Mission Statement - Summit Computing Associates helps clients become more effective and more efficient.  We use a combination of SQL, Visual Basic, and the Microsoft Office Applications including Access, Excel, Word, Power Point and Projects.  Our custom applications are developed by working closely with your staff and/or suppliers of legacy systems.  We have worked with a variety of  existing databases, and have the ability to work with a wide range including Oracle, FoxPro, dBase, Sybase, MYSql as well as the report output from dedicated systems and about any backend with ODBC compliancy or ability to export delimited files or reports.  

Experience and Skills -  Dr. Young has participated in three turn-arounds and three startups as an employee, partner and entrepreneur.  This experience gives him a distinct edge over other software developers:  he understands what it means to run a business.

He holds advance degrees in engineering from the University of Notre Dame, and an MBA from the University of Chicago.  He is a champion of the contribution-margin method for analyzing sales and pricing, and is as much at home in the areas of finance and accounting as he is on the factory floor.  He has worked for non-profits, manufacturers, software producers, service firms, and as a management consultant to a variety of companies.  For the past dozen years his work has been in the area of software sales and development, concentrating lately exclusively on database development and automation projects with the Microsoft Office series of products.  With MS Access, SQL, Visual Basic and ADO he is able to tap into Oracle, Sybase, and other software for the data necessary to achieve high performance results.

Sample Accomplishments 

National Association of Fire Investigators, Sarasota, FL - Developed  membership and conference management system for this international non-profit firm.  The system accommodates different membership grades with corresponding annual fees, invoice statistics, management of conference attendee mailings, and other tasks useful to managing an international membership.

Trailer Estates, Bradenton, FL - Developed office management system including tax-roll submittals, key locator, building permit management, creation and electronically archiving notices of violation, and other clerical time-saving tasks.  

Junior League of Manatee County, Bradenton FL -  Developed a variety of aids and reports plus mentoring services to staff.

Michael Saunders Real Estate, Sarasota FL - Developed a commercial property retrieval system using dynamic queries to accommodate a comprehensive commercial property search based on a variety of alpha, numeric and text fields.

Environmental Engineering, NH -  Report archiving and retrieval system using dynamic queries based on type-forward alpha lists of creator, various topics and sub topics, and location criteria.  Utilized dynamic SQL queries and hyperlinks to store and retrieve electronic media as well as locate hard copy in off-site storage.

Dawn Companies, Mokena, IL - For this union contractor, developed early-warning job problem indicator to timely advise project managers of schedule problems.  Automatically retrieved and archived weekly time card information from  legacy accounting system.  Parsed out union employee weekly time information from ASCII printer text files including level of union membership and various grades of overtime, assigned to active jobs, allowed for back-correction of reported labor hours, compared resource expenditure to other estimates of job progress, flagging potential problem areas with reports designed to allow timely attention and corrective action.

Seacoast MS Access User Group, Portsmouth, NH - Founder of this skills demonstration and skills maintenance group whose monthly meetings included review of new technology, new procedures and applications.  Demonstrated use of ADO with MS Access to achieve 10x speed advantage on a network relative to DAO.  The use of ADO in MS Access 2000 and above can yield applications as fast as SQL 7 on single-processor machines at a fraction of the cost.  Development is more efficient, and complex licensing required of server-based systems is avoided.

Foss Manufacturing, Hampton, NH - Developed manufacturing system in MS Access that was so fast that it was never converted to SQL Server 7.  System was expressly designed for LAN operations, and featured a backend MS Access database with nearly 30,000 records  each consisting of over 200 fields.  The application conveyed complex setup instructions to a dozen  stations on the factory floor.  Operators of  the non-woven fabric machines retrieved a small list of candidate instructions by selecting criteria from a series of dropdown boxes.  MS Access then combined this information in a dynamic query to retrieve the settings particular to  the clients. Settings were displayed on PC terminals, and directed the retrieval and setup for various colors, widths, material thickness, density, programmed heating, cooling and processing schedules, unique to multiple products for multiple clients which included major auto manufacturers. 

Jaworski Geotech, Manchester, NH - integrated MS Access quotation and job-tracking system with MS Outlook, featuring ability to add contact information in either product with synchronization means developed via automation, visual basic, and use of object models.  Demonstrated ability of ADO to replace a DAO application which was exceedingly slow and frequently timed-out in a VPN application.

AT&T Broadband, Newton, MA  Used MS Access to create Excel spread sheets between any two dates.  Spread sheets showed cash-flow projections for sales with selectable probabilities for both sales person and supervisor over-rides.  The firm had a dozen or so sales managers each of which had 8 to 12 sales people on report. Each sales person had many many prospects.   To estimate cash flow, the CFO and Sales VP wanted a system that was easy for sales persons to enter projections and probabilities, managers to enter their own over-rides (but secret) estimates of probabilities, spread sheets for finance, text files for input to the corporate prediction matrix, and a color-indication on each spreadsheet to show what projections had been changed since the last review.  Summit used Microsoft Access to generate a working proposal which had many facilities for monitoring the sales process - with provisions for status of the cycle, probabilities, groupings,and filters.  For finance, the Access database accepted a start and end date, then created an Excel spread sheet for that time period, with options for either sales person or management probabilities, quarterly and annual sums for each prospect, and the desired color coding to show recently changed data. 

Newburyport Chamber of Commerce, Newburyport, MA - Developed a web-based dynamic index for their existing web site that allowed office staff and on-line web-site visitors to quickly recover members satisfying category search and/or wild-card search criteria.  Devised a conversion process allowing input of legacy data from a proprietary membership management system.  The web-based Access database automatically generates search criteria from the legacy data simplifying operation.  

Luna System, North Andover, MA - Developed over 40 reports as a contractor for national roll-out by a major title-insurance company.  These complex reports were based on a series of SQL queries and sub-reports, and featured multiple sections consisting of a lead summary by region, with breakouts by district and by individual sales person.  In another application, converted data from Excel spreadsheet application to an MS Access data-archive application featuring multi-dimensional dynamic queries to retrieve reports, with hyperlinks to recall selected reports electronically.

Fidelity Investments, Nashua, NH - Developed a series of custom SQL queries featuring multiple joins to facilitate satisfying the contract HR requirements for Hughes Electronics.   The development had to account for various types of leaves and retirements for benefits including life insurance and various medical benefits each of which had their own spin-off criteria based on years of service and age, type of layoff or separation,  retirement and leaves of absence, and survivor benefits.  Also developed historic report with 80-column header and coded summary records for reporting historic employee coverages to Medicare for possible recovery action by the government.

Fuller Fuels, Exeter, NH  Developed an accounting  system and automated  fuel delivery scheduling system that eliminated emergency out-of-fuel calls in the middle of cold winter nights.  Application used the degree-day method, 30-year averages,  and historic fuel usage to schedule next-delivery resulting in achieving refill objectives.  Application included development of an invoicing system, aged receivables, and fuel-usage between two dates to satisfy requirements of the State fuel reimbursement program for disadvantaged families.  In four years, no fuel outages were experienced, other than one which was caused by mis-entry of data due to a circumstance eliminated by addition of a coded procedure.  The accounting procedure eliminated the need to purchase and train on an expensive accounting package.

Clarity Software Systems, North Andover, MA  Developed a combination sales and cash-flow projection system integrated with MS Word for output of customized letters and envelopes.  This comprehensive one-page system was called the best-he-has seen by one of the owner-partners.  It features a series of reports including a listing of next calls with barrier to close and next step, as well as an activity listing for review by the sales manager.

Dr. Albert Koegler, MD, Topsfield, MA - Recovered patient treatment and billing data from a disabled FoxPro database, and developed an MS Access presentation that allowed processing of receivables and access to treatment records.

Pierson, Miller, Young Ltd., Joliet, Illinois - Wrote the business plan that resulted in the funding of this 3-person partnership, successfully developing the first electronic billing system for home health agencies.  Personally made the contacts with Electronic Data Systems (EDS) and its partner Blue Cross of Iowa, and negotiated the informal agreement to work together on this pioneering effort.  The resulting product reduced the payment pipeline from a nominal 90-days to 10-days, freeing up significant capital for the agency owners. Negotiated a lease-purchase arrangement with a local bank to provide a means for customer financing.

Applied Software Ergonomics, Woburn, MA Worked with Rosetta Technologies of Tampa to land a Unisys contract to develop software and hardware to drive the Rosetta micr PCL bank-check printers being OEM'd to Unisys, plus provide sales leads to the Unisys sales team under a lucrative contract  extension with Unisys (Bluebell, PA).

Credit Union Coop, Warwick, RI.  As project manager specified and managed development of the software to run the back office check-stuffing machinery and controls, all provided by Unisys.  This project required reading electronic print-outs from different legacy systems of 50 or so different member credit unions, enabling the software to count the transactions on these printer files, then reprinting the statements together with barcodes that the automatic envelope stuffer could read to count the checks.  Negotiated additional monies to bring this project to a very successful conclusion.

Randolph Engineering and the City of Peoria, Illinois - Sold, designed and built a system of battery operated remote dial-up data-gathering and control systems for a large EPA-mandated river-pollution measuring project.  The system was guaranteed to survive six-months unattended while located underground in the Peoria combination storm and sanitary sewer system, measuring flow into the river during violent storms, and turning on water samplers to make periodic samples during the periods of peak rainfalls.  It performed exceedingly well, satisfying the client's requirements and exceeding their expectations.

KW Battery, Skokie, Illinois - Sold, designed, developed and installed a computer-based leak detector for fork-lift truck batteries that detected leaks so small that it took special procedures to prove that they were in fact present.  This important quality system was a significant factor in protecting the company whose long-term 5-year warranty left them exposed to incidental damages such as warehouse fires caused by corrosion eating its way into the electric drive motors located underneath the battery assemblies.

Rea Magnet Wire, Fort Wayne, Indiana - Sold and specified requirements for an on-line insulation-break detector, the first such device of its kind, outlining the operational requirements to create synchronization with ASTM Specification requirements - a key to the successful sale.  The developer of the system was Syscon International of South Bend, Indiana, on whose board of directors Dr. Young served at the time.

Contact Info - Summit Computing Associates is a DBA for Dr. Robert Young.  He can be reached  at 727-230-0256 or 941-725-0761.  His email address is rjyoung@summitsql.com. Summit Computing Associates is a registered DBA in the State of Florida.

*