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AJS Profiles Case Study
AJS Profiles is a steel profiling and grinding company in Smethwick, in the West Midlands. It flame and plasma cuts steel plate to order, grinds it, and supplies finished parts to heavy engineering customers across the country. The business is run from a Microsoft Access production database that holds every customer, job and production stage. wildesoft.net connected that database to the shop floor and then put it on a faster, sturdier footing.
The Business Problem
The office could only find out where a job had got to by asking on the shop floor or waiting for paperwork to come back. Progress, plate numbers and out dates were written down and keyed in later, so the database was always a step behind the machines. Nobody could easily tell who had cut or ground a particular job.
The database itself was also struggling. Its data lived in a single Access file shared by five users, and as the business grew it became very slow, with every busy moment felt by the whole office.
The Solution
wildesoft.net built a shop floor app from scratch on modern .NET. Every job line in the production database now carries a QR code. A worker scans it with their phone, signs in with their own login, and sees that job straight away on a simple, phone-friendly page. They mark the stage they have just completed and add the plate number and out date, and the change goes straight back into the production database. There is no app to install.
At the office's request, the scan now also records who did the work. When a job is marked as cut or ground, the operator's name appears against that stage on the order details screen.
The app talks to the database through a separate, secured service that only accepts requests carrying a valid access token, so the database stays protected while the workers update it from anywhere on site. Logging, a health check and a one-step deployment script keep it dependable and easy to update.
Later, wildesoft.net moved the data out of the shared Access file and onto Microsoft SQL Server, reconnecting the familiar Access application to it as its back end. The office kept the screens and reports they knew, while the server took on the work of storing and finding data.
The Result
AJS Profiles now sees where every job is as the work happens, entered once by the person doing it, with the operator's name recorded automatically. The office no longer has to chase the shop floor for updates, and the production database is noticeably quicker for all five users and far better placed to grow with the business.
Get in touch if your office and shop floor are working from different pictures of the same job.
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