Seeking Supplier Evaluation Database

[Henriqued]

Does anyone have or know about a database (possibly in Access) which could be used for evaluation of suppliers/subcontractors?

Thanks in advance
Henrique

Henrique,

If Access is enough,

Why not have you IT division develop an original database?
Data structure will be easy to work out, given you criteria used for supplier evaluation.

Regards,

Anton

[Chris May]

Henrique,

Before you throw some software at the problem, have you got a manual system that works??
Have you got that many suppliers??

As long as you have the quantity of suppliers to justify the database management, then fine.

If you have a manual system with your selection and evaluation criteria defined, then the easiest way would be to lay this out using Excel to generate your "table" and then using the Access wizard, import this table into Access.

It is not quite as easy as that and some refinements will be required, but you could be up and running within a couple of hours.

I have no real knowledge of database creation but even I can get what I require PDQ......so it cant be that difficult.

Give it a go..............

Regards,

Chris

[M Greenaway]

Henrique

As Chris has pointed out MS Access can pretty much do any database that you require.

I would personally recommend that anyone working in quality learn Access, as a big part of our jobs is the collation, analysis and reporting of data and Access can be a great tool in achieving this efficiently and effectively.

It is worthy to note that many off the shelf software is actually developed using Access. Now call me tight but I would much rather do it myself than fork out over the odds on a bit of software that probably doesnt do what I want anyway.

[Marc]

Just bumping this up. If anyone has an Access database they would like to share, I'm sure a lot of folks would appreciate it!

[Henriqued]

Originally Posted by Marc

Just bumping this up. If anyone has an Access database they would like to share, I'm sure a lot of folks would appreciate it!

Thanks, Marc for this contribution. I'll be waiting for any answers...

[Randy Stewart]

Just one caution on Access. We have run into a problem with upgrading versions. We currently have 2 pc's that are running on Windows '98 because the Access data bases used for Inspection Request Forms and Calibration have so many macros custom written that they will not upgrade to newer versions. We are currently correcting the problem but it has brought up security issues.
So if you are going to create a program stay away from putting in too many custom macros. The software has been improved over the years making it much easier to write code for without jeapardizing the upgrades. I am still able to use the data base I set up for our documentation and it is 5 years old. I stayed with the macros that were available inside Access and they have been no problem in upgrading.

[tomvehoski]

Originally Posted by Randy Stewart

Just one caution on Access. We have run into a problem with upgrading versions. We currently have 2 pc's that are running on Windows '98 because the Access data bases used for Inspection Request Forms and Calibration have so many macros custom written that they will not upgrade to newer versions. We are currently correcting the problem but it has brought up security issues.
So if you are going to create a program stay away from putting in too many custom macros. The software has been improved over the years making it much easier to write code for without jeapardizing the upgrades. I am still able to use the data base I set up for our documentation and it is 5 years old. I stayed with the macros that were available inside Access and they have been no problem in upgrading.

Randy,

I also had a problem a few years ago upgrading an Access 97 database to Access 2000. It had several 1000 lines of custom code. It would crash when converting to 2000. Finally traced it to an old line of unused code that never even ran, but when the upgrade tried to compile, it hit an error and crashed. Once I used the COMPILE command in 97, it found the error and notified me (Access 2000 just locked up). Since it was unused I just deleted the module and then it converted fine. Has been running for about 5 years now without problems.

Not sure if this is your problem, but you might want to try it. I always work on a copy of the datbase, just in case. To compile you have to get into some of the code. If you just use the wizards and don't normally edit code, the easiest thing to do is create a new module. Then select Debug - Compile All Modules from the menu. It will check all code - even stuff that never gets called or executed - and will notify you of any errors.

I also recall several issues upgrading from Access 7.0 (I think) to 97. Some of the command structures changed and I had to go through and modify code to add or remove periods or quote marks or something. I think going straight to 2000 eliminates the problem, but I am not sure.

Hope this is useful,

Tom