Transforming Thailand’s Precast Industry

CPanel Company Limited is one of the largest precast concrete manufacturers in Thailand. With 13 years of experience, Chakrit Theepakornsukkasame, Managing Director, has established the company that has an annual turnover of US$11 million, employing almost 300 workers. Now, with Tekla, CPanel is leapfrogging its competition in the precast concrete industry.

The first fully integrated precast factory in Asia

“I am proud to say we are now the second largest precast concrete producer for residential housing in the country, with the ability to cast for ten houses per day,” says Mr Chakrit Theepakornsukkasame, Managing Director.

“In addition, we own and operate the first fully automated and fully integrated precast factory in Asia, doubling our previous production capacity to now 860,000 sq m a year.“

“The use of modern technology such as Tekla software has resulted in 90% more efficient operations, and the reduction in total construction time by 60%, compared to the more conventional method we used to employ. Our time to precast has been reduced from thirty days to only seven,” said Mr Chakrit.

Indeed, Tekla has become one of the key drivers for CPanel, going forward.

The majority of CPanel’s projects are in the greater Bangkok metropolitan area, with significant presence in the country’s major cities such as Chonburi.

Mr Chakrit is proud to note that the company is the first precast producer to implement Building Information Modeling (BIM) for the construction business in Thailand, enabling the company to work with customers through the five dimensions of modeling for construction – width, length, depth, time and cost.

The need for Tekla

For Mr Chakrit, the process began in 2011, when the company had two large customers, one, cost oriented; focused on providing its customers value for money solutions, and one marketing oriented; focused on providing its customers the best according to the latest requirements of the industry.

He gave a lot of thought as to how to meet their differing needs, and realized by so doing he could also meet the needs of most customers.

CPanel selected a number of vendors for the solution they were looking for.

“Eventually, the choice boiled down to Tekla, as Tekla can enable us to foresee things in the building before it is built. This capability of Tekla, creating and managing constructible, information rich 3D models, has shortened the development time from ten months to only two. We get a real building that we can build with confidence, and not just a model.”

Mr Chakrit noted that his competitors are also employing 3D modeling.

“They are however opening one software for each section of the house, another software for another section, for example, one module for the wall, one module for slab, one module for the stairs, thus making the software really cumbersome and difficult to use.”

“With Tekla, you open one software solution and you can do it all. And it’s easy to use; that’s something important to us. It also helps that Tekla has a localized environment in the software, including local rules and regulations for Thailand. We also received much help and guidance from Tekla offices in Finland and in Singapore. Tekla is very open and willing to include some add-ons in order to improve our processes.”

“In addition, Tekla is an open software, it is designed to communicate to other industry software solutions. In our factory we run production with automated systems from AWM and Vollert. From Tekla we are able to transfer fabrication data to CAM software from Unitechnik, which we use to control fabrication, and to our ERP software, SAP. Thus Tekla is flexible and capable of enabling us to automate and integrate our factory. “

Ahead with Tekla

“I am proud to say that we are the only ones in Thailand to present to our customers, fully detailed, constructible models of their projects. Instead of sending our customers a CAD file, we can discuss or meet with them via these models, which enables them to easily see and understand what is being discussed. We are exporting models created with Tekla Structures to Trimble Sketchup, a wonderful tool which enables easy utilization of models for our customers. "

“Our competitors are still doing their processes manually, and this gives us a competitive advantage, such as time to delivery, and a project that is ready to build, rather than one requiring extensive modifications.”

Today, CPanel’s customers include the leading property developers in the country, and each developer has three or four different housing types. Mr Chakrit credits Tekla software with enabling CPanel to handle this volume and variety with ease, and to work flexibly enough to meet the changing needs of a wide range of customers.

CPanel corporate profile

Founded by Mr Chakrit Theepakornsukkasame on 27 March 2012, CPanel Company Limited manufactures precast concrete wall panels for all construction purposes, such as immovable property purposes, industrial purposes and infrastructure purposes. Their plant has an annual production capacity of 860,000 square meters.

CPanel offers not only the high-quality products from its fully automated system as well as custom-made and specialized solutions by our professional team, ensuring the top-class project management, error-free processes, products and services.