PICK UP AND LAUNDRY ONLINE
SERVICES MANAGEMENT PROJECT
PROPOSAL TO ERADICATE
DISORGANIZATION, MIX-UPS, LOSS OF
ITEMS AND ENHANCE MANAGEMENT
OF DAY-TO-DAY ACTIVITIES IN THE
LAUNDRY BUSINESS.
ASHLEY NASHIPAE KIBOI
BOBITNRB698419
April 7, 2023
ABSTRACT
The age of the internet and smart applications has created a great challenge
for the owners of companies and institutions providing services of all kinds, as
the internet applications have created a new virtual world that is not limited
by time or place facilitating many services and developing many areas.
Development of smart application languages like android among others
give great potential for its proximity to human language. In this project I will
talk about the production of an android application linked to a web control
panel that provides services directed to the service sector and I specifically
mention public washing centers and study the system from where the creation
and technology used then address the target tree market needs and other
services
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0.1
0.1.1
INTRODUCTION
Background
Romans were the first civilization recorded to have employ dry cleaning [2]
Most day-to-day dry cleaning businesses still rely heavily on manual labor
especially the manual tagging, cataloging and searching of hundreds of customers’ clothes.
While digital automation allows countries and businesses to produce goods
and services at alarming scale, increasing labor productivity and expanding
operations at marginal cost, this could minimize the need for manual workers. Recent advances in automation thus have the potential to affect a radical
reshaping of work [1].
The existing systems in our indigenous environment require numerous
paper forms, with data stores spread all over the laundry management infrastructure. Information in this type of system is often incomplete, inaccurate,
lost in transit during computation and sometimes duplicated [2]. Therefore,
the business workflow is low. As multiple copies of the same information
exist in the laundry firm data, which would lead to data inconsistencies,
problems such as mix-up with customer clothing, loss of customer clothing,
late delivery, inability to account for certain customer items, inefficient organization methods (cataloging), insufficient collation of reports for managerial
or company use, lack of real-time data back-up in case of mishaps, tend to
arise from the existing system and the manual approach.
The aim of this study is to leverage on this to implement a version of
the proposed management system to help tackle some of the main issues in
laundry system domain. Electronic management systems aid easy retrieval
and storage and manipulation of records. A significant part of any laundry
operation involves the effective management and timely retrieval of data.
This information could include but is not limited to; customer information,
clothing records, user information, delivery fee and retrieval option, user
scheduling as regards customer details and dealings in service rendered, also
the products package waiting list. All of this information must be managed
efficiently to minimize loss and maximize available resources in the organization. The use of technology goes a long way in speeding and easing up
processes significantly, therefore, technology ought to be used where possible.
A laundry management system is a system that manages laundry related
services for customers, providing ease of access through signup(s) and log2
in(s). With this system, if managed properly, all cleaning services are readily
available to consumers at all times. A computerized system in managing
laundry is one that is to serve the consumer and the service provider well.
This online laundry management system is aimed to ease management of
laundry firms, automating all operations in the process and making it more
efficient. It largely aims at stabilizing, standardizing and consolidating data,
ensuring data security, integrity, eliminating inconsistencies.
0.1.2
Problem Statement
Till date, most laundry firms in the western part of Africa use the manual
means or partial-automation to process their customer service and business
information. Therefore, the data is inappropriately managed, and generally,
management through manual methods is usually laborious and with many
setbacks. In manual method or partial-automation, mode of operation is
slow, there is also a needless task of taking and documenting customer record
repeatedly which in the long run creates redundancy in the system.
Other problems that arise from the use of this manual system include
loss of customer clothing, inability to account for misplacements, customer
mix-ups and late delivery from failed delivery prompts by employees and
unavailability of secured back up in case of file or information loss. Hence,
the reason for an online system to facilitate laundry management system
0.1.3
Objectives
Main objective
The main objective of this system is to keep records of Dry cleaners management, their whereabouts, tax audit records and financial plans.
Objectives
To improve accessibility to information for institution.
To create a user friendly system that is easy to understand and use.
T o improve on backup of data.
To improve on keeping records.
To improve on security.
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0.1.4
Justification of specific objectives
Due to the fact that the system is online, any information needed by the user
or the admin can be searched and found
Saves on time.
The proposed system promotes a change from the cabinet system to an
online database system that will be more economical.
A user friendly system to enables users understand instructions easily
enabling ease of use.
Providing secure authentication to only enable access by authorized persons.
0.1.5
Scope
The Laundry Management System is designed for any Laundry firm to replace their existing manual, paper-based system. The new system is in form
of an e-registration system to control the following; customer information,
products, services, users, carts, and receipt. These services are to be provided
in an efficient, cost-effective manner, with the goal of reducing the delay and
resources currently required for such tasks as clothes details are bounded to
a particular customer with a given id. Since the existing system makes use
of tedious administrative tasks, lots of paperwork and time, in which full
information cannot be gotten from busy customers.
0.1.6
Limitations
Speed of data processing and retrieval of records is slow and time consuming.
Redundancy of data may occur while details are manually entered more
that once.
In case of a disaster like flood or fire, data would be lost and there is no
backup.
A lot of space is needed to cater for the volumes of receipt book hence
congestion.
Prone to mistakes since the whole system is operated manually.
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CHAPTER TWO
0.2
0.2.1
LITERATURE REVIEW
Theoretical Review
Romans were the first civilization recorded to have employ dry cleaning [2]
Most day-to-day dry cleaning businesses still rely heavily on manual labor
especially the manual tagging, cataloging and searching of hundreds of customers’ clothes. A basic cleaners’ business consists of tagging clothes, cleaning the clothes, cataloging and grouping the clean clothes based on the tags
assigned to the clothes and the customer searching for customer’s clothes,
recording customer information over and over again.
These manuals work but are prone to errors such as mix-ups, loss of
customer items and delay in delivery. This is the main reason as to automate
the laundry system for control and coordinating and also to improve job
delivery.
The laundry management system permits business owners to trail large
amounts of specific laundry items faster with high efficiency. By automating
the business there’s improvement in time management and better decision
making. By using the laundry management system, it is easy to automatically keep tabs on clothing linens rags and other items automating inventory
process and accounting too.
0.2.2
Features of a laundry management system
A laundry management system includes the following;
a) Point of Sale (POS)
Laundry management system enables you to communicate seamlessly
with the customers via messaging systems. It prevents employees from gaining access to sensitive business data. Dry cleaning POS software sets your
customized services, garment lists, and price list. The software keeps track
of workload to give a fixed delivery rate, does automatic email and short
messaging services (SMS) reminders to the customer.
b) Store Management
The laundry management system maintains a database of the employees
that display role-oriented tasks to the employees. It also stores and sustains
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customer information, service preferences, and communication preferences.
c) Home Pickup and Delivery The auto-routing feature of laundry management system ensures you to make the deliveries and pickups on time.
The integration of laundry management system software with google maps
renders a best in class navigation service for pickup and delivery.
d) Acquisition and Retention
The laundry management system creates and assigns prepaid packages
to consumers to enhance customer loyalty. Commercial laundry software
solutions provide personalized customer service to make customers feel valued
and know their experience to improve the service. Laundry management
system software applies flat percentage discounts to reward all high paying
customers.
e) Analytics With dry cleaning software, you can track the health of the
business and comprehend by what percentage the company is progressing.
The graphical representation of the business operations in the form of graphs
and pie charts provides better insight into the market. It calculates the
customer satisfaction index and compares International Journal of Computer
(IJC) (2021) Volume 41 No 1, pp 25-35 28 business performances based on
days, weeks, months, and years.
f) Accounting and Reporting Laundry management system software ensures automatic payment reconciliation from your bank and different gateways. It keeps track of all the operational and non-operational expenses and
creates a customized report with date, order filters, and customers. The system generates accessible accounting reports and creates ledgers to manage
and track all the direct and indirect expenses and income.
g) Workplace Management The laundry management system categorizes
garments based on due dates and services. It aids you in apprehending the
status of your workplace and minimizes the turnaround time.
h) Multi-store Management With laundry management system software,
you can supervise your store on a single platform. It enables you to monitor
how your store is performing in a clarified view and edit price list and garment
list as per your business requirement.
i) Hardware It is possible to integrate various equipment with the dry
cleaning software. It could tag printers to barcode the garment and packing
sticker for finished orders. Several printers and scanner also incorporated to
streamline the workflow.
j) Sales and Marketing Laundry management system software assists in
promotion as well. Sending promotional messages and feature rich mails at
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an impressive rate to the customer will ensure retention and engagement.
k) Security Commercial laundry software solutions avail uncompromised
protection to its users. You can oversee employee activities at all times with
the extensive activity log. It takes the back up of your business data daily
for future references.
0.2.3
Empirical review
Reference [2] proposed a system to improve receipt processing and alleviate customer information loss. The research adopted the use of a laundry
database management system to track laundry procedures, transactions, inventory and customer information. The system does not include notifying
the customers about the laundry process.
The method adopted to solve a problem of loss of customer items was to
develop an application to determine the number of clothes from consumers,
catalogue obtained items, document them in details, notifying both the firm
staff and consumer of the documentation and assigning unique identification
modes to each user to enable easy tracking and monitoring of clothing.
Reference [4] proposed a management system for laundry services to
tackle loss of customer items by dry cleaners and untimely retrieval of clothes.
The method adopted in this research to solve this problem was to develop
an application to determine the number of clothes collected from consumers,
catalog obtained items, document them in details, notifying both the firm
staff and consumer of the documentation and assigning unique identification
modes to each user to enable easy tracking and monitoring of clothing.
The result obtained was the successful implementation of a mini laundry
management system with the exception of cataloging function for customer
items, data backup and retrieval. Generally, review shows there are alternating solutions rather than a comprehensive one.
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0.3
METHODOLOGY
In software engineering and project management, a methodology is a codified
set of practices (sometimes accompanied by training materials) formal educational programs, worksheets, and diagramming tools) that may be reputably
carried out to produce software.
The agile model was adopted in this study. The functional requirements
of the system include user registration and log in, cataloging, placing order,
receipting and reporting. The implementation tools include PHP (Hypertext
Preprocessor), MYSQL (My Structured Query language), HTML (Hyper
Text Mark-up Language) and JS(JavaScript)
Figure 1: Agile methodology
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0.3.1
Data collection
Primary data
Primary data are those which are collected for the first time and so are in
crude form. But secondary data are those which have already been collected.
Primary data are always collected from the source.
Interviews
This method was used to gather information from those who work with the
manual dry cleaning system where traditionally a person would go to the
dry cleaning shop to make a booking. The attendants said that the old
system actually did not bring lot customers. But with the explanation of the
new system they actually agreed that it would be good. Interviews provide
immediate response and helped the project designer to acquire accurate and
first –hand information from the interviewees who are much aware about the
operation of the existing system, which was under investigation.
Observation
This method was used in the analysis and investigation of the current it
was used simple because it proved to be cheapest in terms of collecting data
compared to other methods. During the project research. I observed dry
cleaning services here in Nairobi to obverse how activities are conducted
during diagnosis; researcher also participated as a patient and observed and
experienced all the difficulties posed by the current system.
Questionairre
This is a very commonly used method of collecting primary data. Here is
information collected through a set of questionnaire, a questionnaire is a
document prepared by the investigators containing set of questions. These
questions relate to the problem of inquiry directly or indirectly. Here first
the questionnaire re mailed or hand –delivered to the informants with formal
request to answer that question and send them back. For better response the
investigator should bear the postal charges. The questionnaire should carry
a polite note explaining the aims and objectives of the inquiry, definition
of various terms and information as well as the name of the informants,
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if required. The success of this method greatly depends upon the way in
which questionnaire is drafted. So the investigator must be very careful
while framing the questions.
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Secondary data
Are second information. They are not collected from the source as the primary data. In other words, secondary data are those which have already
been collected. So they may be relatively less accurate than primary data.
Secondary are generally used when the time of inquiry is short and the accuracy of the enquiry can be compromised to some extent. Secondary data
can be collected from number of sources which can broadly be classifies into
two categories. Published and unpublished.
Published sources Mostly secondary data are collected from published
sources. Some important sources of published data are the followings.
1. Published reports of central and State Institutions and local bodies.
2. Statistical abstract, census reports and other reports published by different ministries of the institution.
3. Official publications of the foreign institutions.
4. Reports and publication of trade associations, chambers of commerce,
financial institutions etc.
5. Journals –magazines –business times in Kenya.
6. works if research institutions and universities etc.
Unpublished Statistical data can also be collected from various unpublished sources. Some of the important unpublished sources from which secondary data can be collected are:
1. The research works carried out by scholars, teachers and professionals.
2. The records maintained by private firms and business enterprise. They
may like to publish the information considering them as business secret.
3. Records and statistics maintained by various departments and offices of
the central and state institutions, corporations, undertaking.
Secondary data re already collected information. They might have been
collected for some specific purposes. So they must be used with caution. It is
generally very different to verify such information to find out inconsistencies,
errors, omissions etc. therefore scrutiny of secondary is essential. Because
the data might be inaccurate, unsuitable or inadequate. Thus it is very risky
to use statistics collected by other people unless they have been thoroughly
edited and are found reliable, adequate and suitable for the purpose.
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0.3.2
System design
System model
Below is a model of how the system is intended to work.
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Figure 2: System model
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Context diagram
This Context diagram describes the overview of the system work. There are
three entities involved that are customer, staff, and admin. The customer
can make an booking to the system While the staff site, they can see the
booking details from the customer then update the process booking in the
system. Admin can manage the data about the system. With this data, the
admin can update and delete information users also can view all report
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Figure 3: context diagram
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0.3.3
Input and Output forms
Input forms
a) login forms This is the form where people interacting with the system re
first authenticated so that they can be able to use the system b) financial
forms This form will be sued to obtain all financial details of all the Dry
cleaners management c) user details form This form will be used to save the
user details into the database. d) Bookings form
Output reports
The system generates receipts on all reservations which can in turn be used by
admin, finance manager and the client for future reference. Outputs reports
will be:
A Receipt This is the this is the receipt that shows what service and
payment have been made for the system.
B Finance reports This is a report that would generated when the finance
manager generates for all activities for a given duration.
0.3.4
Database design
The general theme behind a data base is to handle information as an integrated whole. A data base is a collection of interrelated data stored with
minimum redundancy to serve many users quickly and effectively. After designing input and output, the analyst must concentrate on data base design
or how data should be organized around user requirements. The general objectives is to make information access, easy quick, inexpensive and flexible
for others. During data base design the following objectives are concerned.
• Controlled redundancy –they would be no duplication of data in the
database
• Data independence – data in the database would not mainly be used with
other data in the database unless if it’s a foreign key.
• Accurate and integrating – data saved would be accurate due to validation.
• More information at low cost- traditionally data was saved in books which
means they had to pay the person who was going to fill data in the books
and plus the books.
• Recovery from failure – due to its capacity to backup data the database
would recover from any failure of the database.
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• Privacy and security-the data base would be having authentication modules
to keep away unauthorized personnel.
• Performance – with the database being reliable the performance would be
much efficient
• Ease of learning and use- the database is very easy to use and to learn.
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0.3.5
Tables
Below are tables to be used
Field name
ID
Password
Email
Name
Table 1: login table
Data type and size
Int(20)
Varchar(20)
Varchar(20)
Varchar(20)
Constraint
Primary key
Not null
Foreign key
Not null
Table 2: user details table
Field name Data type and size Constraint
ID
Int(20)
Primary key
First name Varchar(20)
Not null
Last name
Varchar(20)
Not null
Email
Varchar(20)
Foreign key
National ID Int(20)
Not null
Phone no
Varchar(20)
Not null
Address
Varchar(20)
Not null
Field name
Service type
Price
ID
Table 3: service table
Data type and size Constraint
Text
Primary key
Text
Not null
Int(20)
Foreign key
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0.3.6
Software testing
When all the module has to be done as a full system, the system testing has
been carried out. This testing phase will test the system to check the error
and ensure the function runs well as a whole system. Any error or bugs will
be fixed and repeated testing the system until all the functions can be used.
Deployment phase
This phase is when the system has successfully done and fulfilled all the objectives. The system can be deployed and finally, the system will be published
to the user for use as their need.
Review phase
This phase also gets feedback and review from the user for the maintenance.
This phase will, follow-up with the user to upgrade the system to another
version in the future.
0.3.7
Project requirement
In this project, the requirement includes two parts which are software requirement and hardware requirement. The project requirements to make
sure the completion process well and every aspect requirement that needs to
be used for the implementation phase. This also ensure the correct usage of
the application.
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Hardware requirements
No
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
Table 4: hardware requirements
Hardware
Description
Laptop
MacBook Pro
Processor
2.9 GHz Intel Core i7
Memory
4 GB 1600 MHZ DDR
Operating system MacOS Mojave
System type
64 bit operating system
Pendrive
16GB
Mobile phone
IPhone 8plus
software requirements
Table 5: software requirements
No Software
Description
Used to code the program, especially
1
Notepad++
connecting application to database
2
Java,XML,PHP
Programming language
3
MYSQL
Database for system
4
Microsoft Word 2016 Used to do documentation of application
A browser to run the local host
5
Google chrome
and search for information
20