Material Procurement System

Project Overview

The project was designed to migrate the Material Procurement System (MPS) of our client to an up-to-date software platform. MPS is an IT system that supports all processes in the purchasing environment of our client.

Its features include:

1. Process all customer requirements
2. Provide purchasing agents with information about automotive markets, parts, suppliers, prices, and business terms
3. Relieve purchasing agents from routine jobs
4. Perform analysis and generate reports
5. Calculate revenues and savings
6. Generate cost structures
7. Compare negotiation targets with actual business results
8. Control negotiation progress between purchasing agents and suppliers.

The legacy system was implemented using the programming language Smalltalk from CINCOM. One of the challenges was the absence of documentation (functional specifications and documented test cases) for the legacy system. The task was to migrate MPS to Java 3-tier architecture and create up-to-date documentation (use-case model and documented test cases).

The new application needed to meet the following requirements:

1. Use Java EE technology
2. Provide the same functionality as the legacy application with additional functional features
3. Function with the legacy database and be able to use the same database concurrently with the legacy MPS
4. Provide multi–language support including hieroglyphic (Japanese).

Project Execution

The project started in December 2003. IBA Group responsibilities included detailed system analysis, application design, application development, functional and system testing, quality assurance, and warranty support.

Built on advanced technologies, MPS was developed using RUP methodology with full lifecycle supported by IBA. Given application’s complexity, IBA suggested using pure Java EE platform for migration. Special tools were integrated in the development and build processes to ensure that code satisfies all customer requirements.

An iteration approach with five releases was adopted for the project. Each release included analysis (reverse engineering from Smalltalk code); design and implementation; system, functional and acceptance testing; and deployment to production.

Environment

• Programming languages: Java, Java script, XML, HTML, SQL
• Application servers: IBM WebSphere v 5.1, IBM DB2 on zOS, IBM WebSphere MQSeries
• Development environment: IBM WebSphere Application Developer v 5.1

Project Results

IBA Group efforts for the project amounted to 90,000 person-days. IBA delivered the project on schedule and in budget. In 2005, a complete migration release of the MPS application was deployed to production. Further MPS releases incorporated additional functional features in line with new Change Requests.

The figures below show statistic results of the project:

1. About 800 DB tables
2. More than 1,800 use cases
3. About 8,000,000 lines of Java code
4. About 30K Java classes
5. More than 90 Change Requests during the migration phase, most of these introducing new functionality
6. More than 3,000 concurrent users around the world (Germany, US, Brazil, and Japan).