¡¤              Enables Walstan to compete in the international ERP marketplace since the application will allow the user to visually manipulate scheduling tasks.

¡¤              The availability of the option for forward and backward scheduling allows for greater control and foresight over scheduling tasks.

¡¤              Increase market share by providing a unique system which differentiates itself from similar products on the marketplace.

¡¤              Marketability of Beacon will be increased dramatically due to the addition of a visually appealing production scheduling system.

Our proposed system (Internet Enabled Visual Production Scheduling System) will revolutionize the way the production planner schedules and allows the user to interact with the system in a true graphical interface.

 We have decided to transform the capacity and work load scheduling processes to allow users to interact visually with the system.  The aim of this project is to develop an effective, easy to use, scheduling system to optimize production management.  

Beacon already provides detailed capacity planning and work load scheduling processes. To use these requires that data, such as dates, quantities, queue times etc are changed and that results in the rescheduling of the job(s).  We will allow the user to view the loads on the resources that are used to manufacture the parts on the schedule, then to “drag and drop” that load.  We will show the load on each work centre as a bar representing the time this job will take on a particular machine, similar to a row in a Gantt chart.

The back end processes that keep the corporate data will be updated by these changes as though the dates and times had been keyed into the jobs schedule.  Dynamic scheduling will alert the appropriate personnel when an order might be late or more resources will need to be acquired. 

The project will be fully functional through a browser, aimed at Microsoft’s Internet Explorer at release 6 level in addition to being accessed through the wide area network.

Technical Specifications (Platform):

The proposed system have the same platform as the current system with the following changes: 

The proposed application server will be IIS 6 utilising Microsoft’s .NET Framework while our database server will be PICK.     

• Application – The goal of the application will be to assist the production

planner by graphically displaying the production load placed on each machine at a particular work centre. This will enable the production planner to allocate resources more efficiently.

• Documentation – We will aim to decrease the learning time of a novice user by providing clear, easy to follow, step by step instructions which will be well structured and well written. Furthermore, the code will be highly documented to allow future programmers to learn and expand the system.

• Training - Complimenting the documentation will be an interactive walk through tutorial which will guide novice users through the important features of the system, and thereby equipping the user with all the necessary skills required to maximise the benefit of the system as well as their productivity.

• Provision For Support – We will be supporting users via help documents within the system and also by providing a physical help booklet for quick reference.

• Target Users – Our system will be targeting SME (small to medium) make-to-order manufacturers, in particular, production planners.