Gas Pipeline Remediation Case Study

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OBJECTIVE: Daily automated reporting of rusted pipe-ends remediated by engineers in the field as part of a project to restore them to a suitable condition prior to welding on the ship before being laid on the seabed (Russia – Turkey). SOLUTION FORMAT: MS Excel driven by VBA (Macros) using Dropbox to remotely sync .jpeg images and pipe barcode inputs into an Excel front-end. User navigation via main Dashboard interface to input barcodes and instantiate tablet camera so as to capture before and after .jpeg images in order to prove that each individual pipe had been cleaned. MAIN PROCESSES:

  1. Capture barcode inputs and before & after cleaning images using the in-built tablet camera
  2. Synchronise all images & pipe barcodes to shared Dropbox folders for real-time remote access for reporting purposes
  3. Reports by individual barcode and associated tablet number generated programmatically on a daily basis and emailed to stakeholders

SUCCESSES:

  1. Extremely agile build – 14 days to produce a ‘cradle-to-grave’ robust solution
  2. Provided a solution where the client’s in-house IT department was unable to move quickly enough to create working software, hence the reason for outsourcing to FD4Cast
  3. Flexibility of the solution allowed rapid modifications to the front-end & overall process as the project grew and changed in scope.

Vehicle Remarketing Reporting Automation Case Study

OBJECTIVE: Automation of the reporting, production and reconciliation of Credit Notes issued to their dealer network on a monthly, quarterly and annual basis. SOLUTION FORMAT: MS Excel driven by VBA (Macros). User navigation via customised ribbon to operate model. Manual copy / paste replaced by simple mouse clicks. MAIN PROCESSES:

  1. Update model on a monthly basis
  2. Produce all Credit Notes in a single click
  3. Report on sales breakdown by Dealer Manager
  4. Automated production of journals for upload into ledger system.

SUCCESSES

  1. Reduced processing time from +/- 3 days  to < 2 hours
  2. Elimination of user error in previous manual update process
  3. Step-by-step update process clearly defined within the customised ribbon, reducing the requirement for detailed / complicated end user process notes
  4. FTE re-deployment allowing the business to ‘do more with less’
  5. Project paid for itself – previously there was no easy way to detect cancellations. Therefore these were written-off by the business. New functionality allowed cancellations to henceforth be recouped and netted-off against liabilities resulting in a net gain for the business.
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Construction Duplicate Hours Checker Case Study

OBJECTIVE: Overhaul and enhance timesheet check report automation. SOLUTION FORMAT: MS Excel driven by VBA (Macros) add-in. User operation via custom ribbon. MAIN PROCESSES:

  1. Populate a Cover Sheet with cost summary by division.
  2. Create a Wages Check report of combined timesheet data across all divisions by employee.
  3. Generate a Duplicates tab to highlight likely duplicate timesheet entries per employee.
  4. Generate an Absence report showing employees with 1 or more days without a timesheet entry.

SUCCESSES:

  1. Removed hard coding from the VBA that could have resulted in incomplete reports.
  2. Duplicate timesheet entry checks enhanced to work on individual days rather than the week as a whole.
  3. Replaced user entry of last data row with VBA identification of the last row to prevent risk of user error.
  4. Fixed loss of cell formatting in the original process.
  5. Step-by-step process clearly defined within the custom ribbon, reducing the requirement for detailed end user process notes.
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