It is time to look forward and set the final destinations ...

What could be the final goal of project like this? Definitely, to go paperless is important (we can save many trees), however this shouldn't be the only or the main reason to create this application....

In order to turn the application into ultimate piece of software many features should be add into it in future. Bellow is the list of desirable features:

• Start-up form that could do something useful at very beginning
• Because of accepted model of locally running databases (see the very first post) it is a good idea to have functionality to "split" and "clean" overfilled file. I.e. after copying a database, to purge all data from the new file and, to upload different sections of data from different source databases. This could be helpful in case of deploying a new release of the application or just to keep the size of the Access file under control. Of course in the future more "modern" client-server model could be implemented and even MS SQL Server capability may be a good target ...
  
• Creating control charts On-The-Flow. Only one basic control chart type would be enough to begin with. For example "Individuals and moving range" chart. (Its good to note that currently the system supports a group size of one element. In future group sample of up to eight elements should be possible to deal with). For the record first control chart incorporated was Precontrol Chart ...
• Export and/or Import Reports data to/from text and/or Excel file. Such functionality basically should incorporate collected data into the application database and will allow to print out control charts and basic statistic indexes (Cpk, Ppk, etc...) from data gathered from external sources. There is a little sense to import data, however exporting collected data appears to be more appropriate. (For more see this post)
  
• A file with additional information related to a specific report should be accessible. This functionality is important when additional measurements (using CMM or other tools or methods) are used with relation to the main report. Such a complementary report will be for review only and no statistics or similar activity would be possible to obtain. (This functionality is implemented already. For more information see this post)
  
• All history data related to part could be accessible for future review and update. To have an access to Quality Alerts, Customer Complains, Part Drawing, Visual Aids and Work Instructions, etc..., all in one place, would be extremely useful. (In fact this is same as above requirement. For more - see the post under 'Indie prgs ( 5)' label)
  
• Mold related functionality should be considered as important addition for future release. Recording an initial mold set-up and creating an easy comparison between set-ups collected from start, middle and end of run, would demonstrate a good traceability and will satisfy every prospective customer.
  

All above should turn this two form relatively simple business application into one "Ultimate Application", definitely!

Interesting BLOG for MS Office and Access