Mobile Device Solution for ANCAP and aeronautical industry on AS/400 technology

The National Administrative Office for Fuel, Alcohol and Portland Cement (“Administración Nacional de Combustibles, Alcohol y Portland” - ANCAP) is Uruguay’s multinational State company responsible for exploiting and managing the monopoly of national alcohols, fuels and Portland cement, as well as for importing, refining and selling petroleum byproducts. It is therefore the main fuel provider for the aeronautical industry. 
 

Due to the reliability and robustness of AS/400 (iSeries), ANCAP maintains its core system on this platform. However, the time came to make it compatible with systems providing the flexibility of mobile features and making it part of the dynamics of today’s digital world, in order to promptly reach end customers and internal users. So, based on ANCAP’s needs, GeoCom designed and developed an application for mobile and smart devices that interacts with the company’s invoicing system in a very agile manner. 

 

Data: before and after

 

The previous method implied manual calculations by operators, with the need to consider specific customers and price policies. They also applied worksheets for calculating the weight of fuels according to temperature and density, all of which is useful information for pilots. Worksheets and listings were issued on paper copies and required constant updates, in addition to the use of manual calculators.

All this brought along timing complications, though the greatest problem was the risk of errors in the data used and possible the consequences resulting from such errors. On one hand, mistakes in the entry of data for invoicing caused complaints by the airlines every time that those mistakes led to wrong charges for the fuel provided. On the other hand, pilots must know the weight of fuel for safety reasons that relate to the possibility of landing airplanes safely. Even when pilots are able to calculate this data on their own when they order the load of fuel, those responsible for supplying the fuel also have the obligation to provide their own calculations. This was another reason for implementing these calculations with a digital method, in real time, onsite, and connected to the central database.  
 

Having understood ANCAP’s requirements for a solution, GeoCom assigned two developers who took 300 hours of work for implementing the application that would interact with ANCAP’s system. They did it with GeneXus technology for Mobile Devices.
 

With this application, which was ready in just one-month’s time, it was possible to solve the issue of invoices for airplane fuel, with the added value of mobility and immediacy typical of our digital era. Now, upon providing fuel to airline or private airplanes, the operators at the Carrasco and Punta del Este International Airports load control data and information regarding the fuel provided into a very intuitive interface: product, liters, temperature and density, among other data. Once completed, this information is forwarded, by means of services, to the ANTARES system, where the invoice is issued and returned for printing. The application then prints the slip on a portable Bluetooth printer.

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This is another case where GeneXus enabled the modernization of a legacy system by generating an application that communicates smoothly with the database of the AS 400 platform, while also combining the existing and the new technologies in an efficient way.