This is a selection of projects that have been completed. We engage at different levels depending on the business requirement and the role often changes during the course of the project. Typically this could start as a business consultant formulating the business case for a project; this could later morph into being a team leader role involved in a specific aspect of the project or into a leadership position coordinating a multinational project. These projects demonstrate the wide range of services that we engage in. They are written for the reader with limited technical exposure. Knowledge is specific to industries but the skills are widely transferable across industries. For convenience the projects are ordered under these headings:
Medical and Pharmaceutical
Banking
Oil Refining and Petrochemicals
Publishing – Advertising – Packaging
Manufacturing
Retail
Mining
Food
Miscellaneous
Medical and Pharmaceutical
Current Project
Business: Medical Practice and Surgeon
Task 1: Attach videos clips and photos to each patient case showing before and after images of surgery. This application must use the GDT (Gerätedatentransfer) industry standard interface.
Status: Analysis of the IT landscape. Study the GDT specification. Write a browser based application prototype using agile development methodology.
Technical Environment: Springboot, JPA, SQL database, Thymeleaf, Bootstrap, Git, JSON
Project 1
Business: Swiss pharmaceutical giant manufacturing company with factories worldwide. This company manufactured one of the Covid 19 vaccines.
Task 1: Manage the IT/OT infrastructure part of the project. This included the installation and commissioning of the Nutanix internal cloud. The main project was to build a new automated factory for filling vials, with accompanying offices, laboratories, central utilities and Automated warehouse. A very large number of third parties and stakeholders were involved.
Task 2: Learn good manufacturing practice in a pharma environment. I participated in over 100 training sessions. These included site safety for contractors.
Task 3: Participate and advise on global project management infrastructure.
Result: The IT/OT infrastructure was designed, including wifi access points, server rooms built and outfitted. WLAN pilots went live and Nutanix internal cloud was installed and commissioned. Disaster recovery redundancy was planned.
Project 2
Business: International medical surgical interventions manufacturing company with factories in 3 countries and worldwide umbrella companies.
Task 1: Create a European Logistics Centre from scratch in Belgium, pooling the best expertise from the separate businesses.
Task 1a: Procure and implement the mainframe computer system and network to support the new operation.
Task 1b: Create a central database of all products, raw materials and part finished goods held in the 3 factory locations. Configure the system to simultaneously use multiple national languages for purchase and sales order generation.
Task 1c: Design a standard interface to receive regular updates to the stock in each factory. Coordinate with the individual factory project teams.
Task 1d: Assist business team leaders to document and implement the new business processes. The main areas covered were logistics; central purchasing; sales to umbrella companies; corporate finance.
Task 1e: Coordinate testing and go-live of the entire system with numerous international parties.
Result: The project went live within 6 months and was considered group wide to be a showcase project. Centralised purchasing realised huge cost saving benefits. Group financial control gave performance visibility over all three factories. The overall project management was done using GDPM methodology. Where possible, we have used it on all other occasions to manage other significant projects.
Project 3
Business: International Medical Devices Manufacturer
Task 1: Evaluate and update software development status for a team of 20 internal and external programmers.
Task 2: Document the processes and create testing plans at the various remote parts of the business, Orthopaedics; R&D; Manufacturing.
Task 3: Develop an annual-monthly revolving production scheduler showing current month first.
Result: Towards the end of the year long project it was discovered that the development team had not been maintaining the status database. We were tasked with resolving this, a listing of the projects was made. Programmers were consulted about the status of their projects and the database was aligned. Missing and incomplete development tasks were identified. The development status was resolved. After detailed analysis with the production schedulers the complicated scheduling report was recreated on the new ERP system.
Banking
Project 1
Business: A Swiss domestic lending and credit card bank that had been formed from a larger international bank. The bank was using servers in Australia to run it’s business on an old banking system that had not been upgraded in a very long time. The bank was under time pressure to move to it’s own IT system. Not achieving this within six months would mean financial penalties.
Task: Manage testing.
Result: A large number of parties were involved in the project. There were approximately 100 people involved in the project. About 50% were offshore in India. 20% were from the Indian companies but temporarily stationed in Switzerland. 25% were from the bank and the others were from consulting companies and Infrastructure organisations eg Swisscom. The Software was upgraded and tested offshore and then by the banks employees. A live trial was made with Mastercard transactions. The system went live on time.
Project 2
Business: A large Hungarian domestic retail, trade and lending bank with 30 branches.
Task 1: Create a secure national computer network with local systems for banking transactions. Roll this system out to the 30 branch offices. Some remote branches did not have land lines. These were implemented using satellite links.
Task 2: Develop an application for clearing transactions to the National bank of Hungary.
Task 3: Develop an inhouse Amex Clearing system.
Task 4: Evaluate a banking application system.
Task 5: Develop a system for signature look up available real time over the network.
Task 6: Design; implement and test a disaster recovery system suitable for 10 banks.
Task 7: Work with a third party to interface an automated telephone banking system to the main banking system.
Result: A clear statement of objectives was given by the top level of management. There were very limited funds available to the project. There was time pressure on the implementation of a national bank clearing system. Missing the deadline would have incurred severe financial penalties for the bank. The bank allocated one programmer and various technical and business staff to the project. The project reused obsolete hardware as local servers with a special operating system. These servers did not need to be logged in to. The hardware was too slow for a technician to log into using the special operating system, so the systems were installed and configured on a fast computer and then the discs were returned to the old slow system. Performance was excellent and what should have been an expensive project cost almost nothing. The Amex project required considerable business analysis working with the bank’s business personnel. All these projects were completed efficiently.
Project 3
Business: The largest retail bank in Hungary
Task 1: Manage the migration of the banks data into a new retail banking system.
Result 1: A small team of 4 bank employees matched the legacy data to the fields in the banking system. Because there wasn’t any spare resource from the external implementation team, 3 programmers were recruited from within the bank and received a week’s bespoke training in the new programming language. They were already experts in the banks legacy data and systems. They were very efficient at creating the migration interfaces and developing the reports.
Task 2: Find a strategy to computerise the paper records.
Result 2: Customer application forms containing important identification data such as maiden names and date of birth were not recorded digitally in the legacy systems. A small application was written and loaded with customer data from the legacy systems. Two teams of students were recruited to key the missing data into the highlighted fields. The data from both teams was then compared by a programme and mismatches were identified and corrected. Data was then loaded into the new banking system.
Task 3: Work with 4 pilot branches to develop a rollout and training plan for the other 80 branches.
Result 3: This proved to be a much easier task than anticipated. All the branches were run by very experienced; long serving employees who were extremely keen to be trained and receive their new computers.
Project 4
Business: Czech Commercial Bank
Task: A new “letter of credit” database was set up. Letters need to be created with standard paragraphs drawing data from the database. The 10 most senior people in the department had been selected to be trained, none of who spoke English. The instructor did not speak Czech.
Result: A large unused room with tables and chairs was allocated for the training. The room was cleaned and desks were place in a semicircular line around the instructor, computers were installed. The text management system was command driven. A list of commands was issued with space for notes at the side of each command. The instructor demonstrated each command and the students then performed the same actions on their computers. The students computers were set to keyboard click. This makes a loud clicking noise when the student is typing. If the instructor heard clicking during the presentation, they would stop the presentation. This amused the students. Because the instructor did not speak Czech, it was important that the students observed everything that the instructor did, and made their own notes in Czech. The students learned quickly and the training was successful.
Oil Refining and Petrochemicals
Project 1
Business: International oil terminals business.
Task: Implement workflow in an ERP system for inventory management and also contact management.
Result: Workflow knowledge was a rare skill. It was necessary to attend 2 programming courses and a workflow course so as to gain the knowledge to be able to implement the workflow. These were self-funded in return for a guaranteed minimum project duration. The workflow was implemented and tested.
Project 2
Business: Oil extraction joint venture
Task: Assess the advantages and cost of implementing workflow for inventory management between shore based warehouse and oil platform in the Caspian Sea.
Result: Analysis showed that there were advantages over the current system.
Project 3
Business: European oil refining giant
Task 1: Take over as the system administrator of the ageing ERP system
Task 1a: The hardware was very old and there was no spare capacity for a testing environment.
Result 1a: 2 new systems were sized and purchased, a main production system and a second machine for development and testing.
Task 1b: Stabilise the ERP System. The ERP system had been highly customised and used hard coding. The software system had not been upgraded in many years. The system was very unstable and crashed several times a week. Technical staff had to fix the data many times a week. Technical staff had be logged onto the system early in the morning before the petrol and diesel tanker drivers arrived to start their daily collection and delivery. Technical staff had to open financial accounts for the accounting departments. The accountants had access to manipulate the production data directly. This is a very major risk. The addition of new crude oil products required programming from the technical staff.
Result 1b: Access was given for the senior accountants to open their own financial account. The data manipulation access rights were removed from the accountants. Two contractors were recruited; a programmer and an expert in the ERP finance modules. The hard coding was eliminated from the ERP system, this allows safe development and testing environments to be set up. An application was written so that business staff could add new crude oil products to the system. Many bugs were removed from the ERP customisations. Mistakes in the financial data were identified and corrected. The result was a stable system and technical staff did not have to be on station early every morning. The ERP system was upgraded and tested by the business. Before this could be done, detailed test plans had to be formulated. This involved documenting the business processes and training the business users in test planning and execution. This is a very short description of the work undertaken. This work also reduced the operation costs by millions of USD per year.
Publishing – Advertising – Packaging
Project 1
Business: Large international magazine publishing house.
Task: An ERP system was being implemented by a team of external consultants and internal key users. Approximately 50 people were directly involved. The project had missed 2 deadlines. There were 2 months left to go before the next proposed go-live date. Top management needed an independent assessment of the viability of the project team to meet this final deadline.
Result: All the team leaders and technical consultant were interviewed. Charts were drawn up showing key milestones and inter-departmental and resource dependencies. These charts showed that the project team had made proper provision for testing and correction. A meeting of the project team and top management was called. The charts were discussed and confirmed as accurate. The new deadline was achievable and was achieved.
Project 2
Business: International Packaging Company
Main Task: Upgrade an ERP system.
Task 1: Fix corrupted financial data in the database.
Task 2: Train 10 strong programming team in SQL (System Query Language).
Task 3: Install ERP system in Spanish subsidiary, configure and give training.
Result: The ERP system was upgraded and the subsidiary was installed. The systems were tested by the business and then went live. The training was hands on and each programmer gained a good working knowledge of SQL.
Manufacturing
Project 1
Business: Manufacturing company specialized in famous household brands for cleaning, health and nutrition.
Main Task: The company had just split into 2 halves. A cosmetics business and a household cleaning products business were formed. It was necessary to configure from scratch an ERP system for the global household cleaning products company. The head office team consisted of 5 subject leaders, experts in their own fields. They were a project manager and finance lead; manufacturing and procurement lead; sales lead; technical lead; general administration/documentation assistant. Each subject leader was supported part-time by ERP specialists in that field. Local teams in USA, Italy, France and German complemented the head office team.
Task 1: Split the companies’ database.
Result 1: This was achieved within an hour. The database was copied. One of the companies’ addresses; products; raw materials; purchasing transactions and sales transactions and all other significant data were deleted using SQL from one copy and the opposite data for the other company from the other copy.
Task 2: Create a coding system for libraries and directories. Create coding for the standing data that would support a group of up to 100 companies. Each subject leader was tasked with forming opinion groups with the pilot companies and communicating with the wider group to establish the coding in their own area. Each local company would run its own ERP system using the coding controlled by head office. This meant that all data could be consolidated. The documentation assistant consolidated all the standards and procedures into an operating manual.
Result 2: The coding was agreed by the business. The libraries were installed at the local companies. Standing data was transferred into the local libraries. The documentation assistant consolidated all the standards and procedures in an operating manual. Once the data was integrated the subject leaders trained the local leaders in the use of the system. One of the main benefits of this system was group financial control and product naming. The ERP system had been configured with 2 charts of accounts capability. The first for corporate financial reporting and the second to meet local legal reporting requirements.
Task 3: Bespoke reports were needed for corporate reporting. Cost of goods sold was calculated differently from the way of the ERP system.
Result 3: After analysis, the reports were developed. A bespoke program was developed for cost of goods sold.
Task 4: The system had to be rolled out to all the other locations.
Result 4: A technician was trained to roll the system out. Because of the coding this was very easy. A trainer was recruited and trained on the documentation and use of the ERP system. Roll out took one year.
Task 5: Design and cost an IP network for the entire group.
Result 5: Standard naming was adopted throughout the entire group. A single technician could maintain the network for the entire corporation. This gave massive cost saving benefits.
Retail
Mining
Food Manufacturing and Retailing
Miscellaneous
Project 1
Business: A radio advertising agency for 25 independent radio stations
Task 1: Automate a self-billing invoicing application.
Result 1: This process took data directly from the mainframe and processed it into invoices. This had previously been a 5-day manual task with 9 people working on it. The process was reduced to 30 minutes and required only one person to do it. The main benefit was financial control, the manual process had been susceptible to user error resulting in over or underpayment to the radio stations.
Task 2: Design and build an application to consolidate and format demographics data.
Result 2: An application was created to hold radio listening data. This data showed the typical audience listening to a radio station at specific time bands of the day. This would be matched to adverts running in those time bands. Advertisement is sold by the number of target audience that the advertiser wishes to reached. An advertiser might want to reach 10,000 homeworkers with a particular product. The application allowed the salesperson to negotiate a price for that quantity of hits.