Team Information
Lorraine Bell, lorraine.bell@cuanschutz.edu, Research Services Manager
What
Our animal ordering system does not allow for filtering of information to create a usable delivery schedule for animal deliveries. Our Animal Ordering Specialist was hand manipulating the schedules for the receiving technicians and the receiving technicians were further manipulating the reports to highlight ordering details. We used Visual Basic to automate all of the reformatting. This saves 8 hours per month of administrative time for the Animal Ordering Specialist and 4 hours per month for the receiving technicians. Staff who were spending time altering the delivery schedule can spend more time on tasks that provide customer value and have been able to learn additional tasks to assist during staff vacations or illness. This also improved the morale of the Animal Ordering Specialist because having to manually configure the delivery schedule was very tedious. The automation also makes work easier for anyone covering when the Animal Ordering Specialist is out of the office. The automating of the process has also meant fewer errors in housing animal orders, reducing the need for replacement animals.
Why
Each week a delivery schedule must be generated so that technicians can house arriving animals. Errors in housing mean that research is delayed and OLAR would need to pay to replace the order. The eSirius software does not allow for any automation of this schedule creation. The raw data file must be hand manipulated to delete and rearrange information and highlight any special orders. This was a time consuming and very tedious process that needed to be repeated for 2 facilities each week. There was also always the possibility of errors being introduced by the hand manipulation of data.
When
We implemented the Visual Basic Coding for the delivery schedule process February 7 2019.