The purpose of the research is to analyse and test an innovative software solution supporting scheduling and coordination of activities within an enterprise network. The instrument being developed is a sort of ERP for collaborative small-to-medium-sized companies, able to streamline the joint use of their limited resources. The final objective is in fact to make the network able to address the market's demands as a single entity, in terms of internal efficiency and response times. The solution is based on the introduction of an operative model that reflects the rules of the game agreed between the leading company and the other partners of the network, and of the software tool required to apply this model in a neutral manner. The work is performed in cooperation with some enterprise networks belonging to the fashion, global service and maintenance sectors.
Organisational model of the enterprise network.
There are essentially two innovative aspects of this system: (a) it has been specifically conceived to support the work of small-sized companies which cannot divert resources from their core business (b) it significantly raises the degree of automation of coordination and communication activities within the network. This innovation is obtained by hiding underneath a simple user interface the complexity of algorithms developed to aid the work of networked companies
The system is able to support cooperation among networked companies in a variety of diverse application sectors. To this end, it must be subject to verticalisation to fully grasp the typical issues of each sector, thus aiding penetration also thanks to “cloud” usage methods. Two vertical extensions are currently available: one for the fashion industry and one for the installation maintenance sector A further vertical extension is under development for the global service sector.
A vertical extension for the petrol station maintenance sector is available.
Fuel station maintenance
It is an innovative web-based software platform designed to manage enterprise networks operating in the sector of petrol station construction and maintenance. It makes it possible to control the entire communication flow between the Service Centre (SC) and each Maintenance Firm (MF) and features significant functions for each party's operations, namely: POINTS OF SALE Point of sale data management and relevant survey of equipment present. ROUTINE MAINTENANCE. Management of call servicing according to established contractual conditions. SCHEDULED MAINTENANCE. Servicing schedule management with automatic generation. EXTRAORDINARY MAINTENANCE. Management of off-contract servicing by drawing up budgets and final accounts with the option of using fees agreed with the customer. MAINTENANCE TECHNICIAN'S PLANNER. Drag&Drop Functionality with which the MF allocates servicing from the SC to individual maintenance technicians through an intuitive planner. WORK RELATIONS. Entering the RDL of each maintenance technician for traceability of operations carried out and relevant automatic cost estimate. INVOICING. Production of invoices related to fee-based, scheduled and extraordinary maintenance activities. The system also features functions to load annexes and sundry documents, and a search engine to find them.
CEDEM Scarl BISY Srl.
To make full use of the research results, it was decided to grant exploitation of the demonstrative prototypes to the academic spin-off BISY Srl, set up by the same young researchers who took part in prototyping, committed to engineering and marketing them.
The academic spin-off BISY Srl has engineered and marketed the product.