Introduction
Hi, my name is Lucius LaFromboise. I am an engineer by discipline and an inventor at heart. I have a background in Quality in the Medical Device industry where quality is not just pass/fail. I lived and breathed validations, measurement system analysis, and hands-on inspections; and I bring this focus on quality with me wherever I go. But quality doesn't mean anything unless it is backed up by integrity. Which is why I never sign something that isn't accurate or true. As an engineer I am bound by a strict moral code and must be willing to give up my career in order to do the honest and moral action. I have done it in the past and am willing to do it again.
It all started with Bubble Point Curves...
In the second semester of my freshman year at college I took Materials and Energy Balances. I have never been one to repeat tedious tasks over and over, hence ReportRighter, so during the Vapor-Liquid-Equilibrium unit I performed one Bubble-Point Curve calculation manually and decided I needed to find a new way to do this. I used my knowledge from the computer science class I took the previous semester to make a visual basic application that calculated bubble points based on the chemicals in a mixture and their concentrations. I used the appendix in the back of the book to enter the Antoine constants for all of the compounds listed so that no matter what the professor wanted us to calculated I could do it with ease. We only had that one problem where we calculated the bubble/dew point, so I never used my application.
The dream of ChESuite was born
Even though I never got to use my bubble/dew-point application I had a lot of fun making the program and I found it to be a really fun and challenging way to learn the class material. I decided that from now on I was always going to make a computer program to solve my homework and that I would collect them all together into ChESuite. I could then use this suite of chemical engineering programs to help teach other students how to not just solve problems but to think about them the same way an engineer would. But because it took more than just learning the equations and plugging numbers in to make the applications I would often skip the programming and just do my homework instead. Throughout college I made a few different programs that solved chemical engineering problems but they were not the full ChESuite that I dreamed of.
From App to Add-in
During the summer before my senior year of college I worked as an intern where I had the chance to do a lot of Excel programming to increase our efficiency when calculating statistics like the Anderson-Darling Test Statistic. While doing this I realized that if I didn't have to design a user interface I could save on time and it would significantly decrease the learning curve for new users. After doing a lot of research, learning, and trial-and-error I made my first Excel Add-in PFDesigner v1.0. PFDesigner allowed users to construct process flow diagrams in Excel that could even be grouped and exported as images. This add-in was built using "ancient" methods and required users to install files onto their machine in order to use it and was not practical for large scale use.
Introducing ReportRighter
After I was no longer in school and had begun to work full time I decided it was time to get serious about EngSuite. But the problem was that these programs were complicated and required a lot of mathematics outside of just solving the equations. Because I had switched to developing using Javascript I needed to make functions that solved differential equations, performed Laplace and Fourier Transforms and all sorts of complicated math just to solve a few simple Vapor-Liquid-Equilibrium problems. It was clear that ChESuite would take a long time, and a lot of it. But I didn't have much time I was working full time and I realized that if I could spend less time working I would have more time to devote to real engineering. And what better way to "work" less than to automate a process that should have been automate years ago anyway. That was when I moved my entire focus to ReportRighter.
From Dream through Development to Deployment
The concept of ReportRighter is simple, but figuring out how to actually do it was more of a challenge. For months during development I woke up early and worked for a few hours before I had to go to my "real" job. When I got home I went back down to the basement to keep working. I started over several times; which is pretty normal in programming but it still hurt. Finally, in the end of June 2022 I had finished ReportRighter and all I had to do was get through Microsoft's validation team. After a few weeks of coding I was able to create api webhooks that could communicate with the Microsoft store and provision user accounts in my database. In mid July ReportRighter went live on the Microsoft AppSource app store.
Now What?
ReportRighter is ready to save everyone 1,000s of hours so that they can get back to the "real" work and not waste it copy and pasting from Excel. And the rest of EngSuite is on its way to help make Microsoft Office Suite a one stop shop for all engineers and working professionals. So if you are ready to get back to the stuff that you started in your field to begin with then go to the Micrsoft AppSource page for ReportRighter and get started for 25% off!