AN INTELLIGENT ORDER ENTRY SYSTEM FOR PORTABLE INDUSTRIAL AIR-COMPRESSORS IN A MANUFACTURING ENVIRONMENT

The major goal for this system is the automatic production of a sales order document similar to the one implemented manually today. The automated document is produced in a faster and more reliable way. There are three major operations that the system is capable of performing. First, it can create a unique bill of materials number for any portable compressor based on a subset of 50 available options. An enhanced hexadecimal encoding technique is used for this purpose. Second it can associate a serial number to the bill of materials number. Finally, it can recreate the options set from the serial number. The system is so user friendly that it can be used by anyone to place an order. No specialized knowledge is needed about either the products or their prices. The order for a machine can be placed any time and there is no need anymore to wait for someone to come back from a sales hip, a vacation, or illness. The purpose of this product is to improve the efficiency and the consistency of the order entry system now in use. The system is not designed to replace the product managers or anyone else. Although the system addresses only one product line, it can be easily expanded to cover the other ones as well.