian, said: “Plexus-Suite’s sophisticated artificial intelligence can save time, maintain project quality and control cost. We have systemised the planning process without removing the creative part”. 

Most planning software cannot handle multiple users entering data from remote sites, but Plexus-Suite^TM permits many people to interact simultaneously. This encourages contribution and knowledge input from all participants.  In very large scale projects, there are often multiple cyclical activities that need to be run before big and expensive decisions are made or activities undertaken. The user-friendly software is able to calculate how many times smaller cycles can be run in a given time period before the big decision is taken or expensive activity commences, saving money and reducing risk of failure.

Acsian was co-founded by Jim Scanlan, Professor of Engineering Design at the University of Southampton and Ian Poccachard, an engineer at Rolls-Royce in Bristol. Together with six other engineers and academics, they have developed the software and methodology using their extensive experience in working with large aerospace organisations.