Italian stationery designer and producer.
Integrated Manufacturing and Fulfilment system for 20,000 orders each year for 5,000 Stock Products.
The system handles the whole of the company's business from order entry through manufacturing to despatch, using Macs and PCs in a client/server with 50 users. This includes stock-control, work-scheduling, capacity planning, critical path project scheduling for each order, art room operations, automated supplier ordering, web facility to allow customers to confirm their order and approve their artwork online, invoicing, pricing and costing, credit control, audit trail and document management.
The benefits have been to reduce administration costs by automating many functions previously done manually.
It has improved customer service by better handling of the peak season load with increased accuracy of specification and timely delivery. This has resulted in fewer customer disputes and claims. It also gives an edge over the other diary manufacturers by guaranteeing delivery to within a day, rather than the industry standard week.
It offers a "calm" factory as the seasonal nature of the diary business concentrates a lot effort into the latter part of the year. Working with to do lists allows jobs to be started and partially completed without losing track of what still needs to be done. A list of jobs to do with a scheduled completion date gives management confidence that they are up to date and meeting their deadlines.
Capacity scheduling gives management advanced notice of factory load, allowing seasonal staff to be recruited. Spare capacity is identified and allows a fast-track option for orders.
This development of the system was started in 2004. First implemented in 2005 and has been under constant development to the present day.
Construction Industry Services
Automated system for producing proposals
This company helps to provide services to construction contractors to resolve disputes on large construction projects. This system automates the creation of proposals for the companies services. It uses a library of standard texts and pictures also consultant CV's and previous project descriptions to create the proposal documents. This is a 4d client server system.
This system was developed from 2010 to 2011.
Military Museum
Members List System
This development modernised the user interface and added mail merge facilities for correspondence. This is a 4d client server system.
This system was developed in 2008 through to 2009.
Direct Mail and Fulfilment Company
Warehouse management system
This was my first 4D system and runs as a stand alone system on a Mac. It has been running since 1995 with few problems. The system was introduced at the start of the operation and allows one warehouse manager and 3 pickers to dispatch more than 4000 items each week.
This system manages the warehousing functions for the customer’s mail order fulfilment operation. This includes receiving consignments from suppliers, splitting them into pallets and allocating space in the warehouse. Orders are loaded and dispatch labels produced to allow picking in “walk round” sequence. Dispatch details are transmitted to Parcel force.
Other Projects for this customer include the manipulation of Addresses for direct marketing and include such functions as de-duplication, reformatting, mail sorting and printing direct to ink jet printers.
Telecommunications
FLIPS System
I took over the development of this system when moving the operation from Bermuda to the UK. The system keeps track of the part-ownerships and leases of a telecommunication cable which joins the UK and Japan. Its major function is to report on the current ownerships and allow the allocation of unscheduled maintenance costs.
The work included the migration from Mac to PC and conversion to version 6.5. Development has mainly been to produce a new set of reports for leases. Currently the system is being enhanced to publish the data in HTML format for access over the Web.
HR Consultancy
360° System
This system is a package which the customer sells to large corporate clients worldwide. Its main function is to collect data and report on personnel (usually the top management). The data is collected over the corporate intranet using an integrated email system which embeds URLs for Web browser (Internet Explorer, Netscape) access to the system. The browser function allows contributors to submit questionnaire answers to the system. The system summarises this data to allow management to view their results.
Technically, this is an advanced system which optimises performance over wide area networks. It uses a stand alone 4D application which maintains a local copy of the data and synchronises this data with a central 4D Server system.
This has been an ongoing development since 1996 and has been extensively modified to include new customer requirements. It has been implemented in the UK, Canada, Finland and Switzerland.
It has been implemented on both PC and Mac systems.
Karting Circuit
Reservation System
This system provides a diary for a major karting circuit and manages customer records and their circuit bookings. It provides a visual display of the diary to allow bookings to be made directly by the telephone operator.
Driving Instructor Training Centre
Administration System
This system tracks sales of training courses to potential instructors. It provides interviewers with visual diary facilities and allows them to enter enquiry details and book appointments while on the phone. The system was rewritten to support a new venture into IT training and improve the quality of marketing and sales performance reporting. Other functions include the taking of student payments, debtor reporting and exam results.
The system uses 4D Server on Windows 2000 and supports 20 clients.
Future developments include classroom booking and direct entry of exam answers using a web browser.
Hospital Diabetes Clinic
Diabetes Clinic Records System
The system keeps records for diabetes patients and keeps track of retina photos for blindness diagnosis.
This system needed conversion to v6 and was enhanced to display scanned retina slides.
Media Advertising
This system is a package which the customer sells to various clients in the UK. It manages co-operative advertising between manufacturers and retailers.
Originally developed in the States, the software has been bought by the UK operation in 1999. Since taking over development it has been converted from v3.5 to v6.5 and numerous enhancements made.
After the company was reformed, the system was redeveloped to reduce the manual overhead of updating the data. This included a central server with satellite stand-alone remote systems for both researchers and customers. Research workers updated the plan data which was synchronised with the server which then synchronised with each customer system.
Double Glazing and Conservatory Manufacturers
Inventory System
This system manages the hardware and software configuration of it's complete IT set up. It was developed while I was doing consultancy with them as an interim IT manager and allowed me to bring some order to what was a chaotic situation.
Aviation Flight Planning
This development enables private pilots to pre flight plan their journeys, calculates headings and distances, works out fuel requirements, works out weight and balance calculations and creates a pilots knee pad log.