Press kit new
PressKit
solution based on Plone and Zope and our reference projects, Online Risk Assessment Portal, DENSO, OSHA and Zope@TUM.
Landwehrstrasse 60
80336 München
Germany
www.syslab.com
The company
SYSLAB.COM is a Munich based software development and consulting company founded in the year 1998. We create web-based applications and content management systems for organisations, government bodies and multi national companies. The aim is to provide customers with integrated companywide solutions for the management of data, systems, workgroups and processes.
The coordination of information and applications increasingly requires a central, efficient and
extensive control of heterogeneous IT systems. The solution strategy of SYSLAB.COM goes
beyond conventional IT management by uniting IT resources with the business goals of any
company directly. Today’s economical demands do not allow separating business and IT. Thus IT 
as such has become the very backbone of any enterprise aspiring to enhance its potential.
Open Source Software gives you the freedom to choose. SYSLAB.COM specialises in Open
Source technology, because we believe in the concept of free software and take part in the
community to promote it. We offer Open Source based products, content management solutions,
consulting services and support.
Our developments are integrated solutions based on Zope (http://www.zope.org) and Plone
(www.plone.org), a full featured platform acting as stable and reliable base for the quick and cost
effective tailoring of CMS solutions.
Due to the Open Source licensing agreement, there are no license costs with regards to duration of its use or number of user’s. With Open Source Software you are free to choose your vendor.
For further information please refer to our webpage: http://www.syslab.com or contact
SYSLAB.COM GmbH
Lotte Nielsen
Tel.:089 30635890
Fax: 089 30635899
E-mail: presse@syslab.com
Management
Dipl. Inf. Alexander Pilz
Responsibility: CTO
Educational Background:
Gymnasium, university-entrance diploma, study of informatics
Career:
- Diploma in Computer Science of the Technische Univertität München
- 1995-2003
Research associate, later on scientific assistant to the Faculty of Architecture of the
Technical University of Munich
- 1998 - now
SYSLAB.COM
Gabriele Loher
Responsibility: CEO
Career:
- 1972-1985
Education as bank clerk, further training as business economist, employment as branch manager in customization.
- 1985-2001
Network tutor at „Stadtsparkasse München“
- 2001-2004
Head of Sales, SYSLAB.COM
- 2004
CEO of SYSLAB.COM
Background
Ensuring and improving safety and health of employees at work
is regulated by the German Occupational Safety Law (ArbSchG).
According
to § 5 ArbSchG and the BG regulation BGV A1 (of the German law) the
employer must identify the hazards in the workplace and assess the
resulting health and safety measures to be established and
independently verify their effectiveness.
The labor
protection law (Occupational Safety) requires the employer to carry out
a risk assessment for all workplaces. This obligation is independent of
the number of employees.
Risk assessment is the essential
foundation for a systematic and successful safety and health
management. It is crucial for the reduction of occupational accidents
and occupational diseases.
Through the risk assessment
an employer is in a position to take the necessary measures to protect
the safety and health of their employees.
These measures include:
- Prevention of occupational risks
- Providing information for workers
- Providing training for workers
- Introduction of the organization and methods of implementation of necessary measures.
Client requirements
Risks and hazards at work can vary in different industries and
company sizes. Here, companies need practical help that meet their
requirements. The new portal www.gefaehrdungsbeurteilung.de
of the Federal Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (BAuA) is
to take corrective action.
The portal is aimed at all
stakeholders in the occupational safety and health environment, such as
employers, workers and their representatives, safety officers,
occupational safety specialists, occupational physicians, safety
officers and employees of statutory accident insurance and regulatory
bodies.
Information on specific action guidelines should be added in a
decentralized way, that means by the respective partners themselves.
This is to insure greatest possible relevance for the individual
sectors, as well as topicality.
Solution
A portal and content management system was implemented using Plone.
The portal aims to provide a central platform for risk assessment and
thus reduce work-related accidents and illness through better risk
assessments. It is divided into four main categories:
1. Under the heading Basic Knowledge
you can get basic information on risk assessment. You will
learn what characterizes the process of risk assessment, why you should
make them and how to carry it out concretely.
2. The focus of the
section Practical
Aids is a database that provides access to practical
action guidelines. In addition to a free text search you can also use
the advanced search criteria and narrow your search down by filtering
for providers, industry and specific hazards.
3. The section Expert
Knowledge gives necessary assistance to examine all
possible hazards. The constantly updated content in this section are
based on the "Guide for identifying hazard related health and safety
measures in operation" of the BAuA.
4. Finally, the category Service
completes the offer. Here are hints and tips for using the portal,
answers to frequently asked questions (FAQs), advice, a glossary and an
extensive literature compilation.
Customer benefits
The portal gives employers and employees necessary tools to sector-
or risk-specific risk assessment and shows measures to increase safety,
health and productivity at work.
It assists companies in
implementing a risk assessment, required by the labor protection law. In
addition, a risk assessment provides the basis for a systematic and
successful health and safety in operation at the workplace.
The de-centrally organized input of action guidelines into the database enables a broad group of partners to offer their relevant information on risk assessment on a common platform and thus reach a large audience.
Future cooperation
SYSLAB.COM is working together with BAuA on further improving
functionality and user friendliness of the site, both for the public
parts as well as the user interface for entering practical aids into the
database. A recent change was a revamp of the home page. It now has a
clearer structure and makes better use of screen real-estate by
dynamically showing relevant content.
Project: Change and Revision Management at DENSO Automotive Deutschland GmbH
Intranet based system for change management and revision control of automobile parts
Background 
DENSO is global supplier of automotive technology systems and components. Many car
manufacturers around the world install DENSO products, for example climate control systems.
Whenever a part of such a product is scheduled to be altered, all manufacturers using this part
need to be informed of the intended change and queried for their approval. This process can also
include issuing samples of the intended new layout to customers. After general approval, the new
part can be taken into production. Every step and decision of this change process has to be
meticulously documented.
Client requirements
DENSO wanted to have a system that supported all aspects of change cycle. As DENSO is a
globally operating company, the employees concerned with change management of automotive
parts are spread over several locations. Therefore the system needed to be based on the globally
accessible intranet solution rather than a locally installed database application.
A selection of specific requirements:
- The status of customer feedback for intended changes needs to be easily accessible and
presented concisely. - Depending on the nature of the intended change, the system should enable DENSO to determine when a customer needs to be informed.
- The system needs to be equipped with reporting facilities for internal control as well as documentation for the customer.
- In case of problems, it must be possible to determine exactly when a new part was first introduced into production.
- Feasibility checks should enable staff to detect inconsistencies immediately.
- The roles of different staff members should be reflected in a permission structure.
Solution
The solution is based on a CMS powered by Zope and Plone. The actual data storage is handled 
in a MySQL database. A customer tailored interface was developed to meet the demands for fine
grained input as well as broad overview.
The system holds data of all parts in their various states and their relation to the affected
customers. For every change introduced, a separate item is created that holds all details and can
also include Word and PDF documents. Individual changes can be grouped to larger-scale change
incidents that reflect all changes for a given date.
Ajax based search facilities and data selectors support DENSO staff in quickly assembling and
checking all necessary data for a change process. Various reporting facilities allow creating reports
of intended and effective changes. Different templates enable DENSO to meet their customers'
layout requirements.
Customer benefits
By using a Zope/Plone based system with its object database in combination with a relational database, the benefits of both worlds can be combined. The system is accessible and editable by browser on one hand, while on the other hand complex queries can be efficiently and rapidly computed.
The overall time for administrating changes could be significantly reduced with the introduction of
the new system. Data consistency has greatly improved, because feasibility checks inform data
handling staff immediately of potential conflicts.
Project: elevateIT in the EU
A multilingual Portal and Content Management System based on Open
Source for The European Agency for Safety and Health at Work.
Background
The European Agency for Safety and Health at Work (hereinafter, the Agency) is a European Union
public administration and one of the EU´s decentralised agencies in Europe. As a tripartite
organisation, the Agency brings together representatives from three key decision-making groups in
each of the EU Member States: governments, employers and workers´ organisations.
From it’s headquarters in Bilbao, Spain, the Agency acts as a catalyst for developing, collecting,
analysing and disseminating information that improves the state of occupational safety and health
in Europe. Internet and web services are key tools to support these activities. The Agency works in
close co-operation with a network of partners, based on a system of “national Focal Points”. The
Focal Point also manage the national Agency websites, which constitute the Agency’s network of
websites, through their Internet representatives, who are also represented in one of the Agency’s
experts group called “Internet group”.
Client requirement 
The websites network of the Agency contains 33 national focal point websites based on a common
model (graphical design and information structure). The websites were hosted on different servers
residing in different countries. Since not all the Focal Points could host their national website, for
technical resource or organisational reasons, some of them have been hosted by the Agency and
managed remotely by national webmasters. This meant that the technical environment of the
network of websites was variable: some websites were static, while others were maintained with a
Content Management System (CMS).
The objective was therefore to develop a CMS-portal system based on Zope technologies for the
deployment and maintenance of the network of websites, including national and institutional
website, campaigning websites and the Europe portal website.
To make it easier to add, control and reuse information in different places of the Network, it was
necessary to develop a method consistent for all participating institutions. It was also essential that
the system provide support for multilingualism in user interface and content. It should be easily
extendible to further languages and allow for a uniform way to store and classify all content of the
partners of the Agency through the use of a multilingual thesaurus. An advanced publishing system
was also required to facilitate publication of content in different languages and from different
countries and institutions.
Users should be able to register and thereby have access to all sites of the Agency’s network of
websites. To make it possible for users to specify their interests and wishes, a personalization
feature had to be installed. Furthermore a “metadata-aware” search was needed to make precise
searches throughout the whole network of websites available.
Solution 
The core solution is based on elevateIT, an extension of proven ZOPE/Plone Content Management System, which serves the requirements of large decentralized organizations and enterprises. The
Content Management functionalities of elevateIT facilitate complete web browser based creation
and administration of information. Via portal functionality the users can interact with the system and
other users and personalize contents and presentation. The system facilitates exchange of information between web servers providing relevant and latest information, which can be accessed
across various websites.
One of the key features of elevateIT is multilingualism. The front end and the content of any web
page can be presented in different languages. The Agency has developed a hierarchical
thesaurus, containing over 2400 terms in 20 languages, which is used as a basis to categorise
current and future information. Working together with elevateIT the translators of the thesaurus are
assisted thru workflows and helper applications to keep various language versions consistent. It is
possible to search for specific language versions and translators can look for documents that have
not yet been translated or outdated translations of current documents.
The information on occupational health and safety on the national, institutional websites and the 
European portal is identified by extensive metadata, both Dublin Core and proprietary. The
metadata system and the personalization function of elevateIT thereby facilitate aggregation,
search and group specific information distribution – not just to the voluminous websites of the
Agency but also to other web pages. A Workflow and Versioning solution allows flexible control of
all information before publication. An LDAP Server is used for the centralized management of
users providing “single point of log on”. The System furthermore allows easy adding and
integrating new sites into the network of websites.
Customer benefits
The customer is now able to delegate Content Management tasks from system administrators to
content creators, as technical skills are no longer required to add and edit content. The control of
the published information remains in the hands of privileged users, who are notified automatically,
if information needs reviewing. By that the publication process of information is largely reduced.
The centralized approach for managing users allows the Agency to offer personalized information
and services like “notification of changes”. Syndication facilitates better presentation of information 
– not only on one website but throughout the whole Network of websites.
The search function retrieves more information, as it can search through the whole network of
websites. In addition users can restrict the result list on relevant metadata, making the retrieved
information more precise. The timely process for setting up new sites is greatly reduced, thus
making it easy to create new campaign websites. The customer can now query the system for an
overview of its state of translation and translators can easily find objects that need work. The
system is ready for further extensions to the European Union.
Future Cooperation
After the integration and migration of the main websites and the Focal Point sites, the Agency has
decided to develop further functionalities and migrate its own homepage to the new CMS portal
system. SYSLAB.COM will make the necessary implementations and support the Agency via a
helpdesk. If required, further content restructuring will take place within this cooperation.
Project: CMS at the Technical University Munich
Campus wide Portal and Content Management System based on Open Source
Background 
The Technical University Munich is one of the premier universities of Germany. Over two million
page impressions per month from around the world solely on the central Web-server, goes to show
the interest in its curriculum, research and service offers. The information offered is also accessed
by 25.000 active students, 7.000 employees, and a large group of alumni’s, as well as partners in
industry and commerce.
Client requirement
3 centralized and 600 de-centralized web servers as well as 9 centralized EDP processing and
information system caused redundant data storage, inconsistent information and lack of
information refreshment. Further to that a great deal of effort had to be put in for the maintenance
of the system. Added to that, enhanced Interactivity, expanded Groupware and Communityfunctionality
had to be introduced. Self-service-functions for the students and employees also needed to be offered.
Solution
The core solution is based on elevateIT, an extension of proven ZOPE/Plone Content- 
Management-System developed in co-operation with the department of “WWW & Online Services”
of TU Munich. For authentication and profile administration, a solution to integrate the central
LDAP server was developed. With his personal id every student and employee is able to enter the
system, where they can access various services such as Web mail, address administration, mark
sheets etc. An overlying Metadata-System facilitates classification of information, to help improve
data categorizing and research. To be able to exchange information with external systems,
Syndication-technique has been integrated. An extensive Workflow-System augments complex
processes.
Customer benefits
The new servers are now able to exchange data amongst one another; this enables centralized
retrieval of decentralized information. Categorized classification of information helps speedier
access of relevant information and provides group specific information respectively. With the link to
the LDAP server, now for the first time, there is a centralized authentication. Due to open source
licensing, the system can be used by all the institutions and facilities of TU Munich at no extra
charge. Information reaches the users fast. The ROI is high, as the system is Platform neutral and
the possibility of Integration.
Future Co-operation
Projected co-operation is an assisted rollout at faculties, institutions and facilities of TUM, development of student and employee services as well as technical bureau, link to the SAP system
of TUM.
“...SYSLAB.COM has successfully worked on multiple projects with various TUM
institutions and is due to its vast technology and project experience an ideal partner.”
Dr. Thomas Wagner, TU München
Administrative specification
Office: Munich
Formation: January 1998 OHG, January 2001 GmbH
Company registration number: HRB 135057
Ust-IDNr.: UstID DE212842815
Business object: Development and implementation of internet publications; computing activities –
in particular development of hard and software; design, installation, hosting and maintenance of
computer network and other data processing equipment; consulting services in this computing
area (apart from legal advice and tax consultancy); retailing with hardware, software and computer
equipment.
Legal form: GmbH
Management: Gabriele Loher, CEO - Alexander Pilz, CTO
Number of staff: 8
Start-up capital: 50.000 €
Software: Zope (http://www.zope.org) and Plone (www.plone.org),
Press contact:
Lotte Nielsen,
Tel: 089 / 306358-94,
Fax: 089 / 306358-99,
Email: presse@syslab.com
