The Challenge

EGADS ran a sign-making plant and tracked production the hard way: which products were in progress, how many hours each employee had put into them, and where jobs were stuck. Management had no consolidated view and no way to know about a problem until someone walked over and said so. I built the system that replaced that, across two Robert Half Technology engagements in 2005 and 2006.

Key Pain Points:

  • Product and employee-hour tracking handled manually on the plant floor
  • No consolidated reporting for management on production status or labor
  • No alerting when a job stalled or a threshold was crossed

My Solution

1. Production Tracking

A custom .NET application over SQL Server that tracked each product through the plant and recorded the employee hours against it, replacing the manual process.

2. Reporting and Alerting

  • Detailed reporting for management on production status, throughput, and labor
  • An alerting system that flagged production issues instead of waiting for someone to notice

Technical Implementation

Key Technologies

Application

.NET / ASP.NET C# / VB.NET

Database

SQL Server Stored Procedures

Features

Product Tracking Employee-Hour Tracking Reporting Alerting

Results & Impact

  • Product and employee-hour tracking, reporting, and alerts ran from one system instead of paper and memory
  • Management could see production status and labor without asking the floor
  • The client brought me back for a second, longer engagement to extend the system

What This Means for AI Implementation

The EGADS work is the same shape as most of today's automation requests: replace a manual process with a system that tracks, reports, and alerts. The difference now is that agents and private assistants can sit on top of that data.