Design And Implementation Of The ERP Information System For Minguang Coking Corporation

In recent years, the frequent alternation between seller's market and buyer's market has led to price fluctuation of coal & coke products, hence inconvenience in settlement and payment on the part of coal & coke enterprises. The enterprises tend to lack effective management in such phases as weighing, quality assessment and payment, contracts, and so forth. The data concerning contracts, weighing, quality assessment and payment are often out of line with those concerning purchase and inventory, which makes it hard to obtain a complete chain of accurate data. The lack in effective means of conducting risk management makes it hard to improve the work efficiency and control the fraudulent practices of the employees, hence the loss of the enterprise resources.Based on detailed needs analysis of Minguang Coking Corporation, the current study completes the framework design and detailed design of the ERP solution for its workflow. The solution consists of six modules, namely, contract management, loadometer weighing management, quality assessment & payment, purchase management, inventory management, and financial management. The former three modules cater for the needs particularly to the coal & coke industry and are the focus of this further development. Contract management focuses on detailed analysis and design of the types of and constraints on contracts, including their registration, submission, approval, cancellation, query, statistics, and so forth. The contract management exerts stricter control on the workflow, which starts from the initial phase (the contracts). Both amount and price are strictly defined in the contracts and the settlement process has now an explicit procedure to follow. The loadometer management module focuses on operations involving the weight notes, including loaded weighing, unloaded weighing, historical records of tare weights matched by corresponding plate numbers, screen shots of the monitoring system, and so forth. With such measures as the employment of monitoring system and control over the times of weighing, amelioration in the weighing process is achieved, hence more accurate weights obtained. The quality assessment & payment module consists of sampling, sample presentation, testing, and payment sub-modules, which cover functions involving sampling notes, test reports, payment notes, and their query. These enable the center of quality assessment and the financial department to conduct routine management and effective supervision of each deal. The solution suggests that a new role, namely the sample presenter, to the sampling & testing process in order to avoid any direct contact between the supplier and the analyst. This prevents the analyst from falsifying the test results. The solution also correlates purchase and inventory on the one hand and contracts on the other, so that data sharing is achieved throughout the whole workflow.The current study analyzes the state of affair in the quality assessment & payment of Minguang Coking Corporation, which is relatively understaffed compared with its big volume of business and centralized clients, and the development of information system both at home and abroad. On the basis of the analysis, the current study develops a C/S system which is fit for the corporation's needs. As the system is an extension of Inspur ERP PS9.0, the development tool adopted is the same as that for PS9.0, namely, Power Builder 9.0. Considering the relatively small size of business data and rare process concurrency, the database adopted is Microsoft sqlserv2005, which is compatible with its lower versions, sybase 11 (or lower), and Oracle 10 G (or lower). The ERP solution is now operating successfully in Minguang Coking Corporation and has effectively improved the work efficiency of its information management. The solution has also been adopted by more and more other coal & coking enterprises in Shanxi Province.