Implementation
With the contract signed, DIAM didn鈥檛 lose any time. A project room was quickly established, containing six workstations linked to a test server, and a project team duly began work.
Right from the start, explains Chris, DIAM was determined to make full use of Exel鈥檚 customisation and implementation support toolsets, and made heavy use of Exel鈥檚 ADAPT capability, which allows users to surround screens and forms with programmable logic, permitting it to auto-populate and auto-complete data entry fields, based on earlier user input.
The business also had extensive workflow aspirations, he relates, and engaged Exel to undertake this programming for them. 鈥淲e felt that we didn鈥檛 have sufficient spare in-house SQL resources,鈥 he notes. 鈥淕iven the productivity benefits, it made sense to have the code developed for us.鈥
Also vital to the project鈥檚 success, explains Chris, was EFACS E/8鈥檚 ability to mirror functionality that DIAM had developed to automatically allocate and de-allocate components and materials for particular projects.
鈥淲e used what we called a 鈥榲irtual warehouse鈥, termed CloudWIP, to bypass the need to allocate against specific works orders, and we did a lot of work with Exel to build the allocation and de-allocation logic that we wanted. It鈥檚 really reduced the complexity of how allocation and picking take place.鈥
In August 2018, after three test data uploads had successfully taken place, DIAM鈥檚 new EFACS E/8 国产乱伦 system went live.