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Workflow Management System

Project Proposal
Information Technology Project 2009

Project ID: Submitted by:

Xxxxxxxx
Xxxxxx
Xxx
x

Submitted to:

(Supervisor’s signature)

…………………………..

Name of the supervisor

Date of submission

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 Abstract

“Lakfoil (Pvt) Ltd” is a middle scale, yet prestigious printing company which has
been serving various needs of Sri Lanka's most important industrial giants in areas of
digital and offset printing. The company’s head office is the center of the organization's
most important activities including client processing, design, production and delivery.
The company currently operates in a partly-computerized environment where
the client processing is done using various hand written forms and other important
estimations and procedures are currently executed in a basic computerized environment.
This system, although it serves its purpose, has been inadequate to keep up
with the company's increasing needs in terms of flexibility and time consumption. There
have been incidents where a lot of anomalies have been occurring during client
processing (manual) and estimation.
Seeing the need for a better and efficient system Mr. Delan Silva, the
Managing Director of Lakfoil, wants us to build a system which will automate all the
important phases the company's production workflow (product cost estimation, job
management, etc) and in addition handle the company's inventory.
The primary objectives that are targeted by the company in using the new
system is to increase the company's efficiency, productivity, reduce the man-power
involved and decrease the errors encountered so far to a minimum and thus gain a
‘profitable solution’ to their current problems.
Thus the system will be developed as an integration of three separate
modules; those being estimation, job manager and inventory manager. The modules serve
the purposes of automating the hectic and manual processes involved in product cost
estimations, handling of management procedures within the company and inventory
control respectively.
The system is intended to be completed within the time-frame of fourteen weeks
allocated to us. Implementation will be done using free software such as MySQL
Database and the Java Programming language as requested by Mr. Delan Silva.

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 Table of Contents

1. Introduction..................................................................................1
1.1 Problem Specification..........................................................................1
1.2 Solution Outline...................................................................................3
1.3 Key Benefits..........................................................................................4
2. Objectives....................................................................................5
2.1 General Objectives...............................................................................5
2.2 Specific Objectives...............................................................................6
3.1 Flow of the Project...............................................................................9
3.1.1 Requirements Gathering and Analysis.........................................................12
3.1.2 Designing Phase...............................................................................................12
3.1.3 Implementation and Testing..........................................................................12
3.1.4 Configure and Change Management............................................................13
3.1.5 Documentation................................................................................................13
3.2 Project Plan........................................................................................14
3.2.1 Work Plan........................................................................................................14
3.2.2 Grannt Chart...................................................................................................14
4. Personnel and Facilities.............................................................15
5. Hardware and Software Requirements......................................16
6. Budget .......................................................................................17
7.1 E –Books.............................................................................................19
7.2 Web Sites............................................................................................20

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1. Introduction

1.1 Problem Specification

“Lakfoil (Pvt) Ltd” is a pioneer in the printing Industry since 1979. It was initially
protrude in a low voice accomplishing variety of printing tasks. Due to its’ superior
characteristics in their deliverables it amazingly immerged as an authoritative contestant
in the prevalent economy in Sri Lanka. In the present day it has majored in supplying
printing solutions when it comes to quality & reliability.

• Company vision : “vivid impressions of quality”

• Company Missions : Increased productivity for the customer, reduce lead time
communication cost & the perfect customer
satisfaction.

This company interacts with the client directly or most of the times with the
Advertising agency. The directly contacting customers usually place orders on both
designing and printing. In order to perform the task there is a separate computer graphics
designing sector. The advertising companies most often place printing tasks handing over
the design templates. The printing can be done via two categories, Digital printing or
Offset printing. When it comes to digital printing, it can be done with less effort and
much faster. Although the cost is very high due to high tech machinery and printing
materials. Therefore they perform only the urgent orders using ‘digital printing’
according to customer specification. For an example business cards, invitation cards, etc.
The Offset printing takes place in a different location performing majority of the printing
orders. This particular section functions with the help of manually operated machinery.
The current software system utilized by our client and the operations performed can be
listed as follows.
• 23 years of infallible experience in the printing industry in providing truly
effective personal printing solutions accomplishing customer requirements.

• Provide physical help desk by highly qualified and trained professional and
experienced support team.

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 • Expertise advice is provided to enhance the operations to ensure the customers
remain both satisfied and loyal.

• Offers best quality work in international quality standards.

• Strictly adhere to competitive ethical effect pricing nevertheless of the size of the
job, every customer receives priority attention.

• Hence the company agenda primarily involves “Marketing and selling peace of
mind”.

Although, the existing situation in the company production unit is quit severe
according to several reasons justified by our client, the Managing Director Mr. Delan
Silva. As we studied their prevalent production workflow, the main issue of producing
the desired effect is the delay. The main cause of their delay is due to several prominent
issues. According to what we encounter is that the greater portion of the production
initiating from Customer order processing to Final product delivery is done manually.
When a customer places an order, the Customer Order Inquiry forum is filled and
attached to ‘bill books’. This forum contains Customer contact details, job details
(description, quantity and price), paper details, pre-press details, printing details and
finishing details. Then the total cost is calculated and the quotation letter to the customer
is typed. The job details are placed in an envelope and a job description known as ‘job
bag’ is manually generated and pasted on the top of the envelop. These job bags are
maintained as a physical file system. This whole procedure incorporates with many
issues. In case of an emergency and searching for job details is rather time consuming
and unsecure. They already have a few basic databases accumulating details of customers
and Jobs. Retrieving data from those databases is inefficiently done and they are not
managed properly.

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 1.2 Solution Outline

The current software system the client is using is not entirely supporting the
workflow. That is rather the principal issue the company is experiencing at present.
According to what we observed the tasks are categories and the abstract of our client
requirement is identified as developing a ‘fully automated system’. Our software solution
is modeled under three main categories, as mentioned bellow:

Estimation
Job Manager
Inventory Manager

Our software solution thus include the reassurance of a comprehensive and highly
qualified fully automated system initiating from customer order placement to product
delivery. The whole procedure is illustrated in the figure 1.2.1 below.

Estimator
Server

Intranet

Database

Production Coordinator Manager

Figure 1.2.1

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1.3 Key Benefits

Key benefits intend to achieve from our developed software solution can be embellished
as follows.

• Fully automated customer order processing system with enhanced performance

and features.

• The developed expertise system can quickly and efficiently rectify any problem
that may arise preventing numerous difficulties which rose in earlier manually
operated system.

• Reassure a comprehensive computer based help desk maintained by qualified

and trained professionals for the customers to gain precise knowledge about
merely personal and quality printing solutions.

• The system will show a great impact in demonstrating open communication,

education and training of the employees in realization of the company workflow
of continued achievements intensifying attitude of employment to win customer
convenience.

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 • Eventually, the prime concern of our system is to ensure loyal partnerships with
customers by providing qualified printing solutions quickly and accurately.

2. Objectives

2.1 General Objectives

a) Lakfoil Workflow Management System will deal with a large amount of information.
Our main objective is to develop a system to handle this information very accurately
and efficiently.
b) To focus on the issues starting from the customer order processing to the final product
delivery.
c) To develop several Databases to organize their variety of essential data and to generate
several prominent forums and reports.
d) To make entering and retrieving data efficiently.
e) To make updating and viewing the stored data more efficiently.
f) To develop a software solution that will increase the productivity of the company’s
workflow.
g) To enhance the workflow performance of the company.

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2.2 Specific Objectives
a) To develop a system which is capable of storing the information in a database
automatically and systematically.
b) If a particular data entry should be searched, to make that process efficient, quick and
easy.
c) To handle economical details by the forms created by the system.
d) To handle and keep track of all the activities affecting the company in details.
e) To maintain necessary documents such as reports, budgets, etc.
f) To produce a cost effective system.
g) to develop several Databases to organize their variety of essential data and to generate
several prominent forums and reports.
h) As the system will be programmed in Java to make it user friendly, platform
independent, object oriented and highly secure.
i) To study about Jasper reports and handle them in NetBeans using Java.

In order to accomplish our clients exact requirments precisely and accurately we devided
the system into three(3) main functions as follows.
Estimation
Job Manager
Inventory Manager
Under these main functions there are sub functions as follows.

Estimation
Calculate Cost Estimation
After the customers order arives the system has to calculate the total cost it will
take for the product. To calculate the total cost, that will take for the product, the ordering
details and material cost details are entered to the system. Then the system will input the
order details and will estimate the cost by using material cost details. The output will be
generated as the unit price.

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Generate the Quotation Letter
After Estimationg the unit price for the product that data will be directed to the
quotation letter. After printing letter the user can print it or e-mail the quotaion letter.

Generating the Job Bag Document

A job bag document is generated to specify a unique job number to the newly
arrived printing tasks. The job bag documentation contains the job number, customer
details , job details and it is pasted on the physical job bag (Envilop). To generate the job
bag the the user have to input the job number, customer details, delivery date, order date,
job name, quantity, paper details, printing details and finishing details.The system will
process this information and will generate the job bag.

Job Manager
Job Search
This sytem will be able to search the necessary job by the customer number,
customer name and the job states. When the user needs to search some specific job he has
to input one of those data and then the sytem will generate a list of matching jobs. If the
user inputs a certain job state (eg: printing state) the system will display all the jobs on
the printing phase. Then if the user is in need of a printed search report, he can print those
details .

Changing Job State

Each time a state of a job is required to be changed, the database can be updated
selecting the current state and change the state. To do this, the user should input the
requested state, and when a particuler job state is changed the new state is selected from
the database and the the system outputs the new job state.

View the Dash Board (Categorize the Jobs and Display)

The view dashboard function directs the user to an interactive interface where the
user is exposed to the current set of jobs that are undergoing different phases of
production, displayed in a board like display. The grid dispayes in each column a
different phase of the production cycle and the set of values inside the columns indicate
the Job_ID. The function is responsible for displaying complete details about the job

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when it is selected from the grid and it also is responsible for promoting or demoting a
job on the users demand.

Print Job State Report

The purpose of this is to give the information about the current job state to the
meeting board. The user inputs the job details and the system will process the data and
will generate the job state report. The reports will be categorized according to states of
the jobs.

Print New Job Slips

Purpose of this new job slip is to give information about the new job. This job slip
is attached on the physical dash board that thay are managing. This job slips will inform
the employees the current state the job is in, therefore they can get a clear view of the
progress of the job. After a new job arrives for the Estimation function, that job details
will be printed on a paper slip.

Inventory Manager
Update Inventory
To update the inventory, the user should input the material data and then the
system stores all the details that user inputs into the inventory database. The inventory
details will then be stored in the inventory database.

Print Inventory Report

To print the inventory report, the specific data will be fetched from the database
and they will be printed.

Minimum Stock Level Alert

When a transaction with the system is done, the system will compare the current
stock level with the minimum stock level details. If the stock level is less than the
minimum level the system will generate a minimum stock level alert.

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Create Purchase Order
To create the purchase order the user will input the material data, and the system
will generate a purchase order.

Generate Requisition Form

The requsition form is essential in order to request material from the stocks. The
user inputs the required material information and the requisition form is generated. After
the Manager approves the requisition the inventory database is updated.

3. Procedure

3.1 Flow of the Project

Selecting the Company

As the client company Lakfoil (Pvt) Ltd was selected from a list of possible
suggestions. Necessary meetings were scheduled with the company in order to discuss
the possible projects that can be offered considering the time limit, resource allocation &
experience. Mr. Delan Silva the Managing Director of the company was contacted to
make the necessary meeting schedule. Regular meetings were scheduled for the group
members to understand the project plan.

Choosing the Topic

The topics were chosen after several discussions by the group, the selection was
confirmed by the Lecturer in charge. Discussions were held with the company to make

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the necessary decisions about identifying the project scope & the objectives of the
project.
The project scope and objectives was defined with the company by specifying the
time limitations and resource limitations of the group. Objectives were revised by the
group to identify the crucial points of implementation and issues with the current
resource allocation. The software area & the aim were taken to consideration to make
feasibility study much easier. Additional meetings with the supervisor were held to
make the decisions more comprehensive.

Feasibility Study

A feasibility Study was done to determine whether the development of this product is
technically and financially feasible for the group. An analysis of an abstract definition of
the problem, formulation of the different solution strategies, examination of alternative
solution strategies and their benefits indicating resources required, development. Cost
and time in respect of each one strategy, and an analysis was performed in a cost/benefit
aspect to determine which solution is best at this stage was done by the group which
helps to determine which solutions are not feasible enough due to high cost, resource
constraints or technical reasons.
As the company requires implementation of such system the project is technically
feasible, the end product that the institute requires from the group is a prototype which
can be approached within the given time. As the company and the group have agreed
upon a final product the project will be continuing till the desired goal is achieved. The
failure rate of the project proves to be minimal so that it is taken to be as a feasible
project for both ends.

Confirmation of the Project

The confirmation of the project was done with the company as well as the Lecture in
charge. Permission letter of the institute was provided to the company. A short
description was prepared mentioning the project as an abstract to present to the
supervisor. An official meeting has taken place with the company to accept the project.

Registration

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 The registration of the project was done in a scheduled meeting with the lecturer in
charge. A registration form was presented mentioning the description and group
information. All the members were assigned for the meeting.

Preparing the Project Proposal

Preparing the project proposal was assigned to the members who initiate the
documentation part of the project. Meetings were held regularly with the supervisor and
group members to clarify issues about proposal writing. The proposal was prepared in
several stages in order to make the end result more comprehensive. The group members
who were assigned to prepare the documentation sections were assigned to write the
proposal as previously discussed on meetings.

Allocating Group Members to Complete Tasks

The group members will be allocated to complete the main functions of the system.
Approximately four members were allocated to complete one main function with one
person taking the responsibility of supervising that function.
The “Workflow Management System for Lakfoil” will be planned and conducted
according to the main procedure of the software development life cycle. The phases are
described according to the order as the project is planned.

Procedure is divided into main sub sections and planned as follows.

a) Requirement Gathering
b) Submission of the Project proposal
c) Analysis
d) Design
e) Implementation
f) Testing
g) Configuration & Change Management
h) Documentation

The above mentioned phases are carried out according to a time table which with specific
Time allocated to each work.
The description about how the project is carried out is described as follows.

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3.1.1 Requirements Gathering and Analysis
Requirement gathering is the step which should be followed accurately to
implement the proposed system. By considering the information that has been gathered, a
well structured system can be implemented effectively.
Requirement gathering is done by background reading, interviews, discussions,
analyzing reports and documents relevant to project. By interviewing different levels of
employees in the company, the main idea of the proposed project is taken to action. The
proposed project is mainly categorized into four sections namely Estimating, Production
State Management, Job Search and Inventory.
The information which related to the above three sections are gathered separately
by conducting interviews with the employees of Production division, Estimating division
and Managing Director of Lakfoil (Pvt) Ltd.
By capturing the main functions from the information gathered, it is to be
expected to come up with a highly standardized system for Lakfoil (Pvt) Ltd.

3.1.2 Designing Phase

The designing phase will be done after finishing the Analysis of the project.
Designing phase should contain all the gathered and analyzed information.
The analyzed system should be designed using Entity Relationship (ER) diagrams and
UML diagrams, until it reveals the correct relationships among the functions.
Entity Relationship diagrams should be used to identify the relationships among the main
databases of the Subsystems which are Estimating System, Job Manager System,
Inventory System.
An input can be an output of another function, so the dependency of three
functions can be highlighted when we use UML diagrams. The connectivity among the
main three systems can be identified by using UML diagrams.

3.1.3 Implementation and Testing

Implementation phase will be done after the designing phase. The designed
relationships, data flows are converted into the programming language using a high level
language. All the necessary software are mentioned in Topic 5, Hardware Software
Requirements. Unit testing of each module will be done in isolation before integrating the
modules begin.

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3.1.4 Configure and Change Management
After finishing the Unit testing of the testing phase of the system, Configure and
change management phase will start.
The purpose of this phase should be fixing errors when the new system is
integrated with the prevailing system. When it encounters a error, the three sub systems
should be checked and tested again with the current system. After recognizing the
problem it should be fixed in a way so that the relevant problem has a rare chance of
occurring again.
Introducing user manuals and new technical knowledge is done at this stage. Risk
Management should be done while introducing the new system.

3.1.5 Documentation
Documentation will be started when the Implementation phase starts. It will be
continued until the project is submitted. It’s the only document that connects the users to
the new system. All the technical knowledge and the full functionality of the system
should be included in the documentation. So the users will be able to be familiar with the
System.

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3.2 Project Plan
3.2.1 Work Plan

Task Start Date End Date

Requirement Gathering 04/07/2009 19/07/2009

Project Proposal Presentation 20/07/2009 24/07/2009

Analysis 20/07/2009 29/07/2009

Estimation 20/07/2009 28/07/2009
Job manager 20/07/2009 29/07/2009
Inventory Manager 22/07/2009 29/07/2009

Submission of SRS 30/07/2009 07/08/2009

Design 30/07/2009 21/07/2009

Estimation 30/07/2009 15/08/2009
Job manager 02/08/2009 21/08/2009
Inventory Manager 03/08/2009 16/08/2009

Prototype Presentation 22/08/2009 28/08/2009

Implementation 22/08/2009 04/09/2009

Estimation 22/08/2009 30/08/2009
Job manager 25/08/2009 04/09/2009
Inventory Manager 25/08/2009 01/09/2009

Testing 22/08/2009 24/09/2009

Estimation 22/08/2009 10/09/2009
Job manager 25/08/2009 24/09/2009
Inventory Manager 25/08/2009 22/09/2009

Documentation 04/09/2009 28/09/2009

Submission of Final Project and 29/09/2009 04/10/2009
Final Presentation

Table 3.2.1

3.2.2 Grannt Chart

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4. Personnel and Facilities

All the members of this group are categorized into small groups inside the main
group according to their skills and abilities. The work is divided into following sections

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according to the skill levels of the members, and each of them is assigned to a particular
section.

Calculating estimation, Generate rejected estimate report, Generate quotation letter,

Generate job bag

Changing job state, View dash board, Print job state report, Print new job slips

Searching (by name, by state category), Print job details, Update inventory,
Print inventory report, Stock minimum level alert

Create perches order, Create requisition

5. Hardware and Software Requirements

Software Requirements to run the system completely and for Implementation

a) Windows XP Operating System

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 b) MySQL 5.1
c) MS Office 2007 Including MS Visio 2007
d) NetBeans IDE 6.5.1
e) JDK 6.0
f) Adobe Reader 9
g) Adobe Photoshop CS3
h) Notepad
i) Adobe Flash
j) iReport 2.0.4

Hardware Requirements to run the system completely and for Implementation

a) Pentium IV 3GHz IBM/Compaq/Dell server machines

b) 56X DVD ROM
c) 1024*768 (32-bit) SVGA Display (Medium Resolution)
d) PS2/USB Keyboard
e) PS2/USB Scroll Mouse
f) 160 GB SCSI HDD
g) 1GB DDR2 RAM
h) Printer

Points to Ponder:
The system will be completely compatible for operation once the above system
requirements are satisfied. For greater performance and stability of the servers and the
application, we will use 4GB DDR2 RAM and a have a higher space hard disk drive
dedicated for Virtual Memory.
The software is completely compatible with the in-built video drivers provided by the
Operating System mentioned and any issues with the video card or other peripherals
(such as the printer) will not be tended to by the software manufacturers.

6. Budget

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 Description Amount (Rs.) Total Amount (Rs.)
01 Hardware Cost
1 GB Flash drive 1000.00 1000.00

02 Traveling Charges
Per Week 500.00
4 Week 2000.00
4 Months 8000.00 10500.00

03 Communicational Charges
USB Broadband ADSL Dongle 5000.00
Monthly fee for 4 months (Rs. 1900 per month) 7600.00 12600.00

04 Stationary Charges
Photocopy(pages) 500.00
Scanning(pages) 250.00
Printouts(pages) 2000.00 2750.00

05 Other Charges 2000.00 2000.00

Total Project Cost Estimate 28850.00

Assumption,
All the software are freely available for the implementation of the System.

7. References

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7.1 E –Books
Head First Java, Kathy Sierra and Bert Bates February 2005 Second Edition
O’Reilly Media Inc

Head First MySQL, Lynn Beighley, August 2007 First Edition, O’Reilly Media Inc

MySQL Bible, Steve Suehring, Wiley Publishing Inc

Head First Software Development, Dan Pilone and Russ Miles

December 2007, First Edition, O’Reilly Media Inc

Head First Object-Oriented Analysis and Design

Brett D.McLaughlin, Gary Pollice and David West, November 2006 First Edition
O’Reilly Media Inc

Head First Java, Kathy Sierra and Bert Bates February 2005 Second Edition
O’Reilly Media Inc

Hibernate in Action, Christian Bauer Gavin King 2005, Manning Publications Co.

Hibernate Quickly, Patrick Peak Nick Heudecker 2006, Manning Publications Co.

iReports Configuration Writing Reports for Centric

Ananth Balasubramanyam, Jones and Bartlett Publishers Inc

Java and Software Design, Nell Dale, Chin Weems & Mark Headington

Print Order Processing, Hugh M. Speirs, BPIF

Print Estimators - The Hand Book, Hugh M. Speirs, BPIF

Sams Teach Yourself UML in 24 Hours

Joseph Schmuller, Third edition Jones and Bartlett Publishers Inc

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7.2 Web Sites

Netbeans Available at: http://www.netbeans.org

MySQL Available at: http://www.mysql.org

iReport Available at: http://www.jasperforge.org/sf/projects/ireport

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8. Appendices

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