UK start-up business, IPI Solutions Ltd, was looking to partner with a software company to develop a suite of products to sell into the aerospace, automotive and medical instrument sectors.
After extensive consultations with a number of software companies, Blueberry was chosen as IPI’s development partner.
The Client
IPI Solutions specialises in business applications for engineering professionals.2 Programmers, 1 Manager
Ongoing development
SQL Server, ASP.NET, Silverlight, WPF (XBAP), Click-Once Deployment, Atalasoft Imaging Libraries, OCR text recognition, Dynamic PDF Generation, Dynamic Excel spreadsheet generation
Screenshots
Application Screen
VisualFAIR allows the critical features of scanned engineering drawings to be visually marked-up and copied into its database using OCR.
Drawing Mark-Up Screen
VisualFAIR is fully compatible with AS/EN/SJAC 9102 forms and supports OEM specific forms, custom forms and internal forms. VisualFAIR includes customisable OEM specific materials/process/functional test databases for automatic form 2 completion.
The Requirements
IPI Solutions provide 6-sigma consultancy services to the aerospace and automotive industry sectors. The company wanted to develop a suite of software products to help reduce the considerable man-power and time required to generate compliance documentation (called “FAI Report” in the aerospace sector, “PPAP” in the automotive sector and “ISIR” in the medical sector).
In essence, the software would allow users to collect together a number of documents - such as scanned drawings, compliance certificates etc - and generate collated reports in the particular formats required by the client companies. In addition, the software was required to provide a sophisticated “mark-up” editor that would allow engineering drawings to be marked-up and the details gathered (via OCR technology) for inclusion in the output reports.
What We Did
Blueberry began by conducting a series of consultations with IPI Solutions and industry experts to establish the core requirements of the software. Blueberry then created a number of prototypes for use in gathering accurate feedback from end-users in order to refine the design.
Once completed, Blueberry developed “VisualFAIR” – a stand-alone installable Windows program for FAI Report generation. The stand-alone nature of the product enabled rapid adoption throughout a large number of companies in the aerospace sector.
Development is continuing by expanding the support for PPAP and ISIR generation for the automotive and medical instrument sectors. Increasing amounts of functionality are being delivered by server-based applications utilising Silverlight and XBAP technologies. These deployment technologies are particularly useful in the environments where VisualFAIR is used, as computers are often heavily locked down, making client program installation difficult.
The Results
Over the four years since the project began, IPI’s customer base has grown steadily to over 600 installations for more than 100 companies. VisualFAIR is increasingly being seen by customers as the preferred solution to generating compliance documentation due to its combination of ease-of-use and powerful functionality - despite significant competition in the marketplace.
As a result of the success of the project, there are plans to expand the current server-based work-flow systems to facilitate the use of the software within supply chains, so increasing the growth of IPI’s customer base further.
"Blueberry's extensive skills and experience have been crucial to the success of my company."
Brian Harvey, CEO, IPI Solutions Ltd.