REPORTING COMPONENT
A comprehensive reporting function for routine internal reports and internal and external audits is a necessary part of any control system. The reporting function needs to be reliable, transparent and easily used by all mill staff but it also needs to provide the tools to enable individual mills to design and run special reports.
An advanced report generating component was used as the basis for the report component included in the Tadpole system. This component has been extended to incorporate the specially developed Tadpole analysis charts (cusum E, cusum R, percentile, Shewhart etc) making it possible to produce both text based and special chart based reports directly from the database with a minimum of effort. The standard pie, bar etc charts are also available to the report designer when required. Individual reports can therefore provide a comprehensive set of data analysis options.
A set of standardized reports are included in the Tadpole installation. A report preparation tutorial is also available.
The reports are accessed in two ways
(1) through a windows explorer like interface, making it easy for mill staff to run and develop the reports. The interface is illustrated in the
Figure below.
(2) through a Report List set up by the user. A Report List contains the names of reports that need to be run on a regular basis as a single batch using a single action. This method is used by mills at the end of a Run to generate all the reports required to show the Run complies with all the requirements. The reports are normally printed for management information and stored as pdf files for archival purposes.
The next Figure shows a page from a tally report with pie chart of graded timber length:
The next Figure shows a 100% bar chart of the yield of graded pieces in individual runs over time:
The reporting system is also available as a server based process if this is a specific requirement in the installation. The server license makes it possible for staff in other locations to have controlled access to the data through a web browser. This also makes it possible for third parties, like grading agencies, to be given controlled access to reports that are relevant to their requirements. Once implemented, an agency could carry out most of their routine work on-line with mill visits being less time consuming and aimed more at 'helping' the operation.
© 2008 Wood Technology Australia Pty Ltd