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Market Return System for 
The Maliban Milk Products (Pvt) Ltd
W K B Nirosh Anton Fernando
Registration No: 108555T
LIBRARY
UNIVERSITY OF MORATUWA, SRI LANKA
MORATUWA
University of Moratuwa
107138
Superviser(s): Mr. D. K. Withanage
oAugust 2013
03 /C\2 &
“This dissertation is submitted in partial fulfillment of the 
requirement of the Degree of MSc in Information Technology
of
the University of Moratuwa”
107138
Declaration
“I certify that this dissertation does not incorporate, without acknowledgement, any 
material previously submitted for a Degree or Diploma in any University and to the best 
of my knowledge and belief, it does not contain any material previously published or 
written by another person or myself except where due reference is made in the text, I also 
hereby give consent for my dissertation, if accepted, to be made available for 
photocopying and for interlibrary loans, and for the title and summary to be made 
available to outside organizations”
Student Signature 
Student Name 
Registration Number
W K B Nirosh Anton Fernando
108555T
Supervisor Signature 
Supervisor Name Mr. D.K. Withanage
Acknowledgements
It is my pleasure to thank and pay my gratitude to Mr. D. K. Withanage who supervised 
me with valuable comments, guidance, assistance and encouragement throughout this 
project.
I would like to pay my gratitude to all lecturers who taught subjects in my MSc degree 
programme. The things I have learnt in subjects helped me in many ways throughout this 
project.
Sincere thanks to all of my fellow mates at MSc programme whom I have received 
support or not in make this project a success.
Abstract
Maliban Milk Products (Private) Limited (founded in 1997), is a subsidiary of the Maliban Group 
of Companies, and as at date, it is the second market leader in the relevant industry in Sri Lanka. 
While the management was ambitious of pushing it towards a higher market segment, it was 
simultaneously constrained with issues over obtaining reliable and accurate data for more 
informed and enlightened decision making for achieving its goals.
The main constraint was market returns that stood at 7% of total sales. Apart 
from the loss caused thereby to the company, the management was conscious of its added 
negative impacts in causing end-user dissatisfaction and distrust that could greatly hinder 
management’s efforts to further boost sales.
From the inception, Maliban Milk has never had a proper effective system for 
recording and monitoring especially market returns. This frustrated the management’s efforts to 
ascertain and address issues pertaining to high rate of returns. Maliban Milk depended on its 
installed Infor System 21 as its ERP Application. Although this was further supplemented with 
MS Excel based worksheets and manual paper based records maintained separately by Finance 
and Quality Assurance Departments, they failed to provide the management requirements for 
reliable information; so much so, that the identical query posed at two different times for detailed 
breakdowns of market returns involving comparisons and combinations sometimes yielded highly 
diverse results!
It was in this backdrop that the management finally decided to discard its existing 
market returns monitoring systems and get the correct type of Application that would be an exact 
fit to catering to its total requirements of accurate and reliable information expeditiously.
Several options embracing different models, modules and prototypes were 
examined at depth not only for efficiency and accuracy, but also for financial and related 
economic costs involved in installation and maintenance including scope for accommodating 
changes as and when necessary in the foreseeable future.
Finally, a Maliban Milk Market Return System with a graphical user interface 
was installed and is now fully operative (along with Infor System 21) yielding satisfactory results 
up to now in catering to total requirements of data and information not only for head office, but 
also for Distributors/Customers too.
u
This new system implemented not only retrieves data inputs from the System 21 
application, but also updates outputs into that System. This application works on the Java 
programming language. Therefore Unified Modeling Language was used for system analysis and 
design. It is capable of being viewed by the Quality Assurance and Finance departments, and also 
this furnishes a variety of reports to Company Management.
All relevant aspects and angles pertaining to the above matters are covered in this 
Project Report in greater detail including a separate chapter on what appears to remain to be done 
for the future.
111
Contents
Page
01Chapter 1 Introduction
01Preamble1.1
011.2 Background and Motivation
03Aim and Objectives1.3
051.4 Solution
061.5 Summary.
Existing Systems 07Chapter 2
07Introduction2.1
072.2 Market Return Process
082.3 Infor System 21 ERP
09Other Applications.2.4
102.5 Summary
Technology AdoptedChapter 3 11
11Introduction3.1
3.2 Software development process models 11
3.2.1 The Waterfall approach 12
3.2.2 Evolutionary Development 13
3.2.3 Component Based Software Engineering (CBSE) 14
Software Analysis and Design Methodologies3.3 15
iv
153.3.1 Structured System Analysis and Design Methodology.
3.3.2 Object Oriented Analysis and Design.......................... .
3.3.3 Rapid Application Development...................................
3.4 Software process iteration...........................................................
3.4.1 Incremental delivery......................................................
15
16
16
16
173.4.2 Spiral Development
173.5 Summary
18Chapter 4 The Approach
18Introduction4.1
184.2 Inputs for MMRS.
4.3 Output of MMRS. 19
194.4 Process
20Types of Users4.5
204.6 Features of the MMRS
214.7 Summary
Chapter 5 Analysis and Design 22
22Introduction5.1
5.2 Feasibility Analysis 22
5.2.1 Economical Feasibility 23
5.2.2 Technical Feasibility 23
5.2.3 Operational Feasibility 23
5.2.4 Resource Feasibility 24
v
24Software Specification5.3
255.3.1 Functional Requirements.
265.3.2 Non-Functional Requirements
26Unified Modeling Language (UML)5.4
275.4.1 Use Case Diagram
295.4.2 Activity Diagram
315.4.3 Sequence Diagram.
325.4.4 Class Diagram.
34System Design.5.5
355.5.1 Design Considerations
365.5.2 Major Elements of System Design
38User Interface Design5.6
385.6.1 Tips and Techniques
405.6.2 UI Design Principles
415.6.3 Concluding Remarks
Database Design 415.7
5.7.1 Logical Database Design 42
5.7.2 Physical Database Design. 43
435.8 Summary
References5.9 44
Chapter 6 Implementation 45
Introduction.6.1 45
VI
456.2 Software
456.2.1 NetBeansIDE
466.2.2 MySQL.
466.2.3 Jasper Reports
6.3 47Hardware Requirements
6.4 Flow Charts 47
6.5 Algorithms 49
6.5.1 Validate a date 49
6.6 Market Return 51
6.6.1 Market Return Note Entry process sequence 51
6.7 Summary 54
Chapter 7 Evaluation and Testing 56
7.1 Introduction 56
Evaluation Process7.2 56
Artifacts and Deliverables of Evaluation7.3 57
7.4 Testing 57
7.4.1 Verification 58
7.4.2 Validation 59
7.4.3 Test Strategy 59
7.4.4 Test Plan 60
7.5 Input Data Testing 62
7.5.1 New Return Note Creation 62
7.5.2 Sign on to MMRS 63
vu
637.6 Summary
64Chapter 8 Conclusion and Further work
648.1 Introduction
648.2 Achievements of objectives
658.3 Problems encountered
668.4 Limitations of the solution
668.5 Further Work
668.6 Summary
Appendix A 
Appendix B
Individual Contribution to the Project 67
71
List of Figures 71
List of Tables 71
List of Acronyms and Abbreviations 72
Appendix C 
Appendix D
References 73
MMRS User’s Manual 75
Sign on to MMRS.................................................
1.1 Market Returns Main Menu.....................
Market Return Menu...............................................
2.1 Market Return Note New Entry...................
2.2 Market Return Note Enquiry........................
2.2.1 Return Note Number Enquiry..........
2.2.2 Return Note Enquiry for Date Range
2.2.3 Return Notes Range........................
2.2.4 Return Notes Enquiry for Customer.
1 75
76
2 76
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81
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85
VIII
862.2.5 Product/Defect Reason Summary „
2.2.6 Return Notes Summary for 2 Years
2.3 Market Return Note Modify Rows..............
2.4 Market Return Note Modify.........................
2.5 Market Return Note Delete............................
2.6 Exit from the MMRS ...................................
Enquiries Menu.........................................................
3.1 Product Enquiry...........................................
3.1.1 Minor Group....................................
3.1.2 Product Description..........................
3.2 Customer Enquiry........................................
3.2.1 Entire Customer Name...................
3.2.2 Customer Name Content.................
Updates Menu.............................................................
4.1 Database backup...........................................
4.2 Add New Defect Reason.............................
4.3 Update System 21 Customers........................
4.4 Update System 21 Products..........................
4.5 Update Customer Alias Name......................
4.6 Update System 21 files
4.6.1 By Return Note Number
4.6.2 By Customer Number
User Details Menu.....................................................
Change Current User Password....................
5.2 Add New User to MMRS
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4. 100
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5. 107
5.1 107
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