Shift Automation Engineers HomepageLee Zheng Xun

Information Communication and TechnologyUniversiti Teknologi Petronas

Tronoh, Perakzxun91@gmail.com

ABSTRACT

This paper presents the development of Shift Automation Engineers homepage. This system will be used by all the team members so that it could assist in their daily routine in troubleshooting all the problems in the production of Intel Malaysia. Originally, the responsibility of the author as an intern trainee in the ITMC SAE department is to provide full support to the daily operation of SAE team in helping Intel Malaysia to maximize productivity. In this point of view, the SAE homepage portal will function as a platform for all the team members to facilitate their daily routine, such as updating their latest activities, use the frequent links as bookmarks, publishing their contact information for the ease of other department to ask the for help, record their list of inventories to make ordering easier, provide direction for the new hires to execute their ARs, perform visible recognition by using the star rating system or e-certificate, and as an entertainment center for uploading photos. Before this, there are several problems with the current practice of SAE team members that will cause inefficiency and time consuming in performing all of the abovementioned features. Therefore, SAE homepage is the solution that the author came out that has the graphic-user-interface to integrate with the current SAE share point to serve different purposes in the web and at the same time facilitates the SAE operations. The author uses the “Hardcoding” approach to complete this project. Notepad++ was used as a tool for the coding of HTML, PHP, JavaScript, and AJAX.

KeywordsShift automation engineers; SAE homepage project; internet programming.

1. INTRODUCTION

For the first week of the author’s internship in Intel Malaysia, the Intel supervisor has assigned to him to develop an application for the SAE team to gather all the useful tools and save the time of the team members. At the same time, since Intel has a strong internet connection, the author suggests that the software to be developed in the web based system to make everyone easier to access it. For the solution, the author needs to come out with a graphic-user-interface to integrate with the current SAE share point to serve different purposes in the web to facilitate the SAE processes. Thus, this is assigned as the main project of the author together with another intern from UTP, Eddy Goh in the same team.

2. PROBLEM STATEMENT

After some discussion with the team members, the author has discovered a few problems and inefficiency with the IT management of SAE team. Problems that are listed for further improvement are as follow: -

Inefficiency in link searching

Frequently visited links is entered in the browser manually by memorizing the addresses. This is very inefficient and time consuming as they need to memorize complicated web addresses in the Intel website.

SAE new hires have no direction

New hires, trainees, or interns for the SAE team has no idea on what to do during the first few weeks as the team members are busy executing their daily routine and have no time to manage the new hires. As new hires of Intel are supposed to attend numerous trainings and talks, the buddy assigned to the new hires does not know their progress in doing all those mandatory activities.

Reachability of SAE members

Since SAE plays a crucial part in the production floor and the work on shifts, the team members changes every week. Sometimes when an engineer from the factory seeks assistance, he does not know who is responsible for the IT issue, or who to seek help with. Even among the team members, if there is no team building at the current team, new hires has absolutely no chance in meeting all the team members at one time.

Messy information on training packages

The SAE team members always attend trainings to keep them updated about the latest technology in the production floor and how to troubleshoot them. However, countless training has their own training packages and not all of the team members keep the training packages accordingly. Therefore, new hires have no chance of getting the training material from the team mates but have to attend the trainings themselves.

Lack of visible recognition

When SAE team members accomplished something, recognition is made during the weekly SAE meeting. A more visible recognition should be made to make the team members proud of what they are doing and raise the morale and motivation of their job in the production floor.

3. OBJECTIVE AND SOLUTION

The main objective of developing this project is to increase the performance of SAE team, new hires, and basically enhance the manufacturing process. By doing so with the project, the overall productivity can be improved and thus impact the team positively. Therefore, the solutions for each problem stated are:

Provide a portal where all the important links are bookmarked

Important links are bookmarked in the author’s webpage to enable easy surfing and saves time.

A cookbook to guide the new hiresNew hires and refer to the cookbook to know what trainings to attend and what action need to be taken. Buddy can track the progress through the cookbook.

Create an interactive page of SAE team membersAn interactive page that contains all the information of SAE team members so that people from all over Intel know who to search for when they are having IT issues. Thus, improve the efficiency of the manufacturing department.

Create a page that stores all the training packagesEnable other team members to refer to the training material when they need revising. Thus, efficiency of daily routine is ensured.

Create a page and web function that specialized in recognition of team members

The page can perform all the recognition with just a click, which facilitates the recognition process and improves efficiency.

4. METHODOLOGY

Before the author starts developing the project, discussion was done with his team members during a staff meeting. The information of each team members, permission level and the interface were suggested by the technical lead of SAE team, Joey Chan.

The methodology used in developing this SAE Homepage is the Agile Software Development Model, which based on iterative and incremental development, where requirements and solutions evolve through collaboration between self-organizing and cross-functional teams.

The author is not alone in developing this project as he has a partner intern, Eddy Goh in executing pair programming in the process. They work together at one workstation and the “driver” writes the code while the “observer” reviews each line of code and corrects the error. For us, the driver observer role is switch frequently so that the observer can considers the strategic direction of the work, and thus coming up with more ideas for improvements, or future problems to address. This is very effective as programmers working in pairs produce more efficient programs, with better designs and fewer bugs, than programmers working alone.

A survey is carried out online for the UTP students in order to produce a greater result for the project. The questions asked in the survey are mainly about the web design ergonomics and accessibility features.

4.1 Project Activities

In the process of developing this project, the author is being introduced to Agile Software Development that delivers incremental shippable products in each weekly sprint cycle (as shown in Figure 1 4 below). In each sprint cycle the author is able to demonstrate a workable prototype to the supervisors or technical lead team (Mr. SC Lai/Joey Chan) for their instant feedback.

4.2 Key Milestone

The key milestone for this project will be the weekly inspection of the Intel supervisor. Since he is checking the progress and giving suggestion every week, the author must develop some new functions for his supervisor to review it. Therefore, this is driving a faster completion to the project as deliverables or prototypes were done every week.

4.3 Gantt chart

A Gantt chart was created after the discussion with the SAE technical lead. Number of weeks to implement this project in the system was decided on the day. And the duration of the project was initially decided as 2 months.

Figure 1: The agile software development lifecycle

Figure 2: Software Development Sprint Cycle

Because of the time implications, the author and his team have to revise the Gantt chart and make changes for better time frame. This is because the SAE team has decided to expand the project to a bigger scale, add in more functionality, make it sustainable and editable in the future, and record the documentations for future reference. Therefore, the duration of the project was expanded to 7-months instead of 2 months. At the same time, since the author is using Agile System Development Cycle, he is introduced to a whole new way of planning his system development lifecycle. Since the agile method doesn’t have a Gantt chart, a Burn Down chart is introduced instead. Below is the revised Burn Down chart in the timeline point of view where the system is directly developed at the starting phase, planning and meetings were held weekly to speed up the whole process.

4.4 Development Tools Available

The author’s supervisor has provided him a laptop for the ease of executing tasks at office or home. Software and tools can be downloaded from the Intel Software Supply (ISS) which Intel has bought the enterprise license for them and Intel employees can use it for free. Software that the author obtained from the ISS includes:

“Notepad++” – “A free source code editor and Notepad replacement that supports several languages.” [1] It is used by the author for hard coding in internet programming language such as XHTML, PHP, and JavaScript language.

Internet Information Service – “An app server application and set of feature extension modules created by Microsoft for use with Microsoft Windows.” [2] It is used as server to host the project website.

Microsoft SQL Server – Used by the author to store the data and information of the website using SQL language.

Adobe Photoshop Portable CS5 – “A graphics editing program developed and published by Adobe Systems.”[3] It is used by the author to design the template, buttons, and images for the website.

Besides, Intel also provides some user friendly software that is available to all the employees to facilitate their daily tasks, such as:

Microsoft Outlook - It is equipped with all the security and custom plugins that integrates with every file on the computer.

Microsoft Communicator (Microsoft Lync) - Use as instant messenger among the employees.

5. RESULT AND DISCUSSION

In order to get the best result in web developing, the author had conducted an online survey in UTP and also Intel to get the feedback on how the web page should be developed. The UTP survey done by Eddy Goh, and all the results and analysis are referred from his report. The results of the survey are as shown:

Survey conducted in UTP

1. Does website act as a good platform to share, save and backup all important information in a group?

2. Do you think that by using a proper website and sharing center will increase the productivity of work while eliminate data redundancy?

3. Do you have some obstacles to adapt to a new environment during internship?

Survey conducted in Intel Malaysia

1. Does the SAE team need a portal to show their contact information and details when you want to get them to troubleshoot?

2. Are you having difficulties when it comes to manage training packages and slides?

3. Are you having a difficult time trying to do recognition to the SAE team members that helped you?

5.1 Data Analysis

Based on the survey conducted among the 50 samples in UTP and another 100 samples in Intel Malaysia, the results had been identified and analyzed by the author. Three different questions were asked to both UTP and Intel employees to get 2 different points of view.

5.1.1 Data Analysis for UTP Respondents

For the first question which was asking the respondent whether they agree or not a website can act as a good platform to share, save and backup all important information in a group. 90% of the UTP respondents agree with the statement, 8% not agree and 2 % were not sure about that. Based on the number, students agree that a website can ease the information management of a student. Most of the students use online application such as Google Group, Facebook and Drop box to share information with their teammates. Some of the comments state that they cannot complete their assignment or project very well without these tools that aid them for project integration.

For question number 2 which was asking the UTP respondent whether they agree that by using a proper website

Figure 3: “Burn-down” Gantt chart final draft.

and sharing center will increase the productivity of work while eliminate data redundancy. 92% of the respondents agree with the statement, 6% disagree and 2% were not sure. The author conclude that majority of the students agree that a website act as sharing center will increase the productivity of their work on assignments, projects and researches. This shows that the data center is the key point to eliminate data redundancy and increase the efficiency use of resources.

For question number 3 which was asking the UTP respondents whether they have some obstacles to adapt to a new environment during internship. 76% of them agree with the statement, 20% disagree and 4% of them not sure about the question. From the extra comment, students said that they have no proper guide or documentation on understanding the basic and fundamental rules and regulation of the company. What they normally do is just refer to another friend or colleague in the company. [4]

5.1.2 Data Analysis for Intel Malaysia Respondents

The first question asked the respondent whether the SAE team need a portal to show their contact information and details when you want to get them to troubleshoot. 90% of the respondents agree with that statement, 9% does not agree and the minorities of 1% are unsure about the decision. The statistics shows that majority are agreeing with the action that SAE team needs a centralized portal to show their contact information so that they know who to contact to when they need troubleshooting regarding the IT issue instead of asking other people for the contact.

The second question asked the respondent whether if they are having difficulties in keeping all the training packages after they have attended a training provided by Intel. Based on the results, 80% of respondents agreed that they are having difficulties arranging with their training packages for future references, 20% does not have any difficulties storing and managing their training slides and materials. According to the results shown, it clearly shows that Intel employees do not have a proper system to manage all their training materials.

For the final question in the survey, which asked about are the respondents having a difficult time trying to do recognition to the SAE team members that helped them before. The statistics shows that 76% of respondents agreed with that, 14% are not having difficulties and the other 10% are unsure. The result shows that most of the respondents are having difficulties in producing recognition message for the SAE team that helped them before.

6. PROJECT DELIVERABLES

After 7 months of coding, development, revise and testing, the author and his project partner finally come out with the deliverables with the complete version with the system. During the development phase, all the suggestion and results are emphasized and focused on it so that the users can enjoy what they had requested earlier. This complete version of webpage has been presented to the SAE team at 1st of December 2012 during the weekly staff meeting. They had commented on the

web page as very user-friendly and easy to understand the configurations.

6.1 SAE Webpage Header

The webpage header design is based on the Intel Employee Circuit design and the code implemented is JavaScript for the dynamic frame changing that does not require the refresh of page. The main specialty of this header is that:

Load each tab without reloading the page.

Increase the efficiency of the page by saving the load time.

Tabs can be easily add/delete by only changing one line of code, easy for future updates.

6.2 SAE Home Page

The SAE Home page contains all the information of SAE which includes vision, mission, objectives, and latest activities. It is an interactive page where all the information can be easily edited by the administrator by clicking on the edit button and change information on the JavaScript popup box. Employees from other department can know what is currently happening in the SAE department easily. This homepage part is done by Eddy Goh as the “Driver” and the author as the “Observer” in the pair programming process.

Figure 3: The SAE homepage header

Figure 4: The SAE homepage

6.3 SAE Team Members Page

The SAE Team Members page contains all the information of the SAE team members from both Penang and Kulim site. Through this page, the employees from other department can have the chance of knowing the SAE team members and seek help from them easily by clicking on their contact information. [5]

The members are added initially in the popup form after clicking on the “Add more” button. The popup form require the user to insert their personal details such as Worldwide ID, IDSID, full name, nick name, organization manager, position, email address, mobile number, and their photo. The popup form is generated by the JavaScript library called “TinyBox” which is able to take information from another html or PHP page through AJAX request. Therefore, the page does not require refresh after each click. After the submit button is pressed, the information will directly update on the database and the new SAE team member will be added on the list.

Besides, when the user clicks on the picture of the SAE team member, another popup will be shown on the page, displaying all the contact information and personal details of the SAE member.

Some functions are provided only to the team members but not the outsides. Those functions are such as, the “Edit” button in case there is any information need to be edited by the SAE users. It will turn the details in the popup box into an editable form with all the previous information in it so that

the user just have to change a single field and update the database with the submit button.

The “Delete” button is provided in case the SAE users need to delete some user form the list. Just click on the delete and the member will be wiped out from the database with all the records he has on this entire website.

Besides, the photos can be changed by clicking on the photo and “Edit/Add Image” will come out, the user just has to choose the path for the new image to be uploaded and it will be done within a second. The figure is shown as below:

Apart from that, the position of each team members in the page is inter-changeable. The user just has to click on the direction button located on the side of their image and the position will be exchanged in the process.

Apart from all the functions, the one that stands out the most will be the hierarchical view of the team members. This function is suggested by the author’s supervisor, Mr. Lai and it generates an organizational chart after the “Hierarchical View” button is clicked.

Figure 5: The SAE Team Members Page

Figure 6: The popup information box

Figure 7: The popup editing form

Figure 8: The change position button

The figure shown above is the organizational chart generated by PHP coding. All the positions are inter-changeable by editing the position of each team member on the popup information box. After updating the position of the designated individual, the hierarchical table will update itself through the database. A clearer overview of SAE team members can be shown to the other department through this function.

6.4 SAE POR Page

SAE POR stands for Purchase of Receivables for all the IT assets that the SAE team owns. The page contains all the information on the assets that SAE manages in the production floor. The entries include CPU, Monitor, Printer, Scanner, KVM Switch, Keyboard, Mouse and Cables. If the user click on the entry, it page will direct him to the list of assets that the SAE have in the inventory, together will all the information of the IT hardware.

When the “CPU” is clicked, all the types and brands of CPU will be displayed including all the information needed for ordering new stocks. Pictures are attached with the name and information of the machine, so that it is easier for recognizing the appearance of equipment. If the user wants to edit the equipment information, simply click any part of the information belongs to the equipment and a pop up box will appear for editing the information. This part is also driven by the pair programming partner and observed by the author.

6.5 SAE Cook Book Page

The cookbook page is a platform for new hires to know what they need to do when they first join Intel. This portion is a reference from the author’s pair programming partner, Eddy’s report as he is the “Driver” for this portion of the project. The figure shows the overview of the cookbook page.

When the new hire has done some part of his/her job, the tasks can be mark as done and subsequently update the database via an AJAX request to ensure the page does not reload. New hires can view their own progress report by clicking on the “View Progress” button and take an overview on their progress. The date and time completion of each of the tasks done will be shown on the table. On the other hand, their buddy can monitor their progress and advice accordingly. [6]

Five different levels of permission were implemented on the cookbook page to cater all different kinds of user. Each user has their own access limits so that the information is not exploited by the others. The figure shows the five different levels of permissions in cookbook page:

Another feature of the cookbook is to notify the SAE team member about the expiry of accesses and trainings refresh. As SAE team members always apply for access in different part of building in the production floor for work purpose, the access can be expired in different period. Below shows the table for inserting dates of trainings and refresh period. The users can tick the checkbox at the bottom of the page email notification for the reminder of registration on all access and trainings every quarter.

Apart from that, the frequent visited links are displayed to the SAE team members to ensure they can save time and does not need to enter the address manually. This function improves the efficiency of SAE by giving them all the required links and don’t have to search the links through emails or files

Figure 9: The hierarchical table view of SAE

Figure 10: The POR inventory icons

Figure 11: The Cookbook page

Figure 12: Permission levels in cookbook page

6.6 SAE Photo Gallery Page

The SAE Photo Gallery was added by the SAE team during the final review. It is suggested by the team members as Intel does not allow photos of internal events to be posted up at any social web page, the SAE team needs a photo gallery to store all their photos for the department to view. Therefore, the author developed a simple photo gallery page for them to upload the photos and manage them. Functions provided for the photo gallery include:

Multiple uploads at one time

Multiple photos can be uploaded at once to save time and each of the progress will be shown on the popup box.

Images are auto resized by the server to save space and load time.

The images will be auto resize to less than 600 pixels width or height by the JavaScript included in the code. Thumbnails with small sizes will also be created at the time the photos finish upload.

Slideshow ButtonWhen the slideshow button is clicked, a popup-slideshow will be shown at the page with all the photos on track.

Delete ButtonWhen the “Delete” trash can icon button is pressed, checkboxes will appear next to the thumbnail photos and just simply check all the unwanted photos and confirm delete will do the deleting job. Multiple delete function can save time and reduce unnecessary repetitive job.

6.7 SAE Wall of Fame

The SAE Wall of Fame is suggested by the SAE manager, Kelvin Loh in providing a more visible recognition to the SAE team members. Through this page, the other department can give recognition to SAE in a more simple and user-friendly way. The Wall of Fame page is basically a star rating page that anyone can vote stars on the SAE team members.

Each team members has their own star and the vote count is recorded. The voting process is very easy as the user just have to click on the star to vote. The web page will then submit an AJAX request to the database through the jQuery script. Thus, a user can vote each and every team members at once without reloading the page.

The voting stars and voting counts can be reset by the page administrator by clicking on the “Reset Vote” icon button. That button will change all the voting counts of that particular individual to zero.

6.8 E-Certification

E-certification is a function that enables the team members or visitors to give recognition to employees by sending the recognition receiver an email certification. The users need to get the permission from SAE manager first before they are authorized to use this function. By inserting the name at the input form, it will generate a sample of the e-certificate by HTML CSS positioning method for confirmation.

Figure 14: Uploading progress bar

Figure 14: SAE Photo Gallery Page

Figure 15: SAE Wall of Fame

Figure 16: E-certificate

After confirmed on the details, the server will then buffer the HTML generated into a single file and sends an email to the recipient automatically. The email is generated by the “PHPMailer” library and it requires authentication to connect to the mail server of Intel Malaysia in order to run the process. Email that contains the attachment will be received by the recipient shortly after.

7. CONCLUSION

As a conclusion, this project satisfies all the SAE team members in improving the productivity and effectiveness on their daily routines. The system has met all requirements in the “Software Quality Triangle” characteristics, which are Operational Characteristics, Transition Characteristics, and Revision Characteristics. [7]

The Operational Characteristics covers:

Correctness, where the system met all specifications stated by the SAE team member.

Learnability, where the amount of efforts or time required in learning how to use the software is low. Therefore, the webpage is so user-friendly that IT-illiterate people are able to use it.

Integrity, where the software does not have any side effects such as affecting the job process of SAE team.

Reliability, because the software has been tested by several team members to make sure there is no defects or fail in execution during runtime.

The Revision Characteristics covers:

Maintainability, where the maintenance of the software is very easy that does not require any coding process to maintain it.

Flexibility, where all the information the author include in the software is editable, the user does not have to make changes through coding.

The Transition Characteristics covers:

Interoperability, where the webpage can obtain the IDSID of the user’s PC in the background and applies permission level on the user.

Reusability, where the photo gallery, team members, and all the other tabs can be reused in other department for the same purpose as well.

Portability, since the project is done in web-based, employees can access them from anytime, anywhere. The portability function is important as SAE team members always move around in the production floor.

Therefore, after the testing and documentation of this project has been done, it will officially run in Intel Malaysia for supporting the SAE in daily operations.

8. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Across the journey of this 7-month internship program, the author would like to thank all his SAE team members in guiding and supporting him all the way till the end. Special acknowledgement to his supervisor, SAE team lead - SC Lai, Technical Lead – Joey Chan, and Manager, Kelvin Loh for their willingness to feedback on what he have done, give proper guidance, and pass down on various experience and networking opportunities to him. The author would like recognize both UTP and Intel Malaysia for all the supports that enable him to finish this Student Industrial Internship Program.

9. REFERENCES[1] Ho, Don 2011. About Notepad Plus Plus. Retrieved from

http://notepad-plus-plus.org/

[2] Introduction to Internet Information Services. Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Information_Services

[3] Introduction to Adobe Photoshop. Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adobe_Photoshop

[4] Goh, Eddy 2012. Data Analysis for UTP students. Intel Malaysia SAE weekly report.

[5] Goh, Eddy 2012. Features of SAE homepage. Intel Malaysia SAE weekly report.

[6] Goh, Eddy 2012. Features of SAE Cookbook page. Intel Malaysia SAE weekly report.

[7] Sparrow, Pena 2012. Characteristics of Good Software. Retrieved from http://www.ianswer4u.com/2011/10/characteristics-of-

good-software.html#axzz2FSfvO36i