Monday 14 January 2013

Entry 012: Final Stretch

This is going to be the toughest period of our FYP journey. We have to complete our FYP report by Thursday, 17/1/2013, before 5:00 pm.

On 18/12/2012, Tuesday, we had a meeting with our supervisor to discuss more about our FYP report. We basically discussed the structure of our report. In other words, how the flow of our report should be. We started off by discussing about the introduction. Our introduction should include the background of our report, methodology (descriptive), the objectives and scope of our project.

Next, we discussed about the literature research. We have actually done some parts of the literature research way back before we started doing our report. However, there are still parts of the literature research undone. There are more information that we need to include. Example, we need to include other chemical regulations apart from GHS (Globally Harmonised System).

After which, we moved on to other content which is the study on the Vertere Inventory Management System. We are told to type out at least two or three pages or more about the database system. We have to include the specifications that the system has. Apart from that, we have to evaluate on the system. We must find out whether this system enable the user to track chemicals with ease, there is access and security control, it is able to print out the inventory to meet the current form requirement, alert the user on the maximum/minimum limit and meets Singapore's requirement.

Moving on, we discussed about other alternatives that can improve on the current practice. Basically, the alternatives are converting hard copy inventory form into Microsoft Excel, purchase a commercial database and adopting a customised database. In addition, we have to evaluate on these alternatives.

This is how the first draft of our report going to look like:
Introduction -> Literature Research -> Current Practices -> Interview with TSOs -> Ideal Requirements of a Database -> Options to Improve on the Current Practices -> Evaluate + Proposal -> Recommendations for Future Work

For the recommendations for future work, we can suggest that the next group of students can evaluate on other commercial databases available.

On 4/1/2013, Friday, we had a meeting again with our supervisor. We discussed more about our report. We find out what other information that we left out.

Now the flow of our report will be as such:

Introduction -> Literature Research -> Investigation on Current Practices -> Interview with TSOs ->Chemical Inventory Management Requirements -> Options to Improve on the Current Practices -> Study of Vertere Inventory Database -> Proposal -> Recommendations for Future Work

At the same time, we discussed the things that we need to submit on 17/1/2013.

Things to submit:
1) Hard copy report
2) Soft copy report
3) Gantt chart
4) Logbook (Blog)

Since our logbook is in the form of an online blog, we have to submit another set of document with a cover page and the link to our blog, with a couple screenshots.

 On 8/1/2013, Tuesday, we had another meeting with our supervisor. This time we really have to push ourselves to work hard on completing our report. We sent our draft to our supervisor for checking and comments. With the comments that our supervisor gave to us, we can make changes to our report accordingly.

Entry 011: Meeting with Mr Paul Ruez from Vertere

One of our project's objective is to study on a commercial database. So on 11/12/2012, Tuesday, we had a meeting with Ms Lee at 7:30 am. We are required to reach school early in the morning as we are having an online meeting with Mr Paul Reuz, a representative who will assist us in running through the Vertere Inventory Management System from overseas. Since he live in US, the time difference between US and Singapore is about 12 hours. That is why we had to conduct our meeting in the morning. The mode of meeting was through Skype.

The meeting started at 8:00 am. Mr Koh, our Process Control lecturer, joined in the session as well. Firstly, Paul Ruez gave us an introduction on the Vertere Inventory Management and slowly took us through the database. He showed us how the Vertere database works through an online presentation. We felt that the online presentation was carried out professionally. We experienced how the database actually works 'live'.

What we realised about the Vertere database was it has some of the ideal specifications of a database. However the database was too complicated as it requires alot of information to add in. More information on the Vertere Inventory Management System will be discussed in our FYP report.

Some of the features that the Vertere database has are the ability to track specific laboratory and building block, different level of roles/rights for security purposes, tracking of chemicals by barcode or location, minimum/ maximum management (eg. display the maximum quantity of a specific chemical in a lab. If the quantity exceeds the maximum limit, it will alert the user) and recording of inventory.

Stay tune for more updates on our FYP..