Shahnawaz Limited Pakistan –  A Company Report

Executive Summary:

Shahnawaz Limited computer division is providing private and public sectors with different kinds of computer equipment’s as well as with different software projects. In hardware it is providing BULL and NEC computers. In software projects, which is the main reason behind the success of Shahnawaz Limited computer division, it is  producing different projects like Payroll system, accounting system, Pension system, T.V license fee collection & revenue accounting, Student data bases and data communication, General ledger and Inventory status reporting system , Sales tax, Revenue collection and Monitoring system. In their own department they are using RISC Based system Power PC. 6.xx FROM Bull, CISC Based Intel Pentium, 486 based PC from Acer and NEC, Dot MATRIX LASER PRINTER FROM NEC and LINE PRINTERS from Genicom. In their own department they have Unix (ATX) & Xenix, Windows 95,98 and NT and Novell network.

 

One of the major clients of Shahnawaz Limited is Ghulam Ishaq Khan Institute of Computer Sciences and Technology (GIKI). GIKI is producing many competent scientists and engineers in the research and practical field. The Institute has five faculties faculty of Computer sciences and Engineering, Electronic Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Materials and Metallurgy Engineering and Humanities and Social Sciences Faculty.

 

GIKI has various laboratories in which research is going on. In artificial intelligence laboratory different numerical and mathematical computation are performed. Automation laboratory is automating various administrative systems of GIKI. In Final year project laboratory final year students develop projects of networking, databases, computer graphics etc. Multimedia laboratory is developing Virtual Reality applications. Students to perform their assignments use Personal Computing laboratory. RISC laboratory provides E-mail facility.

 

INTRODUCTION:

 

In 1943, The late Mr. Shahnawaz founded his business in Agra and Delhi. After the creation of Pakistan in 1947, he shifted the company’s headquarters to Karachi. Relations were established with some of the leading agricultural, industrial and automotive manufacturers of the world for the import of their equipment. This led to rapid expansion of their company.

 

Today, the name Shahnawaz stands for a successful group of companies in Pakistan. The network of Shahnawaz Limited covers the whole country with full-fledged offices in all principle cities, namely Karachi, Hyderabad, Lahore, Rawalpindi, Islamabad, Peshawar and Quetta with dealers and sub-regencies in all major towns.

 

Over 2500 employees, working in a professionally managed environment, contribute in the progress of Shahnawaz group and helps in the technical advancement of Pakistan.

 

Given below are names of the main companies, which constitute the Shahnawaz group. Each of these companies has been incorporated separately with its own paid up capital, in accordance with the country’s company law:

 

• Shahnawaz Limited:

 

Shahnawaz Limited represents, exclusively; a large number of world’s reputed manufacturers. Its branches in Pakistan are full-fledged offices having their own workshop, spare parts departments and other support and service facilities for the complete range. It also undertakes the installation of industrial projects and is well known in a wide spectrum of diverse activities ranging from implementing turn key computer based solutions to air conditioning multi storage buildings.

 

 

• Shezan International Limited:

 

Shezan International Limited is the biggest food processing plant in the country. This plant produces fruit juices, squashes, jams, ketchup, pickles, etc. It exports these products to Middle East and Europe.

 

 

• Shahtaj Sugar Mills Limited:

 

It is located on 120acres at Mandi Bahauddin, Gujrat and head office in Karachi. Its daily crushing capacity is 5000 tons. Which is being increased to 8000 tons

 

• Hattar Food Products Limited

 

• Shahtaj Textiles Limited

 

• Shahnawaz Textiles Private Limited

 

• Gaurdian Leasing Modaraba

 

• Nawazabad Farms

 

• Shezan Services Private Limited

 

• Information System Associates

 

PROFILE OF COMPUTER DIVISION:

 

The world over organizations are looking at ways to benefit from information technology (IT) towards gaining the vital competitive edge. In this quest, they are on a constant look out for the best IT people for the very best solution. Organizations in Pakistan are also becoming more and more IT conscious, searching for solutions to their automation means and problems. To come forward with solutions for such organizations, are information technology specialists like the computer division of Shahnawaz Limited.

 

HISTORY AND BACKGROUND:

 

Computer division of Shahnawaz Limited is a part of Shahnawaz group. Today Shahnawaz Limited plays a very important role in the field of IT in Pakistan.

 

Shahnawaz Limited’s computer division specializes in providing turn key solutions to the public and private sector with the availability of a vast variety of automation equipment, ranging from accounting machines to mainframes computer systems.

 

 

From the mid 70’s, when computerization and office automation was mostly just a concept in Pakistan business world, Shahnawaz Limited made it presence felt by helping the government organizations, mostly nationalized banks, in automating their systems. Shahnawaz Limited installed the Monroe Ledger Card equipment and TEC accounting machines to automate the banks’ partial branch accounting system.

 

With the advent of microcomputers in the 80’s Shahnawaz Limited forged that with Monroe’s multi-users microcomputers to become one of the leaders.

 

When the micro-computers swept the industry and the business world, Shahnawaz Limited, in 1987, made the timely move by securing sole distributorship of the full range of the computer from NEC, The world wide high tech computer giants.

 

With Shahnawaz Limited office automated experience, NEC never had any difficulty in providing comprehensive support, both in the marketing and services area.

 

In 1989, with the objective to broaden the base of their products and services, Shahnawaz Limited forged and alliance with BULL Worldwide Information Systems, a leading French computer manufacturer. Shahnawaz Limited, is marketing UNIX based products from BULL that are pioneers in Open System Architecture.

 

 

HARDWARE

 

 

Organizational Hardware System:

 

Shahnawaz Limited has following hardware in their departments:

 

RISC Based System Power Pc 6.xx  from Bull

 

CISC Based Intel Pentium, 486 Based PC from ACER & NEC

 

Dot Matrix Printer & Laser Printers from NEC

 

Line Printers from Genicom

 

 

Sales and Marketing

 

Shahnawaz Limited operates energetic sales and marketing team encompassing young as well as experienced personnel. This team has won several major computerization projects, whereby an extensive range of BULL and NEC computers have been installed.

 

 

The most recent successes have been contracts from prestigious Government organization like income tax department, tax information centers Islamabad, Sargodha, Sahiwal, Sukkur, Bahawalpur, Directorate of postal accounts, Lahore, and Auditor General office for installation of the state-of -art BULL Escala and BULL Estrella RISC-based platforms with AIX OS. Pakistan Military Accounts (CMA) Rawalpindi has installed a BULL Estrella MT604-1xx network.

 

 

Tax Information Centers (I/tax department) located at Islamabad, Sahiwal, Sargodha, Bahawalpur & Sukkur are being hooked in a network by incorporating BULL Estrella 300 Mt 604-1xx RISC systems through hi tech communication facilities.

 

 

Income Tax Department, Sialkot zone has been computerized which involved supply & installation of one BULL Escala model M101 Symmetric Multi Processor (SMP) integration servers, ten (10) BULL Escala model MT604 RISC-based local servers, along with terminals, modems etc. These severs are connected in LAN environment, using dial-up Async. Communication lines. While the integration server is linked to an existing os/400 machine. This project also calls for software training in both AIX and oracle and conversion of few programs from proprietary database to ORACLE RDBMS environment.

 

 

At national logistics cell (NLC), Shahnawaz Limited has installed 16 RISC based bull systems. These include the bull DPX/20 model-100 and DPX/20-600 mini-computers, which are installed on a countrywide basis, in a wide area network (WAN), as well as in a local area network (LAN) environment.

 

Support and Service

 

 

At Shahnawaz Limited, a high emphasis is given to the after sale service and support. For this, well-equipped workshops have been setup at Karachi, Hyderabad, Lahore, Islamabad, Rawalpindi, Peshawar and Quetta. These service centers provide prompt services even at the remote installations.

 

The team of support and service staff is periodically trained at BULL S.A., France and NEC Corporations, Tokyo to keep them abreast of technological advancements and latest in product development. This has given Shahnawaz Limited a leading edge in the filed of support and services and customers prefer to keep maintenance of their equipment with Shahnawaz Limited.

 

SOFTWARE

 

Organizational Software Network:

 

Operating System contains three kinds of software for networking:

 

Unix (AIX) & Xenix  (these software are used for large networks.)

 

Windows NT/Windows 98 & 95 (these are for medium size networking.)

 

Novell Network (for small size networks)

 

  

Development Tools:

 

Shahnawaz Limited has two kinds of development layers within their organization

 

• Back-end:

In back end SQL, Access, Oracle is used by Shahnawaz Limited.

 

• Front-end:

In front end Microsoft Visual Basic is used.

 

The Development tools used by them are as follow:

ü  Visual Oracle

ü  Visual Basic

ü  Visual FoxPro

 

• Visual Pascal

 

• COBOL

 

• Informix

 

• DataFlex

 

 

Turn-key software Projects:

 

The primary reason for the success of Shahnawaz Limited Computer division in today’s competitive Information Technology environment is the ability to deliver complex system integration turn-key projects on time to the entire satisfaction of the customers. This is basically due to a highly professional and competent team of System Analysts, Software engineers, and programmers and support personnel.

 

The team has one several major computerization project, both in public and private sectors, and overtime have gained solid credibility in the rapid expanding information technology sector in Pakistan.

 

The most recent success has been multi-million rupee turn-key projects from prestigious government organizations like the Central Board of Revenue (CBR) and the Pakistan Audit Department. The CBR awarded them the contract to convert the entire Sales Tax (VAT) application, operational at the Sales Tax Wing, CBR, Eleven collectorate offices country-wide from ORACLE Ver-6 to Developer 2000 under ORACLE Ver-7.x.This conversion process was completed in record time and delivered within the agreed deadline to the customer. The project for the Pakistan Audit Department entails conversion of the COBOL application software from the Accountant General NWFP system, and implementing at 4 geographically dispersed District Accounts Offices within the provision of NWFP. The project is also near completion.

 

Other projects which needs special mention are the computerization are the Income Tax Department’s Sialkot Zone, Tax Information Center at Islamabad, Sargodha, Sahiwal, Bahawalpur and Sukkur and National Logistic Cell’s database system and data communication networks.

 

Both these projects involve application systems based on ORACLE RDBMS and remote user access in a Wide Area Network (WAN). Also involved was extensive user training, and data communication among heterogeneous hardware and software platform.

 

 

Applications Development:

 

In the System Design and Applications Development are Shahnawaz Limited’s expertise lies in carrying the software development project from preliminary investigation and system design all the way to implementation of developed system parallel runs, training of staff and finally, live runs.

 

Their software engineering teams have constantly updated themselves on new developments in software technology and are currently working on applications in Visual Basic, C++ and Java.

 

Some of the projects undertaken by Shahnawaz Limited involved organizations were certain applications were already partially developed and computerized by bureau service and were running on hired machine-time basis. In such cases, Shahnawaz Limited software teams redesigned the applications and implemented them on the newly installed in-house machine.

 

The recent most software development is awarded by PMAD (Pakistan Military Accounts Department), which includes development and implementation of Payroll, Pension and Accounting packages for eight country wide CMAs (Controller Military Accounts): Dealing with over 200K space officers, and 700K pensioners of Pakistan Army.

 

The transfer and porting process also involved conversion of relevant master files from one operating system environment into another. In these cases the hardware involved both Open and Proprietary Systems.

 

A software-engineering project conducted involved the total conversion and implementation from SSP-IBM System/36 to AIX/Unix environment for DAO Gujranwala. This conversion and implementation project was carried out in record time including the conversion of COBOL applications along-with datafiles from IBM S/36 EBCDIC format to ASCII format recognizable by Unix environment.

 

A software engineering project currently underway is the conversion of COBOL applications covering Post Office Saving Bank, Pension and Payroll for the Directorate of Postal Account Lahore, from a proprietary system to AIX.

 

Another such project was the conversion of COBOL programs from ITOS environment into MF-COBOL in the Unix environment for a private company. Their software undertakes such conversion projects specialists on a routine basis providing them with vast experience on all major hardware and software platforms.

 

 

MAJOR SOFTWARE PROJECTS:

 

A brief list of the major software projects executed by their countrywide staff of software and personnel is as follows:

 

 

CLIENT	APPLICATION	PLATFORM O- SYS/D TOOL
National Investment Trust(N.I.T)	Branch Accounting	SCO UNIX/ DATA FLEX v3.X
Accountant GeneralSINDH	Payroll, Pension, Accounts	NEC ITOS/ COBOL
Accountant General  (PUNJAB)	Payroll, Pension, Accounts	NEC ITOS/ COBOL
A.G.P.R KARACHI	Payroll System	NEC ITOS/ COBOL
A.G.P.R LAHORE	Payroll System	NEC ITOS/ COBOL
Pakistan Television Corp. (PTV)	T.V Licence fee collection & Revenue Accounting	BOS [UNIX]/Informix v5 (on-line)
GIKiest Ghulam Ishaq Khan Institute of Sc and Tech.	Student database and data communication	AIX/ INFORMIX
Pakistan Post Office	Saving bank system	SCO UNIX/ COBOL INFORMIX
Dewan Sugar Mills	General ledger, inventory, ,cane procurement	SCO UNIX / Oracle v7.x Developer 2000
Shahtaj Textile Mills	General ledger ,Inventory, Production Control	SCO UNIX /INFORMIX
Central Board of Revenue (Sales Tax Wing).	Sales Tax, Revenue Collection And Monitoring System	AIX 4.x/ ORACLE v 7.x Developer 2000

 

 

ONE MAJOR PROJECT:

 

Shahnawaz Limited developed a software project for their own subsidiary company “Shahtaj Textiles Limited” for which they developed the software for the application of General Ledger, Inventory and Production Control.

 

The software project developed tells about how much inventory is present at any time. Besides this, the information about the value and the date of purchase can also be known when required. It also shows the quantity at the end of each month and its present market value.

 

INPUTS:

The input includes the following

• The receipt number
• Description of the item
• The company code
• Receiving date
• Value of the purchased item
• The quantity purchased

 

The same process and information is entered when the items are issued or sold to other customers.

 

 

OUTPUT:

The output includes the

• Inventory status after particular period of time
• Inventory description
• Calculation of the profit margin of the items

 

INTERFACE:

The interface being used was GUI, which is graphical user interface. In these applications, Windows NT was being used. Basically it depends on the type of network and size of the projects to choose the interface. For large projects Unix is used, for medium projects Windows NT is used and Windows are suitable for small projects.

 

 

DATABASE STRUCTURES:

 

For Databases, Microsoft Access and Oracle are being used for this applications.

 

 

(FOR MORE DETAILS, REFER TO THE APPENDIX)

CLIENT:

One of their important client was the Ghulam Ishaq Khan Institute of Engineering Sciences and Technology.  Shahnawaz Ltd. designed a Student database and a data communications network for the institute based on AIX/Informix. The details are given below:

 

 

GHULAM ISHAQ KHAN INSTITUTE OF ENGINEERING SCIENCES AND TECHNOLOGY:

 

 

INTRODUCTION:

 

 

Ghulam Ishaq Khan Institute, (GIKI) is one of the most prestigious institute of the country in the field of Engineering, Sciences, and Technology situated at Topi (District Swabi), 165km from Islamabad towards Peshawar.

 

GIKI is the brainchild of Mr. Ghulam Ishaq Khan, former President of Pakistan. Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan, (HI), is the project director, and has played a very active role in leading GIKI to road of success.

 

Although GIKI is the youngest Engineering University of the country, commenced its first batch in 1993, but still it has gained an excellent repute in the market and is ranked as 9^th best Asian University (Asiaweek, May 1998)

 

GIKI has five Faculties:

 

• Faculty of Computer Science and Engineering

 

• Faculty of Electronics Engineering

 

• Faculty of Mechanical Engineering

 

• Faculty of Materials and Metallurgy Engineering

 

• Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences

 

 

 

FACULTY OF COMPUTER SCIENCES:

 

The Faculty of Computer Science and Engineering endeavors to produce competent scientists and engineers who can play a productive role both in the practical and research areas of computing. The Faculty uses modern technologies to enhance the learning capabilities of the students and to provide them with a stimulating and challenging environment. Following are some of the programs that the institute offers in Computer systems and Engineering:

 

 

Undergraduate Program:

 

The Faculty offers undergraduate and graduate courses and facilitates research work leading to both Master’s (MS) and Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) degrees in Computer Science and Engineering.

 

 

Graduate Program:

 

The FCSE offers courses leading to both Master (MS) and Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) degrees in Computer Science and Computer Engineering.

 

Graduate program can be pursued in the Faculty of Computer Sciences and Engineering (FCSE) specializing in only of the following five areas:

 

 

 

• Artificial Intelligence and Neural Networks

 

• Data Base and Multimedia Systems

 

• Programming Languages and Compiler Construction

 

• Software Engineering and Software Quality Control

 

• Distributed Systems & Communication System

 

 

The faculty of Computer Science and Engineering run various laboratories for research development as well as provides computing power to the students of the institute.

 

 

DESCRIPTION OF LABORATORIES:

 

• ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE LABORATORY:

 

 

It contains Pentium based Computers for developing expert systems based on artificial intelligence techniques, using PROLOG and CLIPS. Along with this, mathematically oriented software like MATHEMATICS and MATHCAD are used for numerical analysis and mathematical computation.

 

• AUTOMATION LABORATORY:

 

 

Used for the automation of various administrative systems of the GIK institute RISC RS/6000 with X- Terminals, loaded with Oracle for Workgroups 2000 and Informix-SE version 5.0 is used for this purpose. A team of Programmers headed by a system analyst are assigned for the automation purpose.

 

 

• FINAL YEAR PROJECTS LABORATORY:

 

Equipped with the latest software and systems, this laboratory is used by final year students completing their projects. Pentium based personal computers with built in sound cards, networked together, connected to main communication channel are used in the projects of networking, databases, computer graphics, computer vision etc.

 

  

• MULTIMEDIA LABORATORY:

 

Twenty-five SUN workstations with 64 Mbytes of RAM, and 2.0 Bytes of media storage are installed for multimedia applications. Very soon around 10 silicon Graphics (Indy) machines will be added to this lab for the development of Virtual Reality applications. An Internet connection of 64 KBPS is also provided via a VSAT connection.

 

 

 

• LINUX SYSTEM LABORATORY:

 

Around 20 networked Pentium based computers are running under LINUX operating system for the course of Systems Programming. The laboratory provides capability to design and develop various system tools and software.

 

 

• PERSONAL COMPUTING LABORATORY:

 

Provides 18 hours of service daily and equipped with almost 100 computers connected under Novel NetWare environment, this lab fulfills the campus wide needs of all students taking computer related courses.

 

 

• RISC LABORATORY:

 

 

This laboratory currently consists of 5 RISC RS/6000 mini frames with IBM AIX version 3.2.1 and a VAX machine running under VMS. Around 30 ASCII terminals and 10 X terminals are connected to these machines. The lab also provides the email facilities all over the campus.

 

 

 

CAREERS IN COMPUTER SCIENCE AND INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY:

The graduate of this Faculty will be able to meet the highest standards of training for leadership in diverse areas of computer science and computer engineering profession, including research, teaching, and high technology industry and R&D organization. The FCSE has a number of laboratories equipped with the state-of-the-art computer systems running a wide range of applications and specialized software supporting the course. Equipment in the laboratories include: SPARC servers, SPARC workstations, RISC RS6000 machines, SGI workstations (02 & Indy), VAX 6000 running under VMS operating system, Multi-Media Pentium & Pentium-Pros, BULL X-Terminals, Virtual Reality Toolkits, Color Scanners, Laser Printers, etc. The joint building makes it very convenient for FCSE to collaborate with the Faculty of Electronic Engineering on the hardware side and enjoys full support of the Electronic Faculty.