Huffman Trucking

Introduction
Huffman Trucking is quite a large company and has been around since the early 1900s. Back when the company started there was merely a single tractor trailer and now the company has seen quite an expansive growth throughout the years. With several types of trailers and large employee base the company has spread out and has facilities located all across the country from New Jersey to California. A little while back the Huffman Trucking Company consulted with another company known as Smith Systems Consulting. Smith Systems was hired on to develop entities and attributes for a database for the fleet truck maintenance, but was unable to complete the job successfully. A reliable database is needed to provide tracking of the scheduled and unscheduled maintenance for their fleet. The project will contain a database with forms, tables, queries, and reports which track maintenance records, inventory of parts, and any purchases from vendors. The entity relationship diagram (ERD) project will minimize down time of each truck in the fleet and ensure parts availability. The project will also minimize revenue loss due to availability of trucks, and each hub will be able to access this database. The overall objective is to bring that proposed database to life and allow Huffman Trucking Company to use that database across all of their various locations.

Setup & Planning

It is crucial all entities of Huffman Trucking contain a functional infrastructure or the means to put the appropriate infrastructure into operation in regards to hardware, licensing, and software design. Making sure these components will not limit or influence the ERD, the next step is to execute several tasks for a successful ERD. There is the potential for lack of 1

Huffman Trucking documentation. To ensure this does not happen, it is important to talk with key players and experts involved in the maintenance process to make sure everything is on the right track. The first requirement is to draft the ERD based on the business rules and entities that were captured by Smith Consulting (the company helping to gather business requirements). Each Huffman hub will use the database and will need to handle high volumes of data. Data anomalies (redundancies) will be eliminated by normalizing tables. The second requirement is to set up the ERD so there is an even balance of normalization and performance. The ERD can then be constructed an ERD in Microsoft Access. This maintenance system will require:

Inventory List - Reflects the status of available parts. Maintenance Schedules - Extends the life of the vehicles. On-Site Available Parts - Replacements will be available while vehicles are being serviced.

A well-developed maintenance system ensures inventory is sufficient, and there are enough parts on hand to handle scheduled and unscheduled maintenances. Used parts will need to be inputted into the database properly to keep accurate inventory of parts. The system will also trigger the order of parts as they are used, and anticipate that parts for upcoming maintenances are available.

Entity Relationship Diagram

It is essential to use Entity Relationship Diagrams so that Huffman Trucking's applications can be documented properly. The entities and attributes have already been created

Huffman Trucking by Smith Systems Consulting, the issue arises that there were no details or information on how they would be utilized in the database. The general purpose of this database is to ensure that maintenance is done regularly across all of the Fleet Trucks throughout every location. This will allow the company to lessen any downtime due to maintenance issues and to ensure that there are always parts at each location in order to repair these trucks and get them back on the road. Of course these factors will also result in minimizing the lost revenue for the company overall and be a positive reflection upon the company as a whole. The goal of these ERDs is to support this shared database that will be accessible across all of the various locations of the company and ensure the database will be successful. The database will change as the company grows and the needs of the business change and a good precaution would be to perform some sort of annual analysis of the database to ensure that the database is still meeting the companys needs.

ERD Structure
All databases must be linked across each of the various locations and the entity relationship diagram will show how the data will flow through each location and how it should be recorded as well. These diagrams will show the logical flow and also allow the company to see which would be the best way for the information to be stored and taken out of the database. The diagram will also display from the creation of the data and how it will be entered and following that how it relates to the databases in the other locations and its relationship to those tables. This also is assuming that Smith Systems Consulting was accurately interpreting all of the various entities and that the data from that will still be relevant. The Entity relationship diagram should be constructed using Microsoft Access and should reflect inventory, maintenance

Huffman Trucking schedules, and on-site available parts in order to ensure that each of these are being taken care of and allowing the company to plan ahead and be more efficient. As long as a well-developed system is put into place and a proper entity relationship diagram is drawn up with the criteria above, the new database should have no further issues.

Normalization
Using Microsoft Access, exclusive forms have been designed and developed for Huffman Trucking Company using the entities and attributes created by Smith Systems Consulting. The forms were created to facilitate the entry of data into the database and will streamline the process of entering the parts information, vendor information, vehicle and vehicle maintenance information, and all other related entities to the Huffman Trucking Project. It is important the Huffman Trucking Company vehicle maintenance relational database be normalized to the highest degree possible. Giving careful consideration to the Entity-Relationship Diagram (ERD) that was created for this project, a normalized relational database can be created. The normalization process will remove any anomalies and redundancies creating a database that is well joined and formed. The normalization will prove to be cost-effective by lowering memory space allocation by eliminating repeating data. Database normalization will also effectively store the data, thus decreasing CPU usage whenever data lookup or queries are to be done on the tables. Proper memory allocation and reduced CPU cycles will make Huffman Trucking Companys vehicle maintenance database easy to use and cost effective.

Huffman Trucking

Maintenance Normalization Process

Huffman Trucking Company requires a normalized database to properly maintain a record of each of the vehicles in the fleet and of the parts required to maintain those vehicles. A record of the scheduled maintenance as well as any repairs made to each vehicle must be kept. This information is vital to Huffman Trucking not only for safety and regulatory reasons but also for insurance purposes. Maintenance scheduling handling happens within the database using the existing query and report. Another benefit is the ability to create ad-hoc reports and queries that will provide cost analysis and allow Hoffman to forecast costs more efficiently. Huffman Trucking database management system can query whatever information the company needs at any given time, to create reports to plan future or upcoming expenses. Specifically designed output reports have been designed for the Huffman Trucking project that will meet or exceed all insurance company compliance issues. Because of the prior creation of an ERD and the normalization of the database each report will be relevant and complete for its intended purposes. A maintenance history report will be produced each time a vehicle requires scheduled maintenance. Additionally, part inventory and vendor reports will be created and can be produced at any time. Creation of reports also allows others besides database users to view the information contained in the database and to analyze it without the need to have database change access or understand the relationships structure.

Conclusion
Huffman Trucking will benefit greatly with a functioning database and ERD. The new system will minimize vehicle down time and ensure every fleet truck is meeting maintenance 5

Huffman Trucking requirements. Not only will Huffman be able to efficiently dispatch vehicles, it will also know exactly when a truck is due for maintenance while drastically increasing profitability. As Huffman trucking continues to grow, this database will allow the entire comany to thrive and prosper.

Huffman Trucking

References
Coronel, C., Morris, S., & Rob, P. (2013). Database systems: Design, implementation, and management (10th ed.). Boston, MA: Course Technology. Kroenke, D., & Auer, D. (2011). Database concepts, fifth edition. Pearson Education.