Case Study: APW Company

The Challenge

The APW Company, established in 1944, is a third-generation family owned Electromagnet manufacturer and coil-winding manufacturer.  APW is equipped to handle small to high volume product demands with an emphasis on quality work and personal service.

APW Company hired Sidian Consulting to build a customized intranet application to run their manufacturing business, from job specifications and builds to a quotation system for customized products.

The Solution

An intranet utilizing ColdFusion and SQL Server was built to integrate with Quickbooks Enterprise using the third-party driver from QODBC.  Some features of the system include:

• Custom image catalog with multi-threaded, multi-upload and post-upload image processing.
• Full audit logging of user activity and job specification changes.
• A user management system with granular permission settings per user account.
• A specifications management interface with information such as manufacturing tolerances, tooling, bill of materials, ISO-compliant production manual, product rates, and more.
• A custom quotation module to allow authorized staff to create quotations for companies based on custom product needs.  Quotations are automatically generated as PDF documents and emailed to the client through the system.

The Results

A truly one-stop application to allow the company to manage all day-to-day business processes, handle all job assets, track jobs in-progress, and create and handle customer quotations.