Examples of Past Projects

Accounting
Accounting systems are quite generic, and we have worked with many. We have done design, modification, interfacing and data conversion for sales, purchase and general ledgers, as well as payrolls and commission ledgers.

Conference Management
Specific software for managing a number of special events to which delegates were invited, involving hotel, sports, events, and dining schedules management.

Custom Product Design
The general purpose design of custom thermocouples was thought by some to be too difficult or labour intensive to be practical when mainframe programmers still had not succeeded after years of effort. In a few weeks we produced a working system on a PC which did the job so well that it was still in use years later.

Data Collection
A simple DOS program in Basic with a character based drop down menu interface to simplify the management and control of lab chart recorders with serial interfaces. Data could be collected from the Chino AA, AH and AL range of devices and fed into flat ascii files formatted for import into spreadheet programs.

Database Publication
We improved the performance of the extract-to-publish segment of a database information publisher from a 48 hour cycle to a 4 hour cycle on the same hardware for a small fraction of the upgrade cost. At the same time we simplified the user interface and improved the reliability of the results extracted. The solution employed principles original to our AS software.

Distribution
Several years' involvement with companies in the snack food industry has given us valuable experience in the systems and logistics of distributing large volumes of low value items in an efficient manner. It has also made us knowledgeable in the nuances of route sales accounting and in the related practices of pricing and marketing.

e-Commerce
We have experience in setting up sites using Minivend and Akopia Interchange. We are familiar with the use and integration of RedHat CCVS. We also understand the integration of e-Commerce with brick-and-mortar retail operations, and the use of ASP to facilitate supply chain management.

EDI
The snack food industry has also provided us with an understanding of the more common types of EDI transaction and experience integrating their processing into mainframe systems. Consequently we know how to set up a manageable and reliable system and interface it to various providers' systems.

ERP
Over the years we have worked primarily with manufacturing businesses and most often with their manufacturing software, so we are familiar with the principles of MRP as it has developed through MRPII to ERP. We have adapted, interfaced, designed, produced and implemented a variety of these systems in several different industries covering the process, batch and job shop models.

Milling
Producing coils and sheets of something from larger coils or rolls presents some special problems for manufacturing systems. Those problems are very similar whether the 'something' is paper or steel, or whether the sheets are rectangular or tubular, in bundles or pallets. We have worked with these problems and understand them. We know and understand about cutting strips and coils (of paper, or steel, or wire) in the best possible way,

which is especially important if you are talking about valuable wire you cannot weld or solder once it has been cut.

Retail Sales
Our first retail sales system was custom built in two weeks of frantic effort using Cobol for a couple of tills urgently needed for a special application. Since then we have worked in enough other retail situations to understand the application of general purpose retail software to a wide variety of business environments, including ASP deployment over the Internet to facilitate supply chain management. We also know about credit card verification and clearing.

Route Sales
We have done several systems for the support of route sales accounting software on Fujitsu and Norand handheld computers. As a consequence we understand the practical application of mobile computing to the route sales process as well as the complexities involved in administering promotional sales pricing for large scale operations.

Subscriptions
We have worked with subscriptions software for a few newspapers and understand some of the accounting issues raised by prepaid subscriptions and the renewals process.

Wireless Inventory
Our involvement in ERP systems and mobile computing led inevitably to the online management of inventory using RF handheld computers equipped with barcode readers. We can do a site survey and set you up with access points and terminals, and we can also handle the programming to interface your new hardware to your current software.

Have you a problem others failed to solve ?

We would like to show you that we have the experience and smarts to turn the impossible into something merely incredible.