Recently I helped one of our manufacturing clients improve their new product setup process. Prior to using CNG they created a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet and emailed it around the office for input from the various departments. After doing that and getting it back to the originator, data was rekeyed into their MRP (Materials Resource Planning) system. Obviously, this could be quite error-prone as data was rekeyed and had the possibility of being overwritten. They contacted us about helping streamline the process by possibly using CNG-Forms to capture the data and having it be transferred from the resulting SQL database to their MRP database. After evaluating the data in the spreadsheet and trying out a CNG-Form, it was determined this was not a satisfactory solution due to the nature of the data (the quantity of data was variable per product setup). Instead, we helped the client re-do the Excel spreadsheet and then added a small amount of software as a macro which exported the data from the spreadsheet to the MRP system. This spreadsheet was set-up as a document template, and a workflow rule was created to route it around the office as required. The last step was to send the spreadsheet to the MRP person who uses the macro to export the data to the MRP system.
This is a great example of using standard office tools to create a customized workflow and have the data exported to another software system. The process to do this was not overly technical, but it did require sitting down with the client and working through how their system worked.
