Frantz Gets Its C/S Bearings With Server-Centric Tool

Many AS/400 shops today are being lured from their safe and trusty "green-screen" environments by client/server technology's promises of a graphical user interface (GUI), enhanced functionality, and greater productivity. But for some venturing into this unknown, concerns about high overhead, unmanageable complexity, and learning curve serve to deter client/server implementation.

If mythological explorations can be a guide to modern-day "techno-journeys," then Frantz Manufacturing Company, the dominating US supplier of steel balls and ball bearings, has learned that choosing the right client/server migration path can make the difference between stumbling upon the elusive Holy Grail, or stumbling headlong into the haunting Pit of Despair. Ed Delaporte, Frantz' s Director of Information Resources, started his C/S journey about a year ago. He knew that the right client/server development tool must allow his small, two-person IS staff to deliver the client/server applications they needed, immediately, while still allowing them to fulfill their other responsibilities.

Finding the right client/server development tool to deliver on this goal, Ed quickly learned, was not going to be simple. As he started researching the technology, he discovered that client/server meant different things to different people. "What I was seeing reminded me a lot of the PC environment, where there is no consistency. You have to buy six different products from six different vendors to get your applications development environment up. We started looking at client/server on the AS/400 and saw all these different pieces. I tried to glean from the industry magazines and talk to technicians. It looked like some of the client/server stuff was overpriced; some not very capable; and some was adapted from other environments."

Pushing the Right "Hot Button"

Ed started getting the client/server "itch" when a new executive came on board. "We had a new Chief Executive Officer [CEO], Tom Brown. Tom focuses outward. He discovers new markets, figures out where we're going next and how we can leverage our market position. He wants to see things like booking trends, gross margin by customer or product, sales trends by part or customer."

Despite the dozens of AS/400 workstations scattered throughout the company, Ed says many nontechnical managers are not inclined to sign on. Instead IS is expected to take care of "operational" matters such as providing decision support data. Ed figured that client/server might be the ticket to give green-screen-shy users the ability to access AS/400 data themselves from their desktops. "It is hard not to be impressed with the GUI. It allows you to give the customer a nice environment - an easy way to interact with the system. I like that a lot. I wanted to give our CEO a "hot button" - double click and it's there. He doesn't have to call anybody or have to ask for a report. He gets it live."

Caveat Emptor

Finding the right client/server development tool to deliver on this goal, Ed quickly learned, was not going to be simple. As he started researching the technology, he discovered that client/server meant different things to different people. "What I was seeing reminded me a lot of the PC environment, where there is no consistency. You have to buy six different products from six different vendors to get your applications development environment up. We started looking at client/server on the AS/400 and saw all these different pieces. I tried to glean from the industry magazines and talk to technicians. It looked like some of the client/server stuff was overpriced; some not very capable; and some was adapted from other environments."

While educational seminars Ed attended were enlightening, the message he got from them was that client/server development would be time consuming. "I went to the Midrange Exposition and attended a seminar on C/S for beginners. Everything they said sounded like it was going to take us three to four weeks to develop a single C/S application. My fear was that it would take me thousands of dollars in software and dozens and dozens of hours in development time trying to figure out what to do with it just to get my first client/server application running."

Based on what he had learned, Ed also was convinced he'd have to purchase a costly array of hardware and middleware devices that would wreak havoc on his smoothly operating system. "I was worried that it would be very complex. I thought I'd have multiple pieces of middleware from different vendors - one doing the front end application development, then a middleware piece, then back to IBM on the systems side. I wondered how I would get all that to work together." Experience told him he had to move cautiously. "I've been a systems programmer. I've installed software and I know that what looks like a simple problem can eat you alive."

Always thinking of the bottom-line, Ed was weary of products that simply put a pretty GUI face on text-based applications. Adding "point and click" capabilities to existing systems, alone, wouldn't justify the investment. "I'm not excited about screen scrapers because I don't see what value I would be adding. I'd be adding complexity, but I don't see that I'm adding value. The reality of the environment is that I run an AS/400. I've got dozens of customers using text-based screens and I can't afford to replace them all with PCs, so I'm going to have character-based applications for awhile."

In the midst of the search, Ed learned that Lombard, Illinois-based michaels, ross & cole, ltd. (mrc) had just come out with a "server-centric" C/S module for the mrc-Productivity Series, a Fourth Generation Language rapid application development tool and report writer. He had been using mrc's AS/400-based tool since coming to Frantz in 1993. Now Ed uses the mrc-Productivity Series to handle about 80% of Frantz's ad hoc reporting. Having enjoyed that kind of success, he decided to contact mrc. When he learned that all he'd need to automatically generate live client/server applications - in addition to the mrc-Productivity Series C/S license - was a copy of Visual Basic, he signed up to become a beta site.

Ed's first test of the product's Visual Basic-generating horsepower was a client/server online inquiry to show booking trends by customer. The application measures the number and value of orders taken that aren't yet considered receivables.

"We've been doing some work in the market place and we wanted to make sure we had a handle on booking trends to help do a better job of planning production material and staffing. It's also a means to monitor how well our strategy is working. It only took me a day and a half to build - and the reason it took me that long was because I wanted to modify some of the Visual Basic code that the mrc-Productivity Series C/S generated. When I saw that it worked, I thought, 'It can't be that easy to build client/server applications.' Everything I had read in the industry magazines and everything I had seen indicated that a client/server application was going to take me three or four weeks - if I did nothing else."

Although the time it took to build the application was insignificant compared to the horror stories Ed had heard, the feedback he received from his clients was anything but insignificant. "The thing I heard most often was 'oooooh.' The next thing I'd hear was, 'That's from the 400?'"

Client/Server Solutions Abound

With Frantz's migration vehicle chosen, Ed enlisted the support of Tim LeClere, Senior Programmer/Analyst, to start developing and implementing a client/server strategy. After mrc's three day training course, Tim was ready to use the new server-centric, rapid application development technology to increase productivity and efficiency.

First on Tim's agenda was to focus on a faxing inefficiency problem he had been charged with solving six months earlier. "Some of our vendors want our raw materials requirements faxed to them. When items are necessary for production, we try to fax them out as quickly as possible." At the time, Dave Hermann, Frantz's Purchasing Manager, printed out the AS/400-based material requirements reports on green-bar paper directly from the AS/400, reduced them on the copier, then faxed them out manually. This process usually took him an hour and forty five minutes at a time. Tim looked at AS/400 fax cards and software packages, but was reluctant to purchase one. "All these AS/400 products are fairly pricey. The software alone is $3,000-$4,000, and the fax card is another $3,000-$4,000 - and that's on the cheap side."

The solution came to Tim one day while he was driving to work. He knew that the mrc-Productivity Series would allow him automatically to generate Windows-based reports using his AS/400 data. "I figured that we could download the data from an online retrieval to a client/server report, and then fax it right off the PC's fax modem. That way, Dave could select a single raw material requirements report or all of the requirements for a division, and very cheaply send them out right from his desk. And because the mrc-Productivity Series' Visual Basic code generator automatically launches the client/server report, we can add custom formatting like fonts and our graphical logo on the letterhead."

Now that the fax application is in place, all Dave has to do to send out his requirements report is click once to download the materials requirements data directly into the mrc-Productivity Series C/S report, and then send it out right from the PC. "All I have to do is click to create the reports and click to send them out." Herman says. "And now it only takes me about fifteen minutes a week. Overall, that's an $8,000 to $10,000 cost savings per year, just from this one application. It's fantastic." Tim is now planning on converting Frantz's purchase order, invoicing, remittance, and acknowledgment procedures to client/server. "It's exciting."

His confidence mounting, Tim sees countless opportunities to use client/server technology throughout the company. For instance, taking advantage of the mrc-Productivity Series' C/S online inquiry, maintenance and summary capabilities, Tim has just implemented a "gross sales" executive information system.

The positive feedback IS has received from these applications has been remarkable. Tim credits his successes to the novelty of the applications, and the mrc-Productivity Series' ease of use and high performance. "The applications have a nice look and feel, and a perfect Windows interface. My customers couldn't believe their MIS department could write something like this because of the restrictions of the AS/400. After you explain that they're still getting live AS/400 data, they can't believe it's real time - right from the AS/400. And I haven't seen any performance consequences. There's no difference compared to the AS/400."

Beyond reducing business costs and providing enhanced data access, Tim has discovered that mrc's client/server environment is also providing better methods for decision support and data analyses - previously impossible on either the AS/400 or PC, alone. "For instance, the mrc-Productivity Series' SmartLinks feature permits me to link related programs together to form comprehensive applications. In a client/server environment, that means my customers can view multiple applications together on one screen. And because the applications are live, they instantly can see how a change in one effects the others. Tim explains, "With the mrc-Productivity Series, if you have three windows open, you change the selection on the first window, and the others update automatically. This is important, because a customer may not know what trends he or she is looking for. But if he has all three windows open and sees that a change in the first effects the third, the relationship is obvious. Then he can enter another change right there to see how it flows back into the other two applications. That's a big advantage. And it only takes seconds, versus the time it takes to run another report on the AS/400 and queue it up on the printer. By that time the train of thought could be lost."

There's No Place Like Home

Frantz has come a long way since the days Ed Delaporte believed that implementing enterprise-wide client/server solutions meant leaving the AS/400 and venturing out into the complex "open systems" world. Indeed, both he and Tim believe that the new, creative possibilities opened up by the mrc-Productivity Series have dispelled their "doom and gloom" predictions about the AS/400's future viability. "My ability in client/server has sky rocketed since we discovered what the mrc-Productivity Series can do," Tim says. "It adds a whole new dimension to the vitality of the AS/400's data. It opens up new decision-making possibilities because you have more than just a piece of paper with columns of data. You've got the visual effect as well as the text. The sky's the limit."

Ed agrees, adding, "I'm not locked into the AS/400. There is nothing here that says we have to buy IBM. I've seriously considered other platforms. Before the mrc-Productivity Series C/S, I was thinking that I probably would move to some sort of an "open" system at some point. Now, when I look at my C/S capabilities on the 400, I think I can use it for two, three, five more years. It has extended the life of my AS/400."