Automate hand-written booking in process

Hi,

This is a big ask never mind a big question !!!

I would like to get a bit further in the company that I work for, not a large company, Owner, MD, and 14 employees. I have worked there for 18 months and have been elevated to the Quality dept as a Quality assistant.

At the moment we receive in parts that we treat, when we receive them we also receive a purchase order outlining the treatment required for that particular part via part number. The office production staff book these in, firstly they need to find the specification sheet appertaining to that part number (we have hundreds of specifications written up on openoffice.org files). Once they have printed out the required spec sheet they then hand write
A Shop floor process sheet
B Certificate of Conformity
C Purchase order for sending of the required test pieces to a testing house.

What I would like to do is to automate this process as much as possible. I would like to be able to produce something that runs as described in the following.

Left open on the computer screen would be a window with a field to input a part number once inputted you click OK the process would search for the documents appertaining to that part number.

When found another window would open with five buttons
Button 1. View specification sheet (click on this button and the spec sheet would open)
Button 2. View Shop floor flyer (click on this button and the flyer would open)
Button 3. View C of C (click on this button and the C of C would open)
Button 4. View Purchase Order (click on this button and the P/O would open)
Button 5. Print (click on this button and all documents would print)

If none of the files are available for that part number then each button would lead to the correct template ready to fill in the required information and save for the next time. Most of our work (at least 95%) is repeat orders.

I’m not asking for someone to produce this for me. I know what I want visually but I need guidance to get there, be it a point in the right direction to a tutorial or an available programme or someone tutoring me online. I don’t know, so please could you help. I must add that I don’t have a lot of money so programmes costing hundreds of pounds would not be of any assistance to me, I’m doing this off my own back. The company that I am working for (believe it or not) have only had computers for a couple of years so I would need to produce something that maybe the MD would then stump up some money for a programme to run it, again I don’t know. Also one last thing, would this sort of thing be easy enough to use Visual Basics for, I would prefer to use Excel rather than the pretty openoffice,

Thanks for you time,

Andy (Lurch).

Hi,

I think Excel forum, sorry,

Lurch

I feel your pain... It always hurts when i read about such mind-numbing manual labor.


Generally speaking: what you ask for is pretty much what VBA was meant for, but not too simple nevertheless. Prepare yourself for many weeks of sleepless coding-nights, bughunt, headaches etc. And when you launch your precious program then be more than 100% sure that it has no nasty bugs. Managers don't like bugs. Especially the kind that heard about computers just fey years ago.

Little less general speak: are all those relevant documents in openoffice formats? But your daily tool is MS Office? You might consider choosing one platform and stick with it. Either develop in OO (not so different actually) or convert docs. Cross-manipulation is likely possible, but definitely more complicated and error-prone. Just a thought.

Do those relevant documents follow some general standard? Like they're kept in specific folders, follow strict naming conventions and so on? Otherwise you might start there - outline some general standards, templates, produce input-forms... But in case the chaos must prevail then central lookup-database might be necessary. Best solution for data integrity would be to put everything into database. Access or whatever you like. Excel might do also.

Or i read you wrong and in the simplest possible case there is no need to preserve generated documents in separate files and no need to use historical OO files - only few fields of info per doc/part and pretty printout?


In general - outline what is needed and take one step at a time. It is doable.

I am pretty sure that there are hundreds of such programs, some less capable, some waay out of sensibility, and someone on this forum knows about them. Keep your faith.

Originally Posted by lurchybold

From your first paragraph, I think I may have taken on more than I can achieve I don’t know VBA, coding or debugging and that doesn’t sound easy to learn either. It all sounds pretty ominous, do you think I may be taking on too much considering the great lack of knowledge.

Where would I need to start ?

Everything is easy to learn, but hard to master. Do not take my word for it, try it.

Lack of knowledge does not have to be limiting factor. It comes in process. I do not know you, for me it is hard to finish large projects sucessfully, i tend to tire and give up. But it is not complete waste of time, something is always learned.

But you seem to have good motivation, decent vision about what you want to accomplish, and really no impossible wishes. Its a good sign. Keep it up.

Now, you say you do not know VBA. But you have some general programming knowledge?

May I suggest you to start with flowcharting. Take few papers, pen, or software you are comfortable with, and write out everything that your program must do. Rinse and repeat, and think every little operation through, into details. Keep it as simple as possible, just the necessary functionality.

I don't do that and that's the main reason my projects fail. Oh and my general lazyness. When you are ready, share your plan with the crowd. You get some good recommendations and we get much better idea what you're trying to achieve...

Thats the hard part. After that it's just a creative manual work, through many sleepless nights Good luck!

Cheers Hannes001,

I am about to start a VBA tutorial, hopefully this will help me on my way,

Lurch