Custom Programming

Kilowatt Custom Systems specializes in custom programming. There are several areas where custom programming is essential.

 

• Accounts Receivable (A/R)

Custom Accounting
Every business can be defined by its A/R and every business survives or fails by its A/R. Accounts Receivable is probably the most important single process that a business owner or manager tracks. Except perhaps for retailers, most businesses have a unique way of generating, tracking, and billing. What customers are billed for, when customers are billed, and the terms and conditions of payment vary greatly from business to business even among competitors in the same market.

"Off the shelf" software just does not cut it.

Batch processing of billing and statements is another must for almost all businesses. Most, if not all customers will accept invoices and statements through email. Instead of printing a stack of paper invoices and sending them out in the mail, the system can generate the invoices directly in an email or as a pdf email attachment. Of course, more complex Business to Business (B2B) electronic communication can be setup using XML attachments which update your and/or your customer's database directly.

 

• Specialty Inventory including Assemblies and Sub-Assemblies

Custom Inventory Control
Most items that are manufactured, a car, a computer, an atomic bomb, or an aircraft carrier are composed of a multitude of parts and assemblies of parts. These assemblies are built from unit parts or raw materials. The unit parts or raw materials are purchased, stored, and used. Throughout the process of manufacture the raw materials and unit parts become assemblies and batches and pre-batches, etc. If you build three aircraft carriers and six destroyers you should be able to list all of the unit parts used by entering two sets of data fields - two ID#s and two quantities.

Each manufacturer usually has their own way of working with assemblies, batches, and other groupings that eventually break down to unit parts or raw materials. The unit parts and raw materials are what the vendors supply, is what you measure your inventory in, and what you write purchase orders for.

When you create your own custom inventory control system, you can do more than simple Min/Max reports. The system can even be programmed to generate to purchase orders, and with more and more vendors amenable to email, the system can even email the purchase orders directly to the vendor.

 

• Quality Control and Assurance

Custom QC & QA
The numbers of tests in just a single business type such as polymer chemistry is overwhelming. To attempt to store such data for in-house use with "off the shelf" software, let alone for customer quality assurance, is untenable. Different industries and different customers have very specialized requirements in these areas.

A vast majority of testing is done with equipment that has its own data storage capabilities. Different equipment from different manufacturers have different data output formats. Getting all of your instrumentation to output data to a centralized database is usually quite a project with a custom system and to do such without is unthinkable.

Often customers have rigid requirements for the products you make. Many customers require statistical quality analysis and end-product analysis per batch or lot. There are times when your quality analysis or assurances have even legal obligations beyond the commercial obligations. It is often necessary to store and be able to retrieve QC data by lot or batch years later. All of this enatails designing custom software and custom database systems.

 

• Manufacture Process Control and Tracking


The control of the manufacturing process and process tracking virtually requires specially customized software. This type of software is required by automotive manufacturers to publishers.

 

• Report Generation


The need for specialized and customized reports is self-evident. There are excellent tools available such as Crystal Reports yet these tools themselves often require special setup. Often it is best to programatically create a customer user interface which allows the user to define the parameters of a report or query in terms that are familiar to the user and pertinent to the business.

 

• Security and Encryption


So much data has to be safegaurded. Social Security numbers and other employee information, credit card numbers, chemical formulations, R&D projects and other patentable information - the list is bigger every day as are the dangers of it comprimise. This is also an area where mere technology is insufficient to address such issues.

Kilowatt Custom Software currently specializes in .Net programming, and specializes in .Net clients (Forms) linked to MySQL databases (ADO.Net).