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VLM
5.2 The Project Team
Declan and Gerry set the vision for the project and
decided on the requirements and the direction that
the system was going to take. The project started
off as an evolving process, insofar as they knew the
general direction they wanted to take, but there was
no detailed project plan. They wanted development
to be carried out in-house, and so the first step
was to recruit a programmer who would be efficient
at building documents online. This was the biggest
task for them to do. As the project evolved, Declan
and Gerry quickly realised that they needed a technology
group in VLM who would build and house the individual
customer web sites, monitor and maintain them.Today
this group consists of 5 full time people. This number
will increase to 6-7 as they continue to expand into
the UK market.
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Structured
Query Language
(SQL)
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(SQL)
is the standard user and application program interface to a
relational database. SQL statements are used both for interactive
queries for information from the database and for gathering
data forreports.
A relational database is a collection of data items organised
as a set of formally described tables from which data can be
accessed or reassembled in many different ways without having
to reorganise the database tables.
In addition to being relatively easy to createand
access, a relational database has the important
advantage of being easy to extend. After the original
database creation, a new data category can be
added without requiring that all existing applications
be modified. (Source:
www.whatis.com)
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ERP
(Enterprise Resource Planning)
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Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system helps an organisation
manage the important parts of its business. It has different
modules to look after, areas such as production planning, procurement,
human resources and finance. The implementation of an ERP system
involves a considerable amount of process re-engineering and
employee retraining. SAP, Peoplesoft, and J. D. Edwards are
among the largest ERP providers |
5.3
Vendor Selection
All their development and hosting is done in house, and as such
there was no vendor selection process.
5.4 Implementation
5.4.1 Technical Dimension
The system was initially developed using a custom-built
database and Java programming. The alternative to
this would have been to develop the system on an SQL
database (see SQL sidebar) such as Oracle, which would
have offered a great deal more flexibility, but at
a much greater cost. Whilst they knew the SQL database
would be the better option, they didn’t want
to take the risk that the system
wouldn’t be a success.
It takes about a day and a half to, build a site for
a customer, and link them into the core system. This
is providing that they adopt an existing version of
the system, as making modifications requires more
time, depending on their complexity.
Once this is done, the user can start creating documents online.
When they are ready for printing, the VLM web site sends the final
pdf document to a central email address (Diagram 5.1). Here a VLM
employee monitors these mails and logs them into the VLM backend
production database, 30 jobs at a time. These jobs are automatically
assigned a unique identifying number and routed to specific machines.
The printing machine operator needs to ensure that
the machine is calibrated, loadedwith paper and is
working. The operator however does not need to know
who the customer is or what the job is. This in turn
reduces the need to employ expensive professional
printers.
When the job is printed, the barcode is scanned (each
pdf is created with an automatically generated barcode).
This updates VLM’s production database with a
record that the job has been printed. The work is
then trimmed and stacked. The barcode is once again
scanned, to date the production database. The system
returns a rack number, indicating where the documents
are to be shelved before they are packaged and shipped.
At the same time the system automatically sends an
email to the customer informing them that their order
has been fulfilled.
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