Woodway Engineering online lightbar build system

Woodway Engineering is the UK’s largest manufacturer and supplier of electronic equipment for emergency vehicles. The core of their business is lightbars which are typically fitted to roof of police vehicles, ambulances, fire engines and many other vehicles.

Each lightbar is custom built to suit a particular customer requirement, no two lightbars are either built the same or cost the same. Customers can choose: voltage, length, type of display, display technology, type of signs, flashing or static, speaker or not and many other options. In total over 4 million different permutations are possible. Building lightbars, however requires a great deal of knowledge as not all permutations are allowed. For example: if a speaker is chosen the centre two light cavities on the rear are not available; or on a dual height lightbar if a halogen light is chosen on the bottom row, LED lights are not allowed on the top row. For this reason building lightbars to customer specifications was left to a small number of experienced engineers. These engineers would specify the lightbar producing the bill of materials and drawing necessary for manufacturing and quotation purposes..

Support for Organisations were asked to design a system which would enable lightbars to be configured by anyone regardless of previous skills. The objectives of the system were as follows:

The database design system approach

Initially it was conceived that the system would be designed as a standard network based database system. Whilst in the planning stage, Support For Organisations recommended that a web based system would have the added benefit of providing key customers with direct access to modify the system themselves. The system was therefore designed with a SQL database and PHP driven website interface. To prevent unauthorised access, “account holder” authentication was applied. For ease of use a question based interface was created, users are asked a series of questions. As questions are answered the cost and “completeness” of the lightbar is built up.

The completed system has been in operation since 2004 and has enabled Woodway to produce quotations quicker, without error. Even more importantly Woodway are able to produce quotations and manufacturing drawings even when their lightbar experts are absent.

Example screenshots

The images below are a small sample of example screenshots to show the database system user interface

The web based user interface early on in the lightbar building process. Inviting the user to select the end caps required.

Further in the process of configuring the lightbar, the user is being invited to decide which type of front display is required.

Nearing completion the user is being invited to select the type of lamp to be fitted to the final cavity.