Pharmacy management and control system

53 PHARMACY MANAGEMENT AND CONTROL SYSTEM Munasinghe, T.M. 1, Premachandra, S.K.A. 2, Hewagamage, C. 3 [email protected] 2achinth[email protected] 3champ[email protected] Background The Rajmalee Pharmacy is situated in Payagala city near the Galle Road and is considered as the largest Pharmacy store in this area. The organization handles processes such as inventory control, supplier management, daily transactions and reporting. Although the organization and its turnover are increasing day by day, this organization currently maintains manual records on all the processes. They are handled and documented manually which has currently become a complex task. They manually maintain two books (journals) to record the transactions. One book is to record purchase transactions from the suppliers and the other book is to record sales from the customers. The issue with maintaining manual records as such is the possibility of having errors. Duplication of records, data inconsistencies and other errors such as human errors can happen since the detection of errors is very hard through a manual system. A computerized information system is to be developed for the control of inventory, supplier management, and point of sales, with the possible intention of overcoming the major shortcomings above. System Analysis Problem Analysis The organization currently maintains manual records on all the processes which are handled and documented manually. They do not have any automated system. Manual books and ledgers maintained, leads to several problems, mainly inconsistencies and incorrect report generation. Among other issues are the high cost, low accuracy, low efficiency and confidentiality issues. 54 Requirement Analysis To overcome the above issues, an automated system would be developed under four modules, namely, inventory management, point of sales, product handling, and supplier management where various functions such as producing goods damaged and returned notes, creating sales orders, categorizing products and maintaining supplier records, respectively. Non - functional requirements too are paramount as the response time, reliability, high efficiency etc. should also be considered. Objectives of the Development Project Through the proposed systems the main objectives which are ordering necessary products from suppliers once the reorder level is reached, returning any damaged goods (if any) to the suppliers, issuing products to customers through orders and issuing receipts, maintaining daily collection reports, payment notes, Cashbook records, and building up long term relationships with suppliers are expected to be achieved. System Design User Interface design The proposed Graphical User Interfaces for the Pharmacy Management and Control System should be in such a way which is easily accessible and usable for a non - technical user, bringing in the designs with a collection of icons, buttons, dropdowns, and most importantly the easiness to navigate throughout the entire system with no or less heavy effort. The main Home interface depicts the principles used in the interface design. 55 Figure 1: Home interface Data Design The data design is concerned with establishing the connection between the data entities and the validation of the data entered into them. Primary keys and Foreign keys are used to create this relationship between entities, using an ER diagram to depict the connection of the entities and showcase the attributes of each entity. This helps overcome problems such as data duplication and anomalies in inserting, updating and deleting data. 56 Figure 2: ER diagram Process Design Process design attempts to represent the paths and flow of processes and their implications to the system, with the aid of use case diagrams, activity diagrams and sequence diagrams, highlighting the involvement of the user and the flow of activities in a process to a particular direction. One such diagram is a use case diagram which is shown below, representing one process of this system. 57 Figure 3: Use Case diagram System Development In this section, the programming codes used for the development of the system is highlighted. The development of Interfaces, the Database of the System, and also the connection string which is used to connect the database to the working front end of the system is built using multiple software development tools and platforms. User interfaces are the graphical representations of a system which an end-user interacts with, to fulfil the objectives of implementing the system. Therefore, the user interfaces should be developed in a way that they are easy to familiarize and operate with. 58 Application Development Tools Netbeans IDE 8.0.2 and MySQL Workbench 8.0 CE were the main application development tools used to develop this system. It should be noted that a Windows 8 or upper version is needed to implement the system System Testing The Black Box Testing method was used in this system to test the system. Black Box Testing is where the behaviour is determined by studying the System’s inputs and outputs. (Delivered from the program or component specification.) Accordingly, based on the sample test methodology and test cases used had the following: ● All Primary Keys of all tables are conditioned as NOT NULL which means all Primary Keys should have a value and cannot be empty. ● All Foreign Keys of all tables are conditioned as NOT NULL which means all Foreign Keys should have a value and cannot be empty. ● Certain attributes across all tables are defined along with a data type, therefore the respective data type should be used when entering records. ● Only the previously set Usernames and Passwords can be used to login to the system. Conclusion The system was successfully developed as per the intentions of the users were achieved. However, there was room for improvement and further enhancements as the users requested which would be completed in due time. Achievements and Limitations Replacing the existing manual system, achieving a high level of accuracy with the reduction of data inconsistencies, ability to serve customers faster, and the ability to monitor overall organizational business activities were among the achievements of the system. Not having a record of past customer purchase history, being a stand- 59 alone system with no web access, inability to handle the application remotely through the web or mobile were identified as limitations. Suggested Future Enhancements Introducing a Customer Management module which would be able to record past purchase history information of loyal customers, developing a mobile application so that the administrator would have remote access to use the system, and making amendments to the system where product expiration alerts will be generated are suggestions for further improvements. References Gaddis, T 2008, Starting out with Java, Pearson Education, New Jersey. Helmers, S 2015, Microsoft Visio 2016 - Step by step, Microsoft Press, Washington. Matthews, M, Cole, J & Gradecki, J, n.d. MySQL and Java Developer's Guide, Wiley Publishing, Inc., New York. MySql, 2020, MySQL 8.0 Reference Manual,<https://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/8.0/en>.