The challenge.
The client – a large scrap recycling company in the U.K. – had implemented automated systems over the last 15 years for its business processes. Their existing application was comprised of 500,000 lines of code in MIDAS application and 511 VB components covering 10 functional areas in MMM application.

Our solution.
We launched our “Fusion” reengineering project to integrate functionality
of legacy based MIDAS system and VB-SQL Server based MMM system and reengineer into a Java-Weblogic- SQL Server platform. The system is an n-tier client-server application using J2EE architecture.

We implemented the following applications as described:

MIDAS
The core of the client’s business system, this application takes care of the material inward/outward movement, stock recording and control, heap accounting, production monitoring, accounting for payments, cost control, financial accounting, treasury, shipping and management reporting.

MIDAS integrates with MMM through a batch import process to receive ticket data originating in the Avery Weighman system (MMM integrates with Avery via an online polling process). Most other information is entered online into MIDAS and updated in batches – either online or in an end-of-day process. Users rely heavily on MIDAS for report generation. MIDAS also receives flat file imports from a banking system. About 150 concurrent users are authenticated by a code and password and access to the application is provided by role definitions.

MMM
Inwards and outwards transactions in each depot are polled from the weigh bridge software and details transferred into the MMM. Here they are priced against a contract price matrix for ferrous tickets. Production of self-billing invoices, online ticket and trading enquiries and cash management facilities are provided by MMM. On a daily basis, this data is exported by users from MMM to MIDAS. There is no provision to update MMM based
on any changes to data in MIDAS. Similarly, any change that takes place
to data in MMM subsequent to the data transfer into MIDAS is not
carried across.

MMM was developed in Visual Basic and SQL Server. The user interface of this application is preferred by the users due to ease of navigation and the technical environment has the advantage of scaling to newer versions of database and tools.

Avery Weighman System
This system runs on Windows NT and is considered by the client to
be broadly adequate in capturing data related to weighbridge tickets. These tickets are then polled by the MMM application and pulled into
the MMM database.