Garrett Liners, Inc.

Garrett Liners, Inc. is a manufacturer of aboveground and inground vinyl swimming pool liners. We are a mid-sized family owned business, and have been producing vinyl pool products since 1964, and sell to distributors and installers throughout the 50 United States and Canada, and in several countries overseas, e.g. England, France, Cyprus, etc.

We currently use InterBase for all of our data storage and reporting needs. We converted from Paradox, and have now been using InterBase for slightly more than two years. The front end of all of our applications are internally written using Borland's Delphi. We currently have four major applications which utilize the capabilities of InterBase and Delphi's programming environment:

1) Customer Maintenance - All customer information (including the end-user/homeowner) are stored in Interbase tables. This information is used, through direct mailings, to keep our customer base appraised of, among others: - Changes to our product line, such as new vinyl prints available. - Updates to our pricing and discount schedule. - Special offers or rebates. - The current state of our vinyl liner design and manufacturing technology.

2) Sales Order Entry - When a customer orders a vinyl liner, the pool dimensions and other pertinent information is entered, the product is priced, and a sales order is generated. All the information entered is stored in the DB in Master/Detail format. The data is checked, using triggers and stored procedures, for validity and reasonableness, before committing. For example, the individual dimensions of an inground pool must equal the overall dimensions.

3) Vinyl Liner Design - Pool dimensions stored in the Interbase database, are used to design the vinyl patterns which are then dielectrically sealed to manufacture the swimming pool liner. This is the result of converting three dimensional measurements to two dimensional lay-down patterns. All necessary measurements for the different shaped pools are stored in Interbase.

4) Production Tracking - All products are tracked through the various stages of manufacture, from design through shipping, with the information updated regularly. This allows customer service to look up an order and relay the current status and probable completion date of each product.

5) Invoice Generation and Billing - All accounting information is stored in InterBase tables, with automatic invoice generation upon shipment of a customer's order. All other accounting processes are handled using the data stored in the DB.

6) Reporting - All reporting necessary for a mid-sized business to keep track of its current state are possible with the information quickly and easily obtained from the InterBase DB. Some reports generated are: - Production output - Cost tracking - Account receivable history - Customer demographic information - Customer ordering patterns

This page was last updated on 2000-12-31 21:23:07