Unfortunately the features that were available from these tools did not meet the companies requirements. Joint with the generally high costs of such systems it meant they were not feasible. Most of the solutions needed high levels of modification to the back end workings, normally based on PHP. This meant outsourcing of personnel would be required.
Frostechnic were not in a position where they could justify spending £10,000′s of pounds on these systems when currently there are no major issues and the workload was slowing.
Fortunately as a summer placement who was keen to learn useful programming skills, I offered to design bespoke software that would perfectly match the needs and business processes that Frostechnic undertake. As an employee of 3 years, who had worked in most areas of the company, I was in a unique position of understanding into how the business processes are performed.
The first step taken was to outline what features were required and how these would all interact with each other. The planning of such a large project was crucial. Without solid planning I was likely to not meet these requirements and have wasted company time and money. As part of a module Product Lifecycle Management i had learnt that the 5 major steps for configuring and designing such a system were
Below is an outline work flow, it was very basic but helped make a start on defining the information and process flows of Frostechnic.
Screenshot of the PCB system.
Initially I was instructed to work on a system that could collaborate all of the existing products and components that the PCB department handles. The nature of this department has meant that data was very scarce and the business processes were very loosely defined and were generally of the “wing it and see” mentality. What was needed was a way to gather all of the designs and develop databases of components and the suppliers. It was also requested to add in ordering, redefining and emailing functionality to help streamline the PCB department. My first steps was to design a spreadsheet for each product defninig what it is and all of its components and board placement. Once this was complete I set to making it automated and efficient. After hours of research I cam to the conclusion that using SQL databases would be the ideal candidate for this system. The company already had a centralised server for all their data needs, therefore all that was required was a design.
Once the PCB department had been finalised i was given the go ahead to start building a bespoke customer, suppliers and services address book. The current system was a mismatch of company data from individual engineers computers, accountants books and secretaries address book. This meant there was no single point to find information that employees may require. It also meant that data was old and frequently incomplete. I decided to implement a simple address book that could meet the companies needs and allow all users to access the same information. With the use of access privileges and login accounts I could control who can see company critical data and avoid accidental, or mistreated information changes. I even integrated address with Google maps to allow for quick and easy directions for the firms delivery driver.
Multi user login details with encrypted passwords and login reminder features.
Change user permissions, backup data and observe user viewing habits.
Full address book support, including delivery address and Google map integration.
Edit / Add and Delete PCB data, order parts through purchasing department.
Full parametised SQL commands to prevent SQL injection attacks.
Backup full database at the touch of the button.
Adjust what each users can see with varying levels of control from read only to full access.
Allow for multiple users at one time, through the use of a secure and reliable SQL server.
