AKS bagged yet another order for Smart Weighment System (SWS) from Harinagar Sugar Mill ....more

AKS awarded contract for integration of ATMs by FBL, Kenya ....more

AKS has signed an agreement with Kakira Sugar Works (1985) Limited, Uganda, for the implementation of:

Agriculture Management System: designed for handling the entire Life cycle process of Sugar cane for sugar Mills.

Smart Weighment System (SWS): Manless Weighment System designed to be capable of operating in hostile weather and environmental conditions, which prevail in Sugar factories and cane buying centers.

Vehicle Identification System: Involves long range readers and antenna, capable of reading tags fixed on vehicles, from a distance to enable movement of vehicles in and out of the sugar mills.

Kakira is about 106 km east of Kampala, the capital city of the Republic of Uganda. Located in the district of Jinja, Kakira lies on the northern shores of Lake Victoria. Kakira Sugar Works is a part of the Madhvani Group of Companies, which has a turnover of Ushs. 200 billion (US$ 114 million). It has a crushing capacity of 3,500 tons of cane per day. It produces more than 87,000 tons of sugar each year, with 10.5 months continuous operation. In 2003/04 – the factory milled 1,010,885 tons of cane and produced 88,119 tons of sugar.

The Kakira Nucleus estate has 8,724 hectares under cane cultivation and provides 50% of the factory’s cane requirements. 3,600 out-grower farmers cultivate and an additional 10,369 hectares and supply the rest.

Kakira Sugar Works (1985) Limited, now plans to implement Agriculture Management System and has awarded the contract to AKS based on the successful implementation of the project at Mumias Sugar Company Limited, East Africa. The System will help Kakira Sugar Works Limited in enhancing their crushing capacity under their Expansion Programme.

AKS has purchased 50,000 square feet of industrial land for building a software development centre in NOIDA, near New Delhi, India.

The proposed building, when fully constructed, will have eight floors of office space totalling 100,000+ square feet of usable office space.

Further, it will have space for parking of 400+ cars in its two levels of basement. The construction work has already begun and is likely to take one year to complete.

Once, this building is complete, AKS will move all its offices in Delhi and NOIDA to this location which will lead to better coordination and cost savings. This building will be a most modern building of international standards with self sufficiency in Power and Parking.

AKS AKS has been awarded the contract for Treasury Management System by Family Bank.

Once implemented, this system will keep track of currency bills and coins in bank branches.

Denomination-wise details are captured for each transaction. System is designed to pinpoint exactly how many bills of what denomination are present in a particular "TILL" (A TILL is like a Cash Box). The system is under implementaion currently and will go live w.e.f. August 1, 2007.

AKS has successfully implemented Vehicle Identification System (VIS) using EPC tags.

The system involves long range readers and antenna, capable of reading tags fixed on vehicles, from a distance upto 10 metres.

Vehicle Identification System has been implemented at Mumias Sugar Company Limited, the largest sugar manufacturer in East Africa. VIS is being used to automatically identify and weigh Sugarcane Trucks, and is fully integrated with AKS's Smart Weighment System.

AKS was awarded the contract by the Mumias Sugar Company, the largest Sugar factory in East Africa , in January 2006 for implementation of their Integrated Agriculture Management System. The contract signing was a culmination of several rounds of evaluation by PwC who were the consultants. The contract was awarded to AKS after evaluation of more than 30 vendors who had responded to an International tender floated by Mumias Sugar Company.

The highlights of the Project will be Implementation of the Integrated AMS system including the Smart Weighment System. The AMS System will also have touch points with SAP, which Mumias plans to implement.

The actual roll out is planned for later in the Year.

Not much time was wasted after the contract signing ceremony before AKS was on site to start the project. Their enthusiasm and energy has captivated management and the project team alike. When the agreed commencement date arrived, three consultants from AKS led by no less than the president of the company were on site for the formal initiation of the project on the 17th January 2006 .

In his short presentation at the initiation ceremony, this is what Mr. Kumar had to say about their offering to MSC :

?For the past 20 years AKS and its group company AKS Software have had a major interest and exposure in the Sugar Industry in South Asia . It is also one of the focus areas of the companies. The business in this vertical has grown to over 70 clients as on date some of which are major players in the sugar industry worldwide. Some of the big names in our client list include the Bajaj Hindustan group, Balrampur Chini Mills, DCM group and many others. Through involvement with large players in the sector, AKS have excellent domain knowledge of the sugar industry with a number of experienced sugar industry professionals being associated with the company. This focus and interest in the Sugar Industry led to AKS developing the first specialized ERP for the Sugar Industry with a strong Agriculture Management module. The AMS in due course has gained in stature as an independent and specialized Agriculture Management product, primarily for the sugar and timber industry. It has now become a critical and strategic tool for the management of the sugar industry in India . AKS / AKS have recently also developed the Smart Weighment System for industries such as Sugar, Tea and other bulk weighment systems. This system is now in successful operation in number of sugar mills in South Asia . AKS regards Mumias as a major client and has already commenced with the implementation methodology for the AMS at Mumias Sugar Company.

Both AKS and Mumias feel that the implementation of this project will bring major gains in efficiency, productivity, cost control and profitability for the sugar company.

Customer Focus: AKS has a strong customer focus with no major change in its client list in the sugar industry in the past 20 years. In fact our customers have grown with our applications through a close partnership. AKS looks forward to attaining the same status with Mumias Sugar Company in due course. To have a strong customer focus it is necessary to have a keen ear to customer suggestions and problems. For this AKS has an annual Customer Meet which was last attended by over 150 delegates from its client mills and was presided by the Head of Sugar Technology Mission, Govt. of India. AKS soon hopes to see Mumias as a participant in these yearly meets where ideas for improvements in the product range and new products are born and evaluated as well as a feedback taken on existing operations.

"AKS looks forward to being a key contributor to Mumias Sugar Company's Vision and Mission Statements?.

The Management of Mumias Sugar Company has following to say ? ? For Mumias Sugar, AKS's domain knowledge of the sector has been evident over the last 2 weeks that they have been here to initiate the project. They have reviewed our operations, given practical and innovative suggestions and won hearts with their energy and commitment to excellence. The end result of this visit has been an energized project team that is sure of success!?

AKS bagged order for implementing Smart Weighment System (SWS) from Harinagar Sugar Mill located at Harinagar, West Champaran , Bihar . Harinagar Sugar Mill is a well-established mill operational for more than 50 years, with current installed capacity of 9,000 TCD. It is largest Sugar Mill in Bihar .

SWS automate Cane Weighment operation incorporating cutting edge RFID technology. It has been designed along Workflow, followed at Sugar factories.

It allows Farmer/Grower to carry out both Gross and Tare weighment process himself at the weighbridge, with the assistance of voice-guided system. Transactions are recorded into Radio Token, issued at entry gate. Camera is installed to take photograph of weighbridge at the time of weighment.

It allows Grower to verify whether Gross and Tare weighment have been correctly recorded or not at Self Help Station. At the end of weighment operation a sugarcane receipt is printed and given to the Farmer/Grower on submission of Radio Token.

SWS is scheduled in be installed by June'2006 and would be operational during the next crushing season. The SWS system would be integrated with the Pulse system of AKS, which is currently being used at the Mil.

On account of ensuing increase in productivity by implementation of SWS, it has been decided to reduce number of weighbridges from 15 to 12 in spite of the fact that the mill is enhancing its crushing capacity.

AKS has been associated with the Family Bank (FBL) in Kenya for the past 5 years. AKS has been providing support to FBL for its mission critical software used for its Banking operations. AKS has also been helping FBL migrate its application to newer Technology platforms by Re-Engineering its applications.

In view of the confidence developed over the years FBL has assigned the task of integrating the core application with its ATMs, which are being installed at FBL branches in view of their conversion into a full, fledged Bank. FBL has installed ATMs provided by Kenswitch and AKS would be providing the interface for the ATMs to access accounts in the Bank's database of account holder's through an ATM manager.

FBL customers already use AKS's Smart card based e-Passbook, which is issued to customers enabling them to avail of the anywhere banking facility. Same Smart card will be integrated with ATM network and be used as ATM Card.

AKS would also be associated in helping FBL in migrating the current Branch accounting system to a core Banking system developed by AKS.

AKS has successfully implemented the Tea Plucker Management System (TPMS) successfully at Kenya Tea Development Agency Limited.

Kenya Tea Development Agency Limited (KTDA) is managed by industry acclaimed professionals. KTDA has 53 operational tea processing factories with installed processing capacity of 780 million Kg green leaf with an annual turnover of US $ 320 million.

In the initial phase of implementation, buying centers attached to the Nayankoba Tea Factory Ltd have been chosen. Currently the implementation has been completed at centre numbers 16, 22 and 39. On an average a buying centre has 500 growers attached to it.

TPMS automates weighment and payment mechanism. System has been designed integrating Digital electronic weighing scale, battery operated handheld terminal, portable printer with Smart Card at its core, eliminating manual entries

When completely implemented the system would cover all the factories bringing benefits to millions of Tea Growers in Kenya .

The system has been selected for implementation after a detailed System study and prototype demonstration by AKS to the KTDA Management. The system would be integrated with the current systems already in use.

AKS has been chosen to implement this system in the face of severe international competition and has been applauded for its innovative integration and usage of technology.