Capstone Proposal

Project Name: ​Operations Production and Information System (OPIS)

Client:​ PaceSetter Manufacturing Inc

Course:​ CST 499 Computer Science Capstone

Team Members: ​Danny Tran,​ ​Francisco Gutierrez, Sergiy Zarubin

August 25, 2019

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Table of Contents

Capstone Proposal
Introduction
Project Goals & Objectives
Environmental Scan
Stakeholders and Community
Approach/Methodology
Ethical Considerations
Legal Considerations
Project Scope
Final Deliverables
Usability Testing/Evaluation
Team Members
References
Appendix
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Introduction

In order to be competitive in a modern automotive aftermarket, companies need to

overcome several challenges. Customer service and sales departments need to be able to tell in a

moment's notice what product is on the shelf, or if the product could be produced in a limited

amount of time (if they have enough raw material and production capacity). The procurement

team needs to be able to see what raw materials are running low and how much needs to be

ordered to make sure production is running close to full capacity and without interruption. The

production team needs the ability to see what part of the production cycle runs under capacity or

creates bottlenecks. Production managers need the ability to see how efficient their employees

are at any moment. Customers need to know what is available in inventory and what could be

built, they also need to be notified as soon as order, invoice, a credit memo is created or there

order is being shipped. Executives need to have the ability to have an eagle eye overview of the

entire company. And most importantly, all of the above needs to be performed with as few

employees as possible.

The majority of Enterprise/Manufacturing Resource Planning (ERP/ MRP) systems are

too rigid, they require manufacturing companies to conform to their standard operating

procedures and do not allow production and executive teams to tweak or entirely change their

manufacturing processes. This makes manufacturing companies rigid as well, which in turn

makes it much harder for the company to adapt to a modern volatile market. That makes them

less competitive.
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Operations Production and Information System (OPIS), is a framework of the

Enterprise/Manufacturing Resource Planning system we are designing for Pacesetter

Manufacturing Inc (PMI). The customer service user will be able to create and manage

customers, create order and push it either into production or issue request to ship. The production

user will be able to create a new inventory item and manage inventory quantities for the item.

The production team will be able to create a bill of materials for the items being produced. The

production team will be able to create a custom production workflow for the item, issue work

order and track it through the process. The inventory team will be able to receive raw material

items and add them to inventory as well as dispense raw materials to production. The

procurement team will be able to create purchase orders and track the delivery dates from the

vendors. The shipping team will be able to create advance shipping notices, record shipping

details such as tracking number, estimated delivery date and shipping cost. Customers will be

notified via email on order, advanced shipping notice or invoice creation. The executive team

will be able to generate reports regarding daily activities and have a dashboard with the current

state of the company.

Project Goals & Objectives

The overall goal is to create a system for PaceSetter that’ll replace their current system

built in 1974 with our Operations Production and Information System (OPIS). We hope that the

OPIS will help bring their business up to date with updated intuitive interfaces and faster

processing with all their day to day activities.

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We hope to accomplish this by splitting up the OPIS system into smaller subsystems such

as Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Manufacturing Resource Planning (MRP),

Warehouse Management System (WMS), Shipping Management System (SMS) and User

Access Control (UAC). Below are features we intend on implementing for every subsystem we

will work on:

● Customer Relationship Management

○ User can create new customer/vendor/sales rep

○ User can create a new price list

○ User can assign a price list to the customer

○ User can create discount/charge for a customer account

○ User can specify special pricing for a specific item for the user

○ User can create new orders

○ User can issue credit memos

○ User can create an invoice

○ User can assign a customer to the sales rep

○ User can run a report for daily sails

○ User can run commission report

● Manufacturing Resource Planning

○ User can create a new item

○ User can create a bill of materials to the item

○ User can create production workflow for the item

○ User can create Purchase Orders for the items

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○ User can issue work orders

○ User can track Work In Progress

○ User can close the work order

○ User can finish work per part

○ User can add finished part to inventory

● Warehouse Management System

○ User can create a warehouse

○ User can receive an item

○ User can set safety stock

○ User can create receiving workflow

○ User can release item into production

○ User can release an item for shipping

○ User can adjust item stock

○ User can transfer stock from one warehouse to another

● Shipping Management System

○ User can create Advanced Shipping Notice(ASN)

○ User can add an item to ASN

○ User can remove the item from ASN

○ User can record shipping information

● User Access Control

○ User can create groups to limit access to the resources

○ User can assign other users to the groups

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​Future Project Improvements

● Customer Relationship Management

○ Integrate with Absolute Advantage Accounting Suit

○ Integrate with Quickbooks Accounting

○ Provide customers with REST API

○ Implement integration with RSSBuss EDI

○ Allow order creation via EDI/ REST API

● Manufacturing Resource Planning

○ Create a mobile application for the production team

○ User can run productivity report

● Warehouse Management System

○ Create a mobile application for the inventory team

○ User will be able to see inventory count by scanning QR code on the shelf label

● Shipping Management System

○ FedEx integration

○ USPS integration

○ UPS integration

● User Access Control

○ Integrate with Active Directory

● Quality Assurance

○ User can create QA workflow

○ Create a mobile application for the QA team

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○ User can take pictures of the defect

○ User can add notes

○ User can return a part to production

○ User can clear part for packaging

● Product packaging

○ User can initiate packaging for part

○ User can print a label for the part

○ User can create a bundle with multiple parts

○ User can finish packaging

Environmental Scan

In the last few decades, many different ERP systems were created. Let’s talk about the

most prominent ones. Microsoft Dynamics is great out of the box could achieve all the goals we

set for ourselves, it could also integrate with all Microsoft products seamlessly. But it has many

disadvantages first of which is the price, Microsoft Dynamics 365 cost about $200 per user

according to the official Microsoft website. Besides that, it requires extensive user training.

Customizing Microsoft Dynamics could get very expensive, some manufacturers have to employ

full-time development teams to handle minor changes to the system. Netsuite from Oracle would

be a less expensive option for the base solution but suffers from the same customization issues as

Microsoft Dynamics. The difference is that only Netsuite could customize your solution, as it is

100% hosted by Oracle. Epicor ERP is used by many manufacturing companies. It is one of the

most robust ERP suites on the market, with initial acquisition cost close to one million dollars
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after customizations and deployment. Odoo, formerly known as OpenERP, recently switch from

the open-source model and currently charges customers for every extension. For the basic

manufacturing package, you could expect to pay $500 per month per user with initial

deployment cost of $25,000, retrieved from the Odoo website.

We will be basing our project on the FileMaker platform. According to Clari's official

website, the initial deployment cost for FileMaker is under $10,000 for 100 users. We would be

using FileMaker as a rapid prototyping tool to create a basic framework and provide testable

workflows to the customer in a matter of hours instead of weeks. Moreover, end-users could be

easily trained to make basic changes to layouts, create custom reports or expand on the

framework. Additionally, FileMaker could interface with other services and APIs to extend its

functionality. For example, we could use Google API to resolve the work prioritization problem

which Production management often faces.

Stakeholders and Community

At Pacesetter Manufacturing Inc we will be closely working with the Chief Operating

Officer Adam Bent to determine the specifics of the project. Our software will be replacing the

InMass MRP system designed in 1974. Currently, PMI is having issues in provisioning and

prioritizing incoming orders as they do not have a point in time visibility of the finished goods

stock or raw material inventory. Production workflow is tracked in an excel spreadsheet and is

not being updated promptly. The procurement of raw materials and consumables also being

performed manually with no ability to track incoming orders.

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Implementing an ERP system, ​Operations Production and Information System (OPIS)

will affect customers and clients in vastly improving work efficiency in terms of speed and

productivity. With the OPIS system in place, procuring and tracking orders will be live and in

real-time without any processing delays and will cut previous time costs dramatically. The

system will ultimately replace previous company schematics and methodologies in procuring and

tracking orders. A complete upgrade will be in place of antiquated architecture.

Effects of increased speed and efficiency in viewing processing orders and viewing

product inventory could possibly come at the cost of company shift in personnel. As things

become quicker less staff would be needed to run daily company operations, leaving a

displacement of the job opportunity. The goal is not that of job replacement but rather a shift in

focus, as prior tasks required more time, having a more efficient system leads offers time and

effort be put in other areas of the company. Overall, the O.P.I.S. will be a benefit to the company

client and customer benefitting all.

Approach/Methodology
Implementation of features will follow an Agile software development lifecycle with

weekly sprints implementation meeting at the beginning of each sprint. Tasks will be written in

stories in Pivotal Tracker, a project management software system. This will ensure tasks to be

completed can follow appropriate time constraints and allows for discussion regarding features

and implementation. Point systems in Pivotal Tracker will monitor team efficiency and progress

on features.
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Deep discussion and interaction with each department and weekly implementation

meetings with company Chief Operations Officer will allow us to test features to integrate into

development. The core of the development process will be done with the FileMaker platform in

developing our software. Our team will implement features broken up into tasks described by

Pivotal Tracker stories using the FileMaker platform.

FileMaker provides a comprehensive online database of all the functions which could be

used in FileMaker Scripts. We would also be able to use their knowledge base to resolve the

most common issue, we might encounter during the project. Moreover, if we ran into an issue

that cannot be solved by the methods described above, we would be able to tap into an extensive

FileMaker Community.

FileMaker Data API would allow us to deliver each module as a service. In addition, it

will allow us to expand application reach to mobile android devices and custom web applications

using RESTful API.

Ethical Considerations
The intention of implementing an ERP System into the company is to improve

productivity and efficiency all while being very simple to use. When implemented properly the

expectations of this technology is to be able to produce current company productivity at a

fraction of the time and with fewer staff members needed.

Increasing productivity while being cost-effective and time-efficient is certainly great for

the company however that may not always be the case for workers who may be impacted by this

technological improvement. Examples of workforce displacement by improving technology has

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been documented in various sectors of society. Examples include decreasing numbers of bank

tellers needed with the invention of the automated teller machines (ATMs) or a decrease in farm

and agricultural workers as machine technology increased (Rumberger 1984). The notion of job

loss or job displacement due to technology is nothing new and even dates back to as early as the

Industrial Revolution in England. Throughout history, technology has not only displaced

physical jobs but also mental jobs with new technologies in electronics and software. However,

as increasing technology does destroy jobs, it also creates new jobs in its wake. An example

would be with the increase in automotive technology, this affected industry in areas such as

increasing jobs regarding petroleum, steel, rubber and various other goods and services regarding

automobiles.

Groups that tend to be most impacted by job displacement are older generations in which

are often the least familiar with the technology. However, the aim of the software is to be

simplistic in which even elderly individuals can be able to operate without much difficulty. As

fewer staff members are required to perform the same productivity with the newly implemented

software technology this leaves remaining members to be able to address other areas of company

need.

Legal Considerations

The software will be delivered under MIT license:

Copyright 2019 Section Six Labs

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Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and

associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction,

including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute,

sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is

furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or

substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND,

EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF

MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND

NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT

HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY,

WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM,

OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER

DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.

The client agrees that the project will be considered finished at the point that software

could perform equivalent operations to InMass MRP. The client also agrees that the migration of

client data to the new system is beyond the scope of this project.
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Project Scope

Timeline/Budget

Week 1 Customer Relationship Management Implementation

(8/25-8/31)

Week 2 Manufacturing Resource Planning Implementation

(9/1-9/7)

Week 3 Warehouse Management System Implementation

(9/8-9/14)

Week 4 Shipping Management System​ ​Implementation

(9/15-9/21)

Week 5 User Access Control Implementation

(9/22-9/28)

Week 6 Integration Testing / Creating How-To videos

(9/29-10/5)

Week 7 Project Delivered to Customer

(10/6-10/12)

Week 8 10/13-10/18 - Capstone presentation preparation

(10/13-10/19) 10/19 - Capstone Festival Presentation

Resources Needed
● One computer setup at the Client location for local development and testing.

● Remote access application with multi-user capability

● FileMaker Pro Advanced installed on local computer

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Milestones

For the first part of the project, we will be concentrating on the Customer Relationship

Management(CRM) module, which will include the Customer database. We would research

leading CRM systems and will work with PMI employees in finding the optimal solution that

will fit their needs. After the Customer database is complete, we would focus on the Orders

database and its subsystems such as Items, Shipments, Charges and Discounts, and Prices

databases. The finished CRM module will be our first deliverable.

The second stage of the project will include building a Manufacturing Resource Planning

(MRP) module. We would extend Items database to include such subsystems as Bill of

Materials, Pictures, item dimensions and properties, manufacturing and shipping notes. The

production manager will be able to create work orders and track products through the production

process. Procurement Manager will be able to predict what raw materials are needed for

outstanding orders and will be able to issue Purchase Orders to vendors.

Warehouse Management System will track inventory stock of raw material and finished

product between two locations, as well as any product in transit to and from facilities. Inventory

personal will be able to receive and distribute raw materials for production and/or shipping.

The third deliverable will be Shipping Management System (SMS) which would tie into

CRM and MRP bringing them together. Shipping manager will be able to look up current

inventory stock, work in production and generate backorder report of items that need to be

shipped. Shipping personal will be able to add tracking numbers and estimated delivery dates to

the invoices.
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User Access Control will limit user access to specific areas of the software based on the

least necessary access principal in order to assure customer information privacy.

Risks and Dependencies

We will have to follow the order of deliverables closely because of the shipping module

being dependant on CMS, Production, and Warehousing modules. Although CMS, Production,

and Warehousing modules are not dependant on each other and could be developed in parallel.

Or as time allows. Most of the Warehousing module will be completed as part of the Production

module which would give us some time that could be allocated to additional testing or to deal

with unforeseen circumstances. Moreover, UAC implementation could be streamlined by

integrating OPIS with Active Directory, which could give us an additional week that could be

dedicated to other issues. Which should cover the risk of running over the allocated time for the

first phases of the project.

Final Deliverables

The final deliverables include the Operations Production and Information System (OPIS)

software and tutorial videos on how to use the final product for company employees. With a

company change in the management system and software, the goal of the tutorial videos is to

ease and accelerate the company's shift to the new system. Videos will include an overview of

OPIS for a broad understanding of the software along with a detailed feature and logical tutorial

of how to operate OPIS.

OPIS will be a functional and deployed Enterprise/Manufacturing Resource Planning

system set to replace the current company system with a full suite of functionalities. The
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software will be of use to various departments and teams within the company. Teams include

customer service, production team, product team, procurement team, inventory team, and

management all able to use OPIS for daily operations.

With an all in one system using OPIS, the production team will be able to keep an

inventory of company products. As well as update and create new inventory items. Other

features include being able to track the materials and resources used in creating inventory items

and keeping track of workflow for the product team. The inventory team will be able to keep

track of stock inventory and dispatch items as needed. The procurement team will be able to

place orders and track of shipments and delivery times. The shipping team will be able to place

the shipment orders from the orders. Finally, the executive team will be able to generate reports

regarding daily activities and have a dashboard with the current state of the company.

​Usability Testing/Evaluation

Testing and evaluation will be assessed by company customer service and team members.

As company employees are the major stakeholders in the software they will be the key

stakeholders regarding OPIS. As each Agile iteration of feature implementation takes place

feedback from Project Manager will give insight on areas that need improvement or need to be

changed. Once again the features will include ​various subsystems: Customer Relationship

Management (CRM), Manufacturing Resource Planning (MRP), Warehouse Management

System (WMS), Shipping Management System (SMS) and User Access Control (UAC).
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Components will include their own integration tests. Tutorial videos of how to operate each

related subsystem for different teams will function as integration tests in a functioning software

system.

The evaluations will be from stakeholders using the software in preliminary

examinations. Employees will be users of the software so direct feedback from them as

stakeholders hold the most value in testing and evaluating the system. Feedback from users will

be the metric to make further iterations and changes to particular features based on the

evaluation.

Team Members
Team members consist of Sergiy Zarubin​, ​Francisco Gutierrez and Danny Tran.

Project Lead: Sergiy Zarubin

● Role/ Responsibilities - Part of the Project Lead responsibility will involve overseeing the

development team while working on both the front end and back end intermediates. This

includes scripts and procedures that route and pass data between the user interface and

the database.

UI/UX Development: ​Francisco Gutierrez

● Role/ Responsibilities - Part of the UI/UX Development will involve generating the user

interface layout of OPIS. This includes generating the software user interface with user

software screen pages. Screen pages will have data fields and buttons that users will

interact with to generate and retrieve data.

Back End Development: Danny Tran

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● Role/ Responsibilities - Part of the back end development will include generating the

database component of the system. Tasks will include creating proper table relationships

with appropriate fields pertaining that that particular table. Preliminary and current data

records of company data will have to be integrated and migrated to the database once

OPIS is fully in use. Once features are in use, integration tests will be done along with a

tutorial for users to learn and how certain software features work. Videos will show step

by step usage of certain features and how to perform specific tasks with the specific

audience user in mind.

References

Innovation in the workplace - FileMaker, An Apple Subsidiary. (n.d.). Retrieved from

https://www.filemaker.com/

Microsoft. (n.d.). Pricing: Microsoft Dynamics 365. Retrieved from

https://dynamics.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/

NetSuite.com. (n.d.). NETSUITE IS #1 IN CLOUD ERP. Retrieved from

https://www.netsuite.com/portal/home.shtml

Odoo Pricing: Odoo. (n.d.). Retrieved from

https://www.odoo.com/pricing#pl=67&num_users=1&hosting=online&odoosh_workers=1&

odoosh_storage=1&odoosh_staging=1&implementation_service=self&pack=25&force_co

untry=US&integrating_partner_id=0&price_by=yearly

Rumberger W.R. High technology and job loss. Elsevier. Technology in Society

Volume 6, Issue 4, 1984, Pages 263-284.

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Appendix

Usability Testing/Evaluation Survey:

https://forms.gle/XhyDCg2aeRXj7N1Z6