We created a web-based Work Order Processing System for our client. We saw the scale of the project and had to deal decisively with the scale of the project in order to ensure that our client got the system they needed. We worked with the client to understand their business, and to capture the requirements for the system. The old system, or way of doing things, didn't allow TCS to accurately measure the cost of their manufacturing, and subsequently prevented TCS from telling whether they were making or losing money on some of the products they were making. Our system, allows TCS to see how much money is being made on every order, as a whole, and per-piece. In its final form, this allows the salespeople to quote more competitively, and to avoid jobs that would incur a loss.

This system managed the work-order process from quotation, through the creation of purchase orders, to the documents required on the shop floor, to costing the job after the fact, and saving all this information so that it could be accessed at a moment's notice to produce the required reports.

The web-based solution employed ASP (active server pages) which ran from a database, and were served via IIS on an existing Windows2000 server at TCS. The choices we made in system architecture saved TCS as much as $15,000 over other solutions that would have also worked. The product was such that the delivery was all or nothing. Without the base components of the system, it would be not better than the paper based system it replaced. We were able to manage the risks we encountered to deliver the project on time with a feature set that allowed immediate use, and scalability for future expansion.

Conclusion (TCS)

The scale of the project was ambitious for the time frame, but we delivered a feature-rich solution on-time to the client.
TCS was happy with the work, and asked our team to come back this summer and improve parts of the system for them.