Project Info
Project Description
The Business
Heap and Partners have been established for over 150 years and manufacture valves and ancillary equipment for use all over the world in pharmaceutical, nuclear, chemical, oil, naval and many other industries.
Heaps are spread across the UK and have multiple warehouses, offices and manufacturing plants. Existing infrastructure comprises multiple DSL lines and Citrix solutions as well as VPN provisioning for remote workers when abroad.
The business relies heavily on very stringent quality control systems and regularly undergo independent inspections to audit this.
A customised Sage 100 accounting exists with all other processes in the manufacturing being monitored via paperwork based systems.
The Challenge
Production workers required a touch screen quality control and workflow system to record all activity related to manufacture and testing of products.
Synchronised integration with the legacy custom accounts system and an admin system to control order mgt and despatch as well as customised quotations system software and blackberry integration for remote sales were all in the needs analysis. All activity needed recording at a very granular level, with control check and swipe card authorisation necessary as double checks.
Their intranet mgt reporting system required an automated export of reporting data as a feed into this. Finally, a data integrated website for online client access was required to facilitate real-time monitoring of manufacturing and despatch progress.
The Solution
The existing SQL Server express infrastructure was used for all the main applications.
An RDO data access VB application was created to reliabley interface with the legacy sage line 100 systems.
All other application were written on DotNet 3.5 either as WinForms or web apps. Batch scripts were automated to provide scheduled SQL tasks.
A custom blackberry application was created to facilitate external engineer access to production schedules and online quotation information.
A windows service to automate integration with online website applications was created and several client-side windows applications top act as a notifier application similar to Outlook managed workflow needs.
