Surfboard Manufacturing Supply Chain Management

This B2B application links surfboard manufacturers with their dealers and suppliers for an on-line order-entry, tracking and notification system, using emails and optionally faxes. It's more complicated than you might think. Fun project.

In essence, the SurfServ application is a web-based subscription service that allows retailers offering surfing goods to electronically communicate orders to various manufacturers, with the initial focus on surfboards. Similarly, manufacturers can respond to the orders, exchange information with the retailers, and track their in-house activities related to an order. Notification of manufacturers by dealers, or dealers by manufacturers, can be by email or fax, with certain notifications done automatically when a change in order status occurs.

SurfServ Inc. not only administers this service, but among other things can can aggregate these transactions, to track trends, spot new movements, and monitor the effectiveness of a subscriber's advertising or promotional campaign.

Subscribing dealers have a special web page, called the WorkSheet, which is their "production" order-entry method. Even "stock" surfboards are made to order, with a wide variety of options, configurations, finishes, etc.

More importantly, the various dimensions that describe any surfboard are inter-dependent, requiring mathematical calculations based on a hierarchy within previously chosen values.

There are about twenty of these inter-dependent dimensions, and each type and model of surfboard usually has its own set of formulas by which these are derived, particularly with manufacturers who have proprietary surfboard offerings.

To eliminate round trips to the web server each time a different board type or ancestor dimension is chosen, the required hierarchy is dynamically constructed from the database. This allows the cascading calculations at the web browser, with each calculation sequence repopulating the dependent dimension choices in drop down boxes in the page.

Customer Online Personalization At The Point Of Purchase

An eCommerce site for high schoolers, where they can buy school themed garments and customize them in various ways, such as icon and ledgend selections. Adobe's Flex is used for the category and item selectors that are chosen by the customers, as well as the item customizer which the customer uses to personalize the gargment they've chosen. All of the Flex components within this item customizer are dynamically configured on the fly, when the customer chooses a garment.

Adapted to a .NET based eCommerce system, where the item customizer generates a part number/SKU based on the customization selections, with orders electronically sent to manufacturers’ using web services, with order tracking included and status notification.

The Flex item customizer is based on Adobe’s Scene7 service, which provides the customized garment to as a dynamically generated image url.

 

A New Revenue Source With Branded Web Conferencing

The customer, a private university, wanted to offer recorded courses and meetings, but did not have the resources to manage and maintain the backend infrastructure. They also wanted to control the look and feel of the web conferencing system, as well as manage it directly.

Done by using Adobe's AdobeConnectPro web services engine through its published Web APIs. The customer's main page has a dynamically configured Flex slide show component, with event registration surfaced in the public side (e.g., upcoming events and the searchable media gallery), and event management done on the private side.

The AdobeConnectPro interface was extended for Flash/Flex projects with a downloadable ActionScript3 SWC along with a demo Flex project. We also have .NET and Delphi DCU versions for the Web API which is part of our Lego®-like software library that we can include in other development projects on a non exclusive basis.

 

Capabilities, Tools, Techniques And Expertise

The adage the right tool for the right job is even more important when selecting a tool set for a software-based product or application. These tools are continually evolving, and we keep close watch on the various offerings, their strengths and limitations, and the subtle nuances.

Today, all viable tool sets are "visual" in the sense that an Integrated Development Environment of some kind is incorporated. Of course, there are some exceptions, like using C (or even, occasionally, Assembler) for a small hand-held product or information appliance. For custom projects we use the tools used by the customer to maintain continuity with their existing code base and investment in intellectual property. Typically, there is a broader range of disparate technologies that keep any business’ back office running, particularly when the WWW is involved.

Increasingly, new and original development is done with one (or more) of these core tools.

• ActionScript3 The programming language that Adobe’s Flash and Flex use to create and deliver rich internet applications over the WWW. It powers the engine and provides the processing glue for all third party tools that use Flash to deliver content and functionality.
• Camtasia Studio Perhaps the absolute best of the video generators, editors and formatters for developing video content. Particularly well suited for quick and focused training videos
• Delphi The premier development tool for Windows desktop and laptop applications as well as web services. We use it exclusively for our own Windows-based products because of its high productivity in rapid applications development, bar none
• Flash Increasingly, systems we develop for the WWW are based on this ubiquitous engine, which is installed on more than 98% of all personal computers regardless of operating system
• Flex Roughly comparable to what Delphi does for Flash, a premier productivity tool that makes rapid applications development for the WWW possible. Among other things, eliminates irritating web browser compatibility problems
• Java Some customers use this programming language for server side processing
• .NET Umbrella term for Windows based program development, generally favored by corporate America. Includes a design tool (Visual Studio) and a choice of programming language (C# or VisualBasic)
• PaperVision3D An open source library used to build three dimensional presentations for Flash

The Toolshed

Today’s heterogeneous information infrastructures need a variety of tools that have specialized places in integrated systems. There’s nothing particularly remarkable about any of them, but they are all necessary.

• ASP (Classic) Many companies prefer to stay with this proven web script tool because of its simplicity and low encumbered overhead
• ASP.NET Web development umbrella generally favored by corporate America
• Crystal Reports For developing reports in a variety of formats and delivery methods
• HTML For basic web page scripting
• Javascript Provides a level of interaction and responsiveness to otherwise static html web pages
• Palm PocketStudio For developing Palm applications
• PHP A popular web scripting tool where ongoing maintenance is not too important
• PL/SQL Oracle’s native database development tool
• T-SQL SQLServer’s native database development tool
• VBA Visual Basic for Applications, extending all the components of MS Office
• Visio For graphical design documentation

Databases

Sooner or later, any application has to remember something, done with one of any number of database products. FutureWare provides database designs for table layout, normalization, data definition language, stored procedures, triggers, history audits & traces for the following database products.

• Advantage
• MS Access
• MS SQL
• MySQL
• Oracle
• Pervasive.SQL

Overall Domain Expertise Summary

• Architectural Design, Development
• Application Software Provider
• Back Office Processing
• Business Objects
• Client/Server
• Compliance Monitoring
• Components and VCL extensions
• Database design & development
• Development FrameWorks
• Enterprise Workflow Management
• Palm PDA Applications
• PocketPC Applications
• Process Integration
• Recurring Revenue Systems
• Search Engine Optimization
• Service Oriented Architecture
• Webservices

Rich Internet Applications

Rich Internet Applications can make web browser based systems far more responsive and interactive, with side benefits that run the gamut, from not having to worry about browser differences and incompatibilities, to faster initial development and easier to maintain, both resulting in lower operating costs.

We are a premier maker of interactive web components, using Adobe’s Flex customer facing front ends, pure ActionScript for highly interactive and ultra lightweight web widgets. Increasingly, these are being dynamically configured from a backend database that allows for rapid changes to exploit market opportunities as they arise, without the expense and time of traditional coding development.

Our latest turnkey Rich Internet Application is a web widget subscription service, allowing individuals, small companies, mid to large company departments and traditional IT staffs to make their web sites more interactive, intuitive and interesting to their site visitors, which encourages them to stay longer and look at the site’s products or services being offered.