Provided the technical team to upgrade a national food services manufacturer’s manufacturing and financial ERP applications to the latest vendor releases. This allowed our client to use the new features added as well as expanded database capacity provided by the upgrade.

Integrated the warehouse management systems for a pharmaceutical distributor acquired competitor to meet management’s expectation of eliminating the acquired companies inventory systems with 90 days of purchase date.

Provided the technical team to modify the warehousing module of a 3rd party software vendor to allow multiple warehouses to be on the same shipment. This increased the efficiency of the local distribution center operation.

Implemented an automated order processing solution for a fluid systems manufacturer that reduced order processing from 30 minutes to less than a minute per order and eliminated human errors.

Provided the technical expertise to integrate an existing warehouse module with 3rd party warehouse management hardware and software used to palletize and label production as it comes off of the production floor.

Facilitated upgrade and multiple customizations to a clinical management system application for regional Children’s hospital.

Provided the technical expertise to design and develop several data entry processes that improved efficiency and reduced errors. These included:  A Transaction Processing system to provide a more efficient method to enter manufacturing production receipts and adjustments.  A Production schedule maintenance features that allowed deletion of an entire schedule in one operation as well as adjustment of a parent items expected production quantity and reallocation of all lower level components in one operation.  Interactive picking of raw materials as well as stock movement transactions. This reduced paperwork and improved operator efficiency.

Provided technical expertise to large logistics provider. Helped architect a technical solution to allow them to reengineer their customer service and operation workflow. Managed the technical team and as well as providing resources to the project. This team designed, developed and implemented the solution that had been architected to support the reorganization.

Designed and developed a Dashboard application to display a variety of metrics. Managers can now see issues at a glance via a point and click user interface. Business users can drill into the information directly into a customer’s order for problem determination and issue resolution. 

Provided technical expertise to a large logistics provider to reengineer processing of EDI 410 Rail Carrier Freight Details and Invoices. The refined process allowed more flexibility and was easily maintained and adjusted as new trading partners were added.

Provided technical expertise to a large logistics provider to modernize an external facing Vendor Management application. Created an extranet application that allowed vendors to securely log in, enter invoices and review payment status. This reduced customer service efforts and eliminated receipt of a mailed invoice from smaller vendors that were not EDI capable.

A multi-billion dollar distributor was facing a crisis. A few of its customers, using unscrupulous ordering practices, had been able to obtain quantities of government-restricted product for sale on illegal websites. The regulatory agency reacted by banning the shipment of any of these products from several of the distributors’ regional warehouses, and was considering doing the same at others. To satisfy the regulatory agency, a method for identifying and halting these nefarious orders – without disrupting the flow of product to legitimate customers – needed to be designed, built, and implemented in an impossibly short time. While our customer organized a new department to analyze and quantify the regulatory requirements, a small, highly skilled technical team was assembled, with Affiliated providing key members. The System i based fulfillment system was the obvious place to stop these questionable orders. Multiple channels processing nearly half a billion dollars worth of goods per day had to be monitored and secured. Compounding the situation was the necessity correct ill-considered alterations originally made in an attempt to “band-aid” the problem. Working intensely over the course of several weeks (with often fluid requirements), a functional solution was created. Initially tested at a single distribution facility, the system was quickly placed into production. Almost immediately, the flow of product that could have found its way to illegitimate distribution sites was stopped. The new regulatory-compliance department could now evaluate the orders, identifying and reporting the questionable ones, and ensuring the uninterrupted flow of critical product to its customers.

After several widely reported incidents, public attention had been focused on the potential of product tampering in a critical supply chain. Requirements were proposed by several state governments, which would require companies to track certain products from manufacturer to retailer. In order to continue doing business in these states, a large, nationally-known distributor needed to comply with the pending legislation.

The scope and timeline of the proposed laws, along with the nature of the distributor’s business made for an intimidating mission. Software up to the task of tracking product in the necessary detail did not exist - anywhere. Tight integration across widely differing applications (both on and off the System i platform) would be necessary to make the system work. With the clock ticking, a large team composed mainly of outside contractors from several companies was assembled to accomplish the massive undertaking.

Inventory-tracking and order-fulfillment systems became focal points of the System i technical efforts. Updating procedurally-based applications to operate effectively with a bleeding-edge SOA-based system was critical to the project’s success. The Affiliated System i specialists were instrumental in making the applications perform seamlessly together.

Despite legislation that was in constant flux, and product-tracking software that was constantly evolving, the Affiliated team members delivered. The updated systems interfaced product movement transactions through the distribution facilities, ensuring that the distributor was in compliance with current and pending state laws.

Affiliated provided critical System i technical knowledge, in-depth business applications experience, and the ability to work effectively with personnel from within and outside the company during the entire year and a half long project. 

A multi-billion dollar central-Ohio based drug distributor needed to replace a heavily modified and completely in-house supported replenishment-planning system with a modern, vendor supported solution. A large, heterogeneous team of employees and outside contractors (from multiple vendors) was assembled to accomplish this massive task. Over twenty-five separate business-system interfaces had to be analyzed, constructed, tested and implemented. Application configuration choices were made, verified, and executed. Affiliated was instrumental in the creation and deployment of the applications security scheme. (The methodology was later used as the basis for all of the customer’s System i application security, and was in fact deployed by Affiliated.) Throughout the course of the sixteen-month project, Affiliated provided extensive System i technical expertise, in-depth business applications knowledge, and the ability to work seamlessly with widely varied personnel from all levels of the business. Following the successful implementation of the new system, Affiliated personnel were kept on to provide on-going production support, and to create “bolt-on” solutions to extend the functionality of the new system.

A nationally known sporting-goods distributor wanted to provide their smaller customers access to the power of its streamlined order fulfillment application by using web-based storefronts. A west-coast based provider that specialized in just this kind of work was selected. But, while the provider was adept with Linux-based solutions, they had no experience working with large companies using System i based enterprise systems. Additionally, the in-house staff had limited experience with modern, internet-based e-commerce solutions.

The requirements were daunting – technical, pricing, inventory and image information for tens of thousands of items (from across widely varied platforms) needed to be quickly and efficiently transferred to the storefront’s systems. Customer orders being fed back from customers needed to be rapidly validated and accurately integrated into the customer’s order fulfillment system for same-day picking and shipping.

The two-person Affiliated team provided the customer with the needed business depth and technical breadth to successfully tackle the project.

Experience with multiple platforms allowed product information from the System i database to be seamlessly matched with Macintosh-based images, then transferred to the Linux-based servers. Solutions to upload on-hand information to the storefronts on a regular basis throughout the day were created, minimizing backorders and maximizing customer satisfaction. Customer orders were cleanly processes through existing interfaces, updated to cope with e-commerce realities.

Using proven methodologies and modern techniques, a flexible, maintainable application was created to support the companies expanded business needs. 

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