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Project Profile
We have been working closely with a manufacturer of industrial spun nylon to completely revamp computer systems and software that
This project became necessary when the manufacturer replaced winders on its largest production lines with new ones that operate in a radically different manner and generate spun bobbins much more rapidly than previous equipment, and replaced its case scales and wrappers. Legacy systems literally could not cope with consequences of these equipment changes. We successfully reconfigured and modified supervisory process monitoring and control software to handle new winding equipment in the manner needed. The software vendor declared the desired application behavior impossible, but we achieved it (with the vendor’s package), thereby preventing frequent downtime and waste that the vendor claimed were unavoidable. We designed software systems based on Microsoft SQL Server 2000 to accommodate faster packing with better packed-quality safeguards, and faster shipment workflow required to keep up with the new winders. Our architecture uses database replication to protect data from hardware problems and server reboots for installation of Microsoft patches. Cases that used to routinely take 24 hours to leave the site can now be shipped as soon as an hour or two after the last bobbin is put in the case. Product data reaches the new long term historian we built in a similar timeframe, instead of in batches two or three times a day. We are completing design and beginning implementation work for revised production planning tools that will allow planners to preallocate product and more precisely route product to the right destinations for orders in progress. Our collaborations on this project include close work with other vendors both locally and in the United Kingdom. This project will transition to support mode later this year. If you would like help of the same caliber for your yield improvement project, please contact us! Other Services We gladly perform support as well as project services. We have a keen understanding of computing environments where downtime cannot be tolerated. If you have had difficulty finding expertise at our level that shares your sense of urgency about resolving problems in your production systems, please call us. Here is an example of our support work. We responded on a weekend for a large system we had never seen before. The program team had tried unsuccessfully for hours to solve their problem, and their rollout window would close soon, which would prevent new revenue initiatives from reaching the market. We quickly narrowed troubleshooting to about a dozen lines of code, which allowed the team to make the needed one-line repair in time to finish the rollout. From that brief look, we also recommended a mini-project that reduced the customer’s several hours of downtime during upgrades on that revenue generating system by 30% on one platform and 50% on another. |
