CUSTOMER
The customer is one of the leading developers of enterprise resource planning and business automation solutions.
CHALLENGE
The customer has an Advanced Manufacturing Management (AMM) solution aimed at automating and simplifying the manufacturing processes for large enterprises. The solution is based on DevExpress XAF. Xafari team provided their expertise in XAF development and helped in developing the system’s core functionality using Xafari Framework.
ABOUT THE SOLUTION
The system consists of four modules:
Project Management. The module provides efficient manufacturing project management through a common project knowledge base, a pool of available resources (people, finance, equipment, etc.), tools for monitoring the project progress and visualization instruments for analyzing project effectiveness and shortcomings.
Specific-Order Manufacturing Management. The module provides tools for quick assessment of manufacturing costs and deadlines, planning and assigning resources for the project, changing the project in view of new technical requirements, etc.
Serial Manufacturing Management. The module is based on the SCM (Supply Chain Management) methodology and the APS (Advanced Planning and Scheduling) algorithm. They provide instruments for:
- developing a sales plan with account for seasonal demand fluctuations and other factors
- generating recommendations for ordering materials and components with an option to select the best possible delivery route
- planning the manufacturing process, depending on the sales plan and materials and components delivery schedule.
Preproduction Stage Management. The module provides tools for planning and analyzing different management scenarios for the future project, depending on the human resources and equipment used and other factors, as well as an instrument for effective document flow.
The system architecture allows using modules separately or together, depending on the user’s and the company’s business goals.
USING XAFARI FRAMEWORK
The solution was developed using DevExpress XAF and Xafari Framework. A number of Xafari components were used to implement important features of the system. Below are just some of the examples.
Due to the vast functionality of the system, i.e. a large number of processes and resources end users have to keep track of, it was bound to have a complicated UI with many views. Our task was to make the UI as simple as possible for the end user while maintaining their access to all the vast functionality of the system. We used Xafari Dock Panels and Smart Design to simplify the UI of complicated business processes with a large number of views, as well as IHierarchyNode for data representation.
Using Auto Refresh enables automatic updates of the data in the system’s modules, making sure all team members are on the same page.
Xafari Security provides correct access to projects and data for different teams and users of different roles.
We also used a number of Xafari ERP components to implement complex operations, namely Audit, Xafari Server, and Reports.
The system works with Oracle databases, so Xafari.DB Module was used to enhance the application performance.
RESULT
The resulting AMM solution allows managing and tracking several manufacturing processes at a time, monitoring how the company’s resources are used, and changing and improving the projects in real-time. It has already helped to automate business processes of more than several dozens of companies that are using it.
TECHNOLOGIES
.NET, C#, DevExpress XAF, Xafari Framework.
