This project was intended to create a new solution that will alleviate the backlog of production activities for the production of pre-fabricated concrete buildings.  The core J.D.Edwards system which does not have these capabilities creates an opportunity to alleviate a mission-critical business process.  A client-server application designed to operate with a MS Access order management application will comprise of a set of order management, customer management, and scheduling module will serve the needs of production planners to assess, identify, plans and schedule orders while ensuring that participating departments receive their proper status, and have the capability to communicate critical business, regulatory and quality assurance data to ensure the complete delivery of valuable orders.  This order management process, it enhanced by the use of user centric data entry forms, detailed process reports, workflow-based processing, coupled by a comprehensive search tool that allows rapid access to the entire collection of order data - including order notes, products and status information.  A DASHBOARD model was adopted to help the sales and office personnel to engage operations in a far more responsive manner, by employing status or departmental centric order lists that enhance the way the user conducts business and accomplish tasks on a daily basis.

The system features include:

		Single tabbed interface
		Comprehensive customer editor
		Customer centric contact list
		Project based order management
		Workflow based processes
		User specific security
		Dashboard technology
		Standardized reports
		Advanced search tool
		Transaction history

The tabbed interface organizes information so that the user may view order information in an organized fashioned without the added confusion of notes, or historical data.  TRANSACTION HISTORY was added to enable users to view the various activities that have occurred on an order.  This helps to maintain a progressive view of the evolution through various STATUSes of an order, which offers enhanced service support ensuring timely delivery, and to address product specific REGULATORY requirements.  By integrating an OUTLOOK type GUI model, the application adopted an enhanced approach to task, status and workflow driven work processes.  The DASHBOARD mechanism embedded into the OUTLOOK model allowed the user to quickly traverse orders, status and customers in a cohesive representation.  It is designed to list customer data ordered by status and activity.  A CONTACT EDITOR was introduced to help manage contact information resembling the model used in VISTA which is more friendlier and useful.  The same approach was adopted in the PROJECT EDITOR which allowed the user to view a project with accompanying product orders in an ordered fashion.

A SCHEDULE EDITOR module was added to help

regulate the flow of work on a daily basis, to ensure the completion of each stage of the product assembly, to alleviate production bottlenecks, to improve the allocation of multiple plant resources and to ensure the timely delivery of mission-critical buildings.  Coupled with user-centric tasks, dynamically updated STATUS (by involving multiple departments), the overall system ensures that all work is documented, accommodates changes and is properly regulated.  To accommodate the large volume of project retrieval, a SEARCH tool was introduced which is designed to search through layers of projects, products, contacts and notes.  Enhanced reports were used by reusing the same reports with various rendering were employed to reduce the number of report templates typically required in traditional ACCESS applications, by simply manipulating queries and report controls.

An improved WORKFLOW logic was introduced specifically to ensure as production changes, varying from customized product items, regulatory needs, installation specifications are applied to the order, the order record is routed appropriate through participating departments such as ENGINEERING or LOGISTICS to ensure that the order may be completed successfully.  The integration of best-practiced CHANGE CONTROL principles were put into place to alleviate the lack of documentation, and for the eventuality of SIX SIGMA certification.

The application is also integrated closely with the J.D.Edwards host database where orders are generated initially, and states are updated to facilitate both enterprise resource planning and sales performance needs.  This ensures that all production activities managed through the application communicates critical data to core business systems to reduce the impact overall corporate performance.  ETL functions were put into place to streamline the process of data the data exchange and ODBC-direct communication was used to upload status information.  An IMPORT WIZARD was also created to allow the rapid integration of external data and link them to individual order records.  Data and integration with Lotus Notes, PC-Miler and SalesLogix centralizes many of the operations while focusing the work-load of the user while reducing inefficiencies made possible by disparate systems.

This application represents the first of many operational enhancements that will support the long term needs of the organization that can be developed, deployed and integrated rapidly with ease and while ensuring the highest level of interactivity.  Users who used to spend half a day organizing operational data at the beginning of the week will resolve to use this application that decomposes their work load to a week-to-week or day-to-day productivity schedule.  The OUTLOOK model combined with SCHEDULING enables managers to view production activity and decompose them along an linear time-frame.  A series of automation coding was introduced to help organize, schedule, render and validate ordering to ensure all items are delivered on time, with the highest quality and by overcoming problems that could not be properly documented across a multi-dimensional data structure such as a collection of EXCEL, WORD and NOTES documents.