Variety of Industries Served
Manufacturing and Industrial
The first phase of the project centered around the collection of laboratory test results on manufactured samples into a highly customized data structure. When MSDS (material safety data sheet) and other technical documents were required the database provided batch-level details. Later it was recognized that the collections of product and lot information could be augmented to provide detailed inventory data and from that it was short step to interface with the accounting system’s order tracking module.
The company which provided steel cable, fabricated lifting rigs and myriad related parts and accessories to the maritime and industrial communities was awash with paperwork and reliance on manual materials tracking. Although the basic product lines were simple the variations of size, length, weight, and other ratings created a catalog that numbered into the tens of thousands. We developed a system of cataloging and indexing in a way that sales and purchasing agents (not particularly computer-savvy) could enter the key descriptors to rapidly identify any manufactured or custom-fabricated products.
While the company had been wholesaling baked goods at high volumes (the facility received flour and sugar by railroad car) they now wanted to open a nationwide retail operation. The system we implemented received orders for whole or mixed-product cases, provided the necessary requisitions for the bakery products and tracked shipments.
The company was engaged in engineering and steel fabrication building specialized conveying systems for chemical, food, mining, and solid waste industries. As all the manufactured products were custom engineered projects the inbound and outbound logistics, materials sourcing and inventory control was paramount to continued profitability.
The company manufactured several variations of a 26-foot fiberglass sailboat. Although the basic boat (hull design) was consistent, the variations of rigging, interior layout and finish were many. Additionally, there were variations of properties in the molding resins that required very close testing and analysis to ensure a consistent result would be obtained in the production of the fiberglass components.
This company manufactured equipment for the production (fabrication) of semiconductor wafers used in electronics and LED manufacturing. The company also operated a 12,000 sq ft CNC machine shop that produced the machined parts and attachments used in assembly. The fabrication machines were complex, including the heavy and light fabricated metal components, robotic actuators, ionized field generators and flow control devices. The finished machines required two on-board computers to control the multi-phase stages of pressure, introduction and purging of gasses and ionized fields that made up the complex “recipes” for various semiconductor products.
Aviation and Aerospace
This company provided a full range of services for building, equipping, and operating high altitude balloons for scientific, industrial and government clients. The company had outgrown its home-grown network and now needed a robust server-based system that connected to their widely distributed clients and suppliers around the world.
This European-based company manufactured helicopters. The US facility was tasked with all phases of material resource planning for the operations around the world. The long-existing MRP was running on an aging IBM platform that needed to be migrated a better-performing Windows-based application. The challenge in this project was to provide the long-serving staff in the procurement division a system that replaced the voluminous paper reports they were using and gaining their acceptance of the more agile and powerful system without loss of productivity.
Finance and Risk Management
This was the risk department of a city-owned municipality that had been running its own PC based in-house application that was no longer in compliance with the company’s IT policies. The two major tasks were to 1) maintain and upgrade specific features to optimize productivity in the short term and 2) assist with the analysis, selection and implementation of a current-technology commercial application that was adopted by the company IT staff.
A branch office of a regional brokerage house had their own analysis tool built but now needed to change parameters and formulas which the prior developer had hard-coded. The task was to extract the points of entry and provide the users (brokers) a rapid-access entry point to run comparative analyses.
The owner had a vision of a fully automated title search order processing system that could interface to agents in remote locations where the searches had to be done manually, deliver the reports and run accounts on the clients. We delivered the system as required on a platform that was feasible at start up time supporting ten users and scaled up to just under 100 users with very few changes beyond adding workstations as needed.
Other
Designed, built, delivered, and operated systems for two call centers. The CRM tracked customers and sales as well as tracked a network of remote sales agents and their semi-monthly commissions. The VoIP used an open source PBX that used softphones instead or requiring telephone hardware.
Mark Thomas is a CRM and Data Solutions Master. If you have any topic you would like to see addressed, feel free to make a suggestion. He can be reached here.
