ABSTRACT

The system is a web based Manufacturing System that enables a Manufacturing company to schedule its manufacturing operations based on the daily update of sales from its dealers. The system is modelled to be used by a Manufacturing company, whose main activity is manufacturing different products & then selling the finished goods through a network of Dealers.

To start with, the Stocks of all the Products manufactured by the company and held in the company ware-house are stored in a Database. The details that are stored include the quantity of each product held with the company dealers who hold the stocks of finished products for sale.

Once the sales figures of Products sold in the past week are entered by the Dealers over the internet along with the Orders for the next delivery, the schedule for the next week’s production will be drawn up. A report of the required raw materials or parts will be drawn up with the approved suppliers for each & the suppliers will be intimated about the part requirements over the internet & asked to quote their rates. The message asking for a Quotation will be sent as an e-mail message. Once the rates are quoted, the Order will be placed with the required delivery schedules. 

The system incorporates intelligent Order processing System which checks and intimates the required Higher-ups in the Company about any discrepancies in the Orders that were placed. For example if an Order is placed with a Supplier whose rates are not the least then an automatic Event-generation will send the details of the Order & the person who placed it to the Managers or Directors who are supposed to oversee the process.

Once the parts are supplied the Part Stocks will be updated. Then a production plan will be drawn up taking the Bill-of-materials into consideration. The Bill-of-Materials contains the details of each Product & the type & quantity of Parts required for manufacturing a single unit of the Product. Once the Production plan is approved, the Part Stocks will be updated when the Parts are issued to the Production Department. Once the finished products are available from the Production Department, the Products will be dispatched based on the Orders placed by the Dealers. The stocks with the dealers will also be maintained.

Existing System:

Is a Manufacturing company, which manufactures different models of Computers & sells them through a network of Dealers. The company stores details for each model. The different models will henceforth be referred to as Products. The details that are stored for each product are Name, description, Price & Status. The company has a network of Dealers who sell the Products manufactured by the company. The company holds details of all their Dealers like the Dealer Name, Address, Credit limit & status – which can be active or inactive.

The company has a warehouse, which stores all the Product Stocks – the finished goods that have been manufactured & are ready for dispatch to Dealers. Dealers also hold Product Stocks in their Sales out-lets.

The Dealers submit their sales figures & place orders for new Stocks of products at the end of each week. They take into consideration the sales figures when they order for new stocks. The Order placed will sometimes be the same as the sales figure. It may also be different.

 

Once Dealers place the Orders, a Production Schedule Report will be generated. This report is based on the total Orders placed & the current Product Stocks held with the company. The final Production Schedule is generated by removing the Product Stocks above the re-order level present with the company in its warehouse, from the total Orders placed for the Products by the Dealers.

 

When the Production Schedule is ready, a Parts Indent (requirement of the raw materials to manufacture the Products Ordered) will be generated from the Bill-of-Materials. The Bill-of-Materials is a list, which contains the details of parts & the quantity of each required for manufacturing a given Product. Each Product has a corresponding Bill-of-Materials.

 

The Parts indent is generated, by taking into account, the Production Schedule, the Bill-of-Materials & the Stocks of parts already held with the company in its stores. The final Parts indent is arrived at by removing the Part Stocks above the re-order level held in the company stores from the total number of parts required for manufacturing the Products in the Production schedule.

Once the Parts indent is generated, the Suppliers are intimated about the requirement of Parts. To enable this, the details of the Suppliers like their name, address, e-mail address, Telephone number, status are held with the company.

The Suppliers quote the rates once they receive intimation about the requirements. The company’s procurement department staff then look at the quotations submitted & confirm procurement orders for the supply of Parts. The Managerial staff review the Orders thus confirmed, to check that quotations placed are for the lowest rates.

When their quotation is accepted & the order confirmed, the Suppliers supply the Parts. When Parts are delivered by the Suppliers, to the Stores, the Part Stocks held in the company Stores are updated.

These Part Stocks are then delivered to the Production Department when the manufacturing starts. These Part Stocks are then updated by removing the figure dispatched to the Production department form the Stocks held with the stores.

After Production is completed, the production department sends the finished Products to the warehouse where the Product Stocks are held. The figure of Products stocks thus received will be added to the Product Stocks held in the company warehouse.

Once the Product Stocks are available these will be dispatched to the Dealers who placed Orders for them. The Product stocks held with the company will be reduced by the amount dispatched & the Dealer’s Stocks will be increased by the same amount.

Thus the cycle is repeated for every week. Currently all the above activities are done manually. The process is a tedious one. To arrive at the production Schedule or Order Indent for Parts, data has to be gathered from various sources. Because of this errors are occurring in the process, which is leading to delayed deliveries to the Dealers. Some times because of the errors wrong products are produced which have no requirement & thus a lot of money is being wasted in maintaining the inventory.

Automating such a process will not only eliminate the errors in the process, but also bring down the delivery times & make the company more competitive. So it was decided that an automated system should be developed to make the whole process simpler & easier.

The following is the system developed for the above stated needs. An initial feasibility study was performed & a conclusion was arrived at that automating such a system will not only achieve all the things mentioned above, but will also provide additional Reports which will enable the Management to look at the statistical side of the Sales & predict future sales trends or demand for products. This would also create a Stock inventory system, which would reduce the inventory levels with the company, thus effectively reducing the borrowing costs of the company. Another advantage was that the whole Accounts system could be linked to this system in future, which would finally reduce the Overheads of the company.

Proposed System:

It was decided to use good Software engineering principals in the development of the system since the company had quite a big Dealer network & was aiming to add new Products & Dealers & expand their operations in the near future. So the following Project Plan was drawn up:

1. The Analysts will interact with the current manual system users to get the Requirements. As a part of this the Requirements Specification Document will be created.

2. The requirements Specifications document will contain the Analysis & Design of the system & UML will be used as the modeling language to express the Analysis & Design of the System. According to Grady Booch et al, in The Unified Modeling Language User Guide [UML-1998], “The Unified Modeling Language (UML) is a graphical language for visualizing, specifying, constructing, and documenting the artifacts of a software-intensive system. The UML gives you a standard way to write a system’s blueprints, covering conceptual things, such as business processes and system functions, as well as concrete things, such as classes written in a specific programming language, database schemas, and reusable software components”.

3. The Analysis, Design, Implementation & testing of the System itself will be broadly based on the Rational Unified Software Development process. According to Ivar Jacobson et al, in The Unified Software Development Process (The Addison-Wesley Object Technology Series) [USDP-2000], the Unified Software Development Process contains Inception, Elaboration, Construction & Transition as the main Phases, which contain further cycles & iterations. This process will be followed to produce an incremental cycle, which will deliver milestones like the Requirements Specification Document etc., at the end of each of the iterations, Phases or cycles.

4. The Architecture & Technologies will be decided as a part of the Analysis of the requirements.

5. Once the Design is ready the Implementation & Testing strategy of the system will commence. Each will be independent of the other. The implementation of the system itself will be broken down into sub-systems following the Software Engineering principles for the development of robust software.

6. Once the implementation is ready, the System testing will take place. If the system is judged to be stable then Acceptance testing by the Users will take place & once the Users are satisfied the System will be rolled out to the Users & they will be trained on how to use it for an initial period.

The following chapters contain an account of how the Technology & architecture for the system were chosen.

SOFTWARE REQUIREMENTS:
• Web Technologies : HTML, CSS, JS. JSP
• Programming Language : Java
• Database Connectivity : JDBC
• Backend Database : MySQL
• Operating System : Windows 08/10
HARDWARE REQUIREMENTS:
• Pentium processor : Core I3
• RAM Capacity : 2GB
• Hard Disk : 250GB
• Monitor : 15’’ Color Monitor