CASE STUDY– SULTAN
QABOOS UNIVERSIT Y,OMAN
(SQU)
C A F E T E R I A
S E R V I C E S & H O S T E L
S E C U R I T Y
M A N A G E M E N T
Sultan Qaboos University is the realization of the promise
announced by His. Majesty Sultan Qaboos Bin Said during
the 10th anniversary of Oman’s National Day in 1980. Construction started in 1982 and the first Sultan Qaboos University students were enrolled in 1986. In accordance with the
Royal Directives of His Majesty, The University commenced
with five colleges; namely Medicine, Engineering, Agriculture,
Education and Science. Furthermore the College of Arts was
established in 1987, following the College of Commerce and
Economics which was developed in 1993. The College of
Law joined the University in 2006 and finally the College of
Nursing was established in 2008
PROBLEM:
PROBLEM Sultan Qaboos University (SQU) provides catering services to their students and staff and also provides hostel
facilities for the female students. There are students in excess over 45000 who avail catering and hostel services as per
different schemes and affiliated courses.
The catering services have been outsourced to catering contractors who manage around 35 canteens scattered around the
university campus. SQU wished to implement a solution that would ease the management of printing and issuing of coupons,
reconciling contractor claims and also help them manage access to female students’ hostels.
Need was to centrally maintain the database of all students records and verify online with central server on ORACLE database and also to trigger printer coupons based on authenticity.
BioEnable Technologies Pvt Ltd,
www.bioenabletech.com
THE
CHALLENGE
C A F E T E R I A
S E R V I C E S & H O S T E L
S E C U R I T Y
M A N A G E M E N T
SQU’s old system issued pre-printed coupons to students depending
on their eligibility which, the students exchange for free meals in the
canteens. Different coupons were used for breakfast, lunch and dinner.
The catering subcontractors used these coupons to present monthly
payment claims. SQU reconciled contractors’ claims against their record of coupons issued and remitted payments to contractors accordingly. Some of the limitations of the current manual system were
•
Managing the issue of coupons to students and maintaining the
records of the same was time consuming, complex and error prone
•
Reconciliation of contractor claims with SQU’s record of coupons
issued was also time consuming, complex and error prone.
• The coupons issued to students were being misused
F E M A L E
R E S I D E N T
Each female student was required to mark their attendance before
retiring at the end of the day. The attendance record was used to ensure the safety and security of female residential students. This was a
manual system and had the following limitations:
• There were be proxy signing.
• It was difficult to ensure all students were signing in regularly
• It was difficult to determine those students who were present in the
hostel premises from those who were not.
S E C U R I T Y
S Y S T E M
THE
SOLUTION
After extensive study and analysis, the IT Group determined system
that a Biometric Fingerprint Recognition Technology based solution.
The canteen and hostels will be equipped with FRTs and printers
(printers in canteens only) that will verify the students’ identity using
their fingerprint as the basis for such verification.
For the canteens, Oracle based back end systems will validate the student’s eligibility to each meal session (breakfast, lunch, dinner) and
automatically print coupons based on the success of the validation.
The objectives of the proposed solution are:
•
Provide SQU with a fast and efficient mechanism to manage and
maintain records of meals availed by students
•
Reduce the complexity and time consumed in reconciling contractor claims against meals availed
•
Minimize the potential for misuse of meal coupons in canteens
•
Eliminate proxy signing in the hostels
•
Have current and accurate information on the IN status of female
residential students
SYSTEM ARCHITECTURE
As per mandatory requirement of SQU, Five Fingerprint per student was taken
taking the total count of fingerprint database to over 2,00,000 fingerprints. To
handle this huge database and also to provide matching in fastest possible time
frame Bioenable Followed AFIS architecture with database designed on ORACLE
FP Data Management
Matching and Reporting
Browser interface
Event recording
DB Server
Work Station
Browser Interface on
general workstations
Web Based Reporting
S/w
LAN /TCP/IP
Network
Location 4
Location 3
Location 1
Location 2
IMPLEMENTATION
DETAILS
Initially as a pilot a complete working system in the
main student cafeteria was implemented. There were
12 biometric readers located in the entrance areas to
the cafeteria, and daily these network attached systems authorize more than 3000 meals. After the pilot
the total system was implemented including the following
• Supply of over 120 Biometric Fingerprint Recognition Terminals
• Supply of over 120 Receipt Printers
• Supply of 50 Hamsters (USB Based Fingerprint
Scanners) used for registration
•
Customization and Development of SQU specific
programs
•
Installation of equipment in designated areas
C U R R E N T
S T A T U S :
BioEnable provided complete turnkey solution for this requirement and its working satisfactorily for last 5 years
BioEnable Technologies Pvt Ltd,
www.bioenabletech.com