Case studies of custom Spire software

How Don McIntyre Consulting Ltd. builds custom modules when a stock Spire or Sage BusinessVision add-on is not enough. The study below is a production scheduling application for manufacturers.

Spire Systems · Custom module

Production scheduling

A manufacturer needed to shift many Spire production orders at once. Spire's Production module only lets you change one Expected Start Date at a time.

The problem

In Spire's Production module, only one production order's Expected Start Date can be changed at a time. A factory shutdown, machine repair, or other delay that affects many orders becomes a long, repetitive edit. Each extra click is another chance to key the wrong date.

What we built

The client asked for a way to change several production orders at the same time. Don McIntyre Consulting Ltd. built a Windows Production Scheduling application that lists Spire production orders, filters them, and applies date and phase changes in a batch.

What the application does

  • A graphical list of production orders you can view and change
  • Batch-move Expected Start Dates by plus or minus up to five days, or to a chosen date
  • Batch-move selected orders from one production phase to another
  • Un-schedule production orders in one step
  • Right-click a calendar date to see every production order expected that day
  • Primary filter by phase
  • Fine-tune the list by any production-order field
  • Admin users have full access; other users have read-only access
Production Scheduling Windows app showing a grid of Spire production orders, a phase filter, buttons to shift dates by one to five days, and a calendar of expected start dates
The Production Scheduling Windows app: a grid of Spire production orders, phase filter, date-shift buttons, and a calendar of expected start dates.

The result

The client now updates many production orders together instead of one record at a time.

Save time

Date and phase changes that used to be one order at a time are applied to a selected batch. A shutdown or repair no longer means walking the schedule line by line.

Reduce errors

Fewer manual edits means fewer mistyped dates. Admins make the change; everyone else can still read the schedule without changing it.

Other custom work

When a stock add-on is not enough, we build modules that fit the accounting software you already run. Typical requests look like the production scheduling problem: Spire or Sage BusinessVision only lets you edit one record at a time, and the shop needs a safe way to change many records together.

Browse the product catalog for the stock add-ons, or ask about a module built for your process.

Need a custom Spire or BusinessVision module?

Tell us which system you run and what you need the software to do. Don McIntyre Consulting Ltd. is based in Canada and replies by email.

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