2024
OVERVIEW
It is the custom management system of a company that produces doors and windows. It follows an order throughout its entire life: from the moment a customer requests a quote on the website, to the calculation of how much that order cost and yielded.
The core part is production planning. The system knows how many minutes of processing each order requires, how many department hours are available each day, which materials must arrive from suppliers and how far in advance: from this data, it automatically calculates when each processing phase can be carried out, and in what order.
Around this core, the system also covers the collection of quotes from the public website, orders to suppliers, the final reporting of operators' work, quality documentation, a shared document area with a smartphone app, and an online store for professional customers.
It is not an adapted standard product: it is built around the specific processes of this company, and connects directly to the machinery and systems that the company already uses.
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The complete picture: orders, production planning, turnover by customer and by agent, comparison between estimated and actual times.
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A tool that automatically calculates the dates for each phase, taking into account department capacities, holidays, public holidays, and supplier delivery times.
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A paperless screen to declare what they worked on and which parts they completed.
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The list of what still needs to be ordered, the documents to send to suppliers, and the status of each order.
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A personal page, accessible via a private link without having to register, where they can update the status of their orders and the arrival date
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Your orders, assigned quotes, and commission calculations
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Guided public form in three steps, configurable by the company: product lines, options, window and door types, and measurement constraints are managed without touching the software.
Orders enter automatically from the management systems already in use in the company, in three different formats, instead of being re-entered by hand.
It distinguishes between phases outsourced to external suppliers — where delivery time matters — and phases carried out internally, where the capacity of the departments, measured in available minutes, matters.
The system deduces on its own which materials are needed for an order and which orders have not yet been placed. Where a regular supplier exists, the order is created automatically.
The system compares the actual time spent with the estimated time, and also handles the case of an operator working on two processes simultaneously, dividing the time between the two.
Every arrival of material and every hour of work generate a progress line valued in euros, according to rules that can be set for each type of material.
Agent performance, with the hierarchy of area managers and the calculation of bracketed commissions: a certain discount level corresponds to a certain percentage. In addition to the overview, there is a month-by-month detail for each individual agent.
Recording of quality controls and generation of CE marking documentation, the mandatory conformity certification for windows and doors. Which controls appear in the certificate is decided from the control registry, without any technical interventions on the document template.
iPhone and Android app for customers to view documents and the status of their orders, with push notifications.
Shared document folders, each visible only to those who have been authorized.
Catalog with categories, product variants and stock availability, shopping cart, orders and shipping address management. It has its own interface, separate from the rest of the system.
A program installed on the automatic processing line computer reads its production log and transmits it to the system, associating it with the correct work order.
COMPOSITION
The system is a single central application, hosted on a server, which everyone accesses via browser or app. There are no installations on users' computers, with two deliberate exceptions: the program that reads the machine log and the device in the workshop, which must necessarily be located where the hardware is.
The seven areas of the system — quotes, planning, document area, online shop, supplier portal, user administration, workshop services — share the same database and the same master data. Each can be turned on or off independently, allowing the same software to serve installations with different functionalities.
Much of the behavior is not hardcoded into the software but configured by the company: which columns appear in supplier documents, how each material is economically valued, how often reminders are sent, which analyses are produced. This makes the system adaptable without technical interventions.
STACK
The central part
Built with Python and Django, a mature and highly popular technology for management applications.
Web interfaces
The data archive
With PostgreSQL, one of the most robust open-source databases, with the PostGIS geographic extension.
The publication
It takes place via Docker containers, a technology that packages the application with everything it needs to run, making installation on a new server predictable.
PDF documents
They are generated by the system itself; files (attachments, photos, shared documents) are stored in a cloud space.
Error monitoring
Switch to Sentry, a service that automatically collects and reports malfunctions.
