The Way it Works

1. The bar code on the back of the patron’s driver license is scanned by a bouncer or a door person.
2. The encoded data is fed into our web based age verification system.
3. Our web based software system immediately calculates the patron’s age, and parses out other identifying information.
4. Age, height, gender, and drivers license expiration date are displayed to the bouncer or door person.
5. The screen flashes green if the patron meets the age requirements, red if not.
6. Patron name, age, birth date, gender as well as city, state and zip of residence is stored for future marketing efforts and patron reporting. All data is accessible via the online reporting system.

System Benefits

1. Comply with city and state law with immediate verification of patron age BEFORE they enter your establishment.
2. Immediate notification of invalid or expired driver license provide a red flag for ID misuse.
3. Displays in an easy to read format the identifiable physical characteristics to deter ‘ID sharing’.
4. Software is web based, allowing you to verify IDs and access reporting system from anywhere in the world. This means that you will NEVER have to install or update software.
5. Reporting System helps you understand your patrons. View a detailed list of all patrons or filter by age, gender, or time of visit. [view screenshots]
6. Collect patron data to better target daily specials or promotions.
7. Track peak traffic times to properly staff your workforce.
8. The entire system is scalable. Manage one site or manage hundreds of sites with the same web based software platform. Create multiple users within single sites to verify patron data at different check points.

Care-A-Lot Pet Supply has been providing customers with pet supplies since 1989, either through their catalog, online store, or retail stores located in Newport News and Virginia Beach, VA. The distribution center (located in Virginia Beach, VA) operates from a facility with over 50,000 square feet and more than 2,800 products stored, ready to fill orders. The distribution center is responsible for maintaining all supplies offered by the Care-A-Lot Catalog, On-line store as well as all retail stores.

Challenge

Care-A-Lot’s challenge was to increase productivity and improve efficiency while receiving products from suppliers and fulfilling orders placed by patrons of Care-A-Lot’s catalog, online store and retail stores. “We receive and ship thousands of products a day and we needed something to help streamline the process,” said Paul Camping, Inventory & Receiving Manager for Care-A-Lot Pet Supply.

“In the past our employees had to take all of the ‘To Be Received’ or ‘To Be Shipped’ products from their location, to the computer and then to their next destination. This process was cumbersome and inefficient.” said Camping.

Solution

“As our company has grown it has been my responsibility to find new technologies that simplify procedures and increase productivity,” said Richard Pekarsky, Network Manager for Care-A-Lot Pet Supply. “A technological intervention was needed in our shipping and receiving process, however, we were initially unable to find technology that would meet our specific needs. Newcastle Systems not only provided exactly what we needed, but also afforded an incredible purchasing experience.”

The NB400 Series carts were tested in the distribution center, by scanning in new products at the receiving docks. The carts were then moved to inventory pallets where products were pulled, scanned, and prepared for the shipping department. “The carts were so successful that more were purchased for our retail store locations,” said Pekarsky.

Results

Since the carts have been introduced in May of 2006, their workers are more efficient and productivity has increased by 40%. It has also decreased the time employees dedicate to product movement. Due to the mobility and wireless ability of the carts, their employees have larger work areas which has allowed for a more prolific work environment. “The cost savings of the carts were immediately apparent,” said Camping. Care-A-Lot also uses the carts as label makers for pallets and general organization. “It saved time when you can print out a label while standing in front of it instead of walking across the warehouse to a workstation printing it out and walking back,” said Brad Voorhes, Supervisor for Care-A-Lot.

“I chose Newcastle Systems for many reasons – its ease of mobility, long lasting battery, ease of use and ability to choose our own hardware. Our business relies on our ability to receive and distribute products swiftly and efficiently. We rely on Newcastle Systems to help us accomplish that goal.”

Mercury is the world’s leading manufacturer of marine propulsion systems. The success of Mercury Marine has not occurred by chance. Since the company was founded in 1939, Mercury has consistently emphasized quality, innovation and reliability. That pledge remains as strong today as ever. Mercury Marine, a division of Brunswick Corporation of Lake Forest, Ill, began as the Kiekhaefer Corporation of Cedarburg, Wisconsin, when Carl Kiekhaefe and a small but dedicated staff of employees sought to design and produce the best possible boat engine.

Whether they are fishing, water skiing or just enjoying a day on the water, boaters rely on the power and performance of Mercury Marine engines to navigate them through all types of water. Mercury Marine relied on LXE and Miles Data to navigate its distribution center (DC) operations through a transition from legacy, DOS-based applications to wireless Web browsing.

“Now, the power and performance of LXE vehicle mounted computers drive parts distribution operations at Mercury Marine’s DC in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin with the reliability and speed that Mercury’s engines are known for. Mercury Marine is on track to meet or exceed its ROI target based on a 15 percent improvement in productivity and 99.5 percent of same-day shipments.

Mercury is the world’s leading manufacturer of marine propulsion systems. In 2006 the company was named Wisconsin Manufacturer of the Year and was rated number one in customer satisfaction by J.D. Power and Associates for its outboard and stern drive engines. The awards reflect Mercury Marine’s commitment to lean manufacturing, Six Sigma and customer focus, which also motivated the overhaul of the company’s 225,000-square-foot DC in Fond du Lac. The DC ships 10,000 parts and accessories a day to support international operations and serves as a regional distribution center for the Midwest.

The facility had a home-grown software system, a proprietary wireless LAN, and 12-year-old mobile computers. The long life was a testament to the system’s durability, but ongoing reliability was a growing concern and an increasing risk to the business. When Mercury Marine undertook a strategic initiative to expand throughput and capacity at the facility, it was clearly time to retire the legacy system.

“We needed to update the technology and increase the reliability of the system,” said Daryl Dahl, Mercury Marine’s distribution plant manager at Fond du Lac. “We needed a new system that would engage our distribution center associates more and increase productivity.”

The legacy system featured automated guided vehicles (AGVs) using antiquated software to communicate with the mainframe. The system controlled the vehicles, which drove associates to pick locations. The method of communication, referred to as “screen scraping,” proved to be problematic and unreliable for a system that needed to run 24/7. The legacy vehicle routing system had become very inefficient due to persistent RF signal drop off and processing delays. These performance problems in turn reduced productivity.

There were three major components to the upgrade: convert the wireless infrastructure from proprietary 900MHz technology to a highly secure, 802.11bstandard network; redevelop the legacy host and mobile computer software to run browser-based applications over the wireless LAN; and, install new mobile computers that could efficiently run the new applications and would be easy to support, yet would also match the rugged, durable performance the legacy
units had provided.

“At first, Mercury wanted to continue using DOS handhelds because they had worked so well in the legacy system, but we encouraged them to look at Windows units,” said Terry Prewitt of Miles Data, an LXE Elite PartnerPass program member who worked closely with Mercury Marine on the project. “When they saw the degree of control Windows gives network administrators over the computers, for example the ability to make remote updates and lock out users from making certain changes, they saw a lot of benefit in a mobile Windows platform.”

Mercury Marine selected full-screen vehicle-mounted computers from LXE, which feature a full-color, SVGA touch screen display and a Pentium® processor running Microsoft Windows® 2000. The rugged computers are mounted on forklifts used by DC associates to pick and ship orders.

“Our infrastructure supports Windows, and the LXE computers easily connect to our network,” said Dahl. “We like the LXE computers because of the size of the screen and the keyboard, its wireless connectivity, and because it has an Internet browser.”

Mercury Marine redeveloped its picking, shipping and other DC applications in Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE) to run as browser-based applications from an Oracle Web server. Mercury chose a wireless network from Cisco Systems featuring 802.11b-standard Cisco Aironet® 350 Series Access Points to manage communication between the server and the new wireless mobile computers. The system has been highly reliable with minimal downtime, which has produced savings from reduced IT support requirements.

“Our associates were involved from the beginning to design the screens and to test them. Mutually beneficial relationships were formed during the development stage, which allowed the associates to take ownership of the system and accept it after it was implemented,” said Dahl.

Forklift operators receive picking instructions wirelessly from the host system on the color screen and use touch screen input to confirm activity and enter quantities. The large computer screen enabled Mercury Marine to design applications with large input buttons that are easy for associates to use.

“The new system is much faster and more reliable, and has allowed the associates to become much more engaged in their work,” said Dahl. “As an unexpected benefit, because associates have more information available to them, they’ve become good at sequencing their tasks to be more efficient and productive.”

When Mercury Marine began planning its system replacement, it set goals for the new system to provide a 15 percent productivity improvement, improve fill rates, support 99.5 percent same-day shipments and require less IT support. Miles Data’s recommended solution of LXE computers and Cisco wireless access points has helped Mercury Marine meet or exceed these goals and enjoy a better-than-expected ROI.

“A new system was not hard to justify because we expected efficiency improvements, quality improvements, and cost savings relative to increased productivity and less downtime,” said Dahl. “We are very satisfied with the new system and results have exceeded our expectations.”

Entergy Corporation, the second largest nuclear generator in the United States, is an integrated energy company engaged primarily in electric power production and retail distribution operations, owning and operating power plant with approximately 30,000 megawatts of electric generating capacity and 14,500 employees. Entergy delivers electricity to 2.6 million utility customers and has revenues of more than $10 billion.

Challenge

Entergy’s nine nuclear power plants operate under OSHA’s Lockout/Tagout Standard 29 designed to safeguard employees from unexpected startup of equipment and protection from hazardous energy. As an employer, a durable and standardized lockout and tagging procedure must be in place when machines and equipment are being maintained and serviced.

The existing manual printers provided labels that were often low quality or could not handle the condition of the plant well.

Solution

To ensure Entergy was exceeding regulations, a proactive approach was taken to find alternatives to the existing manual process of marking machines as dangerous or locked out. A team from Entergy began benchmarking alternatives. They landed on technology integrator, Miles Data Technologies, and the Zebra Technologies 105SL printing system. In less than three months, Miles Data was able to work with Zebra and provide a synthetic tag and thermal transfer ribbon formulation that is scratch and water resistant, and can be printed on-demand.

“Miles Data understood the strict OSHA requirements we were under and customized a solution for our nine nuclear sites,” said Jeff Lanum, Senior Project Engineer at Entergy. “They have always supported my rollout schedules and provided the best solution for the unique process at each location.”

Results

Since implementing the Zebra system, printing tags on demand has not been a problem. Employees were eager to jump on board because the printing solution made their workplace safer and saved them time by printing safety tags and labels on-demand.

“It’s been astounding – we’ve had minimal service calls and the equipment works all the time,” said Lanum. “I have put money in the budget for new printers the last few years, but the original equipment is still going strong. Some printers are over seven years old.”

A leading manufacturer of structural components came to Miles Data looking to eliminate the possibility of human error, and to improve efficiency in their inventory process.   Miles Data proposed a solution that involved a custom piece of software specific to the customer’s needs, and a range of hardware options which would meet the requirements of the software and withstand the harsh environments in which the solution would be implemented.

Challenge

The software would need to communicate with an existing database and would need to operate on a rugged mobile computer. Because the areas where data would be collected did not have wireless coverage, the software and the device would need to be capable of batching data and synchronizing when connected to a PC.

Solution

Miles Data Technologies and business partner StrategyBytes collaborated on developing an automated physical inventory system solution utilizing bar codes and mobile computers. StrategyBytes analyzed the software requirements while Miles Data helped determine the appropriate hardware solution. After a thorough business analysis, StrategyBytes recommended their Advanced Warehouse Inventory System (WIS) with a few minor modifications. Miles Data recommended the Intermec CN3 mobile computer based on form factor of the device, ruggedness and operating system. Employees played a key role in the selection of the mobile device knowing they would be the ones who needed to make the migration from manual data collection to automated.

Results

The structural component manufacturer has reduced the time it takes to perform physical inventory by more than 60%. What used to take 90 ‐ 120 minutes, now takes 30 minutes. In addition to the time savings, the manufacturer has better visibility to their inventory and a more accurate inventory. A bonus benefit has been the CN3 mobile computer is used for placing weekly orders. Instead of uploading to a physical inventory, they upload to a PO, and can adjust the order to fulfill an order for a specific truck.

In preparation of a mass mobile device roll out, a worldwide manufacturer of flexible packaging came to Miles Data looking for an effective, and reliable way of connecting to their existing legacy AS400 (5250) application over their wireless network. The existing 5250 application requires constant connectivity of logged in users. Any disconnection will require the application administrator to physically reset the user before they can gain access to the application. Constant connectivity between the user’s session and the host application is an absolute requirement.

Challenge

Develop a solution that will allow a user’s session to remain connected to the host application even when the mobile devices themselves become disconnected from the wireless network. Wireless disconnects are not uncommon in any environment and can happen for a variety of reasons including:

• Holes in coverage
• IP address conflicts
• Roaming issues
• Devices going to sleep

In addition to ensuring a constant connection to the host application, the administrators of the system wanted to centrally manage all sessions – a task that is not possible on standard client side terminal emulation applications.

Solution

The solution was to integrate Stay Linked, a piece of software that resides on a hard wired server between the mobile device (handheld computers) and the host application (5250 emulation). When the mobile devices gets disconnected from the network the connection between the Stay Linked server and the host application remains. As soon as the mobile device connects back to the wireless network the user’s session is restored exactly where it left off without the host application even realizing a user had been disconnected.

Results

The end results is a managed wireless connection to the host application without the risk of disconnect.  In addition to maintaining the connection to the host application, the solution provided for an administrator to be able to accurately maintain and monitor individual user sessions which provides for remote management and troubleshooting of end user processes.

Consumer fear forced food traceability to the forefront, making it a hot topic around dinner tables nationwide. Contamination problems and bioterrorism threats continue to plague the industry, prompting wider adoption of systems that enable thorough tracking. Astute businesses realize better systems must be implemented to calm consumers’ fears, minimize health risks and avoid costly lawsuits.

There is a silver lining: Companies that implement proactive systems to ensure food safety and quality have discovered additional financial benefits for the business due to increased efficiency and improvements in supply chain management.

Companies operating with the traditional “pencil-and-clipboard” approach expose themselves to a blanket recall if consumer safety issues plague their products. However, companies that use barcodes, radio frequency identification (RFID) or wireless mobility equipment that capture tracking and traceability data are better positioned to quickly identify and address problems.

Systems must be in place to isolate the source and control the problem whether it is a bioterrorism threat or contaminated water draining into crops. Automated data capture systems allow this process to specifically track the production batch, thereby identifying the trouble, isolating the contamination and helping to rectify the situation before it becomes a pervasive problem.

Financial Benefits

Food traceability is another tool companies can employ to differentiate themselves from competitors. For example, if a food processor promotes the use of American-grown products, a system must be in place across its supply chain to ensure that at each level of production the ingredients are from only American farmers and manufacturers. While consumers may not be able to taste the difference of American-grown products, they buy the product based upon the company’s guarantee that all of the ingredients are grown domestically.

Traceability becomes increasingly important in niche markets such as organic, cage-free eggs. Concerns about the integrity of organic products have led the FDA to implement mandates that producers and distributors must meet in order to qualify under organic or cage-free classifications. For many companies, mandates cause a manufacturing process challenge. However, if companies or industries as a whole take the initiative to implement sufficient systems, they can be designed to optimally monitor and sustain standards.

Improving the Supply Chain

U.S. government studies claim American companies spend $1.6 trillion annually on supply related activities including the movement, storage and control of products across the supply chain.

One key to food processing and manufacturing companies’ success is often rooted in limiting the overheard associated with the supply chain. Many traceability systems pay for themselves in six months because of their dramatic increase in efficiency.

By having an automated tracking system in place, processors tie their business operations together. Finding the right technology partner allows a food processor to develop a tracking and traceability data-capture system tailored to company’s needs rather than implementing a one-size-fits-all government-mandated or software package system.

Food processors focused on traceability and their technology partners can develop, implement and integrate with an enterprise resource planning system that incorporates financial, accounting and manufacturing control systems. These programs help ensure the business has streamlined as many elements as possible.

The issue is that many food processors are doing their tracking with pencil and paper. Although this complies with mandates, it does not provide any improvement in operational efficiency. Maintaining traceability records with pencil and paper is expensive due to time and lost opportunities. Technology, on the other hand, enables compliance and, at the same time, improves processes.

How it Works

So what can a company hoping to avoid recalls and lawsuits expect to implement? Industry standards include barcode scanning and label printing technology to track and identify jobs, people and materials.

Companies looking to take the next step may choose an RFID tag encoding and scanning system for automated scanning of materials.

Aided by artificial intelligence techniques, programs can generate warnings at the moment problems occur. The barcodes or RFID tags are identifiers, which store information on a computer database.

Database records contain part numbers, quantity, vendor, lot number, container type, location, age, quality-control status and cost.

To link the entire enterprise, wireless mobile computing may be utilized to provide managers and other supervisors real-time data collections stored to a central database. Linking across the supply chain to include a variety of food-processing facilities and warehouses is done via the Internet.

Prior to supply arrival, companies may require that vendors apply barcodes to ensure the product is traced from the original location. As materials enter the facility, a tracking application is used to connect with a supplies database and accounting system. As the process continues, all materials are tracked through the production cycle to record what supplies enter each batch.

From here, picking, packing and shipment can all be monitored right down to which products were loaded to specific boxes and then shipped on a certain truck. If the products are packaged incorrectly, the error is caught prior to shipment.

The complete process helps ensure food processing facilities effectively track back from finished goods to find the problem. Then, they can trace forward to where the product was distributed and pull the products prior to mass recall.

Many food manufacturers still operate with dated traceability standards and often find themselves having to comply with blanket recalls. This approach pushes food processors back on their heels, leaving them reeling to find answers.

Implementing an automated data capture system in advance of mandates can help companies meet the trends of restaurants and grocery stores requiring suppliers to have electronic food traceability systems in place. The newest technologies can rapidly recall “one-step-backward” and “one-step-forward” traceability data when required. Armed with accurate information in real time helps food processors isolate the issue quickly, resolve it, limit losses and get up and running again.

The Wisconsin based foundry specializes in ferrous metals: gray iron, ductile iron, stainless steel, and specialty iron castings. As a leader in its field, the Milwaukee based foundry helped its customers build the backbone of civilization by providing castings for many of the products they are famous for throughout the world. Optimizing every process is crucial to minimize down time, and maximize efficiency.

Challenge

Automate the label printing process by utilizing SAP to generate flat text files that can be handled in real time by an automated printing system. These text files would contain the information that is to be printed onto the label. The system must be centralized, require no manual queing of print jobs, and be able to distribute print jobs throughout the nation, and to any printer on the Foundry’s network.

On top of developing a new printing system, the new label fi les used must pass an extensive Quality Assurance (QA) evaluation process that visually compares the old labels to the new – ensuring an exact replication.

Solution

The solution requires a piece of label creation software that can not only design the labels, but can also handle the SAP output by filling in fields on the label at run time. The proposed software solution was to use Seagull Scientific’s Enterprise Edition which includes Bartender (label design piece) and Commander (automated printing piece).

The chosen integration method was to generate flat text files from within SAP that contained the information that is to be printed onto the physical label. This fl at text file would be dumped into a folder on a server that was being monitored by Commander. As soon as the file was recognized Commander would populate the according fields within the label file, and send the job to the specified printer.

Results

The benefi ts of the new system are a fully automated label printing system driven by SAP and Seagull Scientific’s Enterprise Printing software. Print jobs are generated in real time and distributed throughout the nation as needed.

By automating the label printing process we have eliminated the human error element, and maximized employee productivity. The end product was a seemless transition into an SAP driven, automated label printing.

Challenge

Streamline an existing process of inventory management which requires an employee to obtain inventory levels by hand (pencil and paper) and then manually type them into an excel spreadsheet – one at a time.  Because inventory was taken throughout the facility, the hardware would have to be mobile, rugged, and most importantly – ergonomic for the user.  The software would have to be a batch application because the existing wireless infrastructure did not provide coverage in all areas in which inventory would be taken.

Solution

The first step was to determine which piece of hardware would accomplish all tasks at hand, in an efficient manor.  In order for the hardware to work, it would have to meet the following guidelines:

1. Efficiently run the inventory management application
2. Be comfortable for the user
3. Withstand day-to-day abuse
4. Meet budget requirements

The chosen piece of hardware was the MC9090.  Known for its fast operating system, comfortable pistol grip, and rugged casing this device was preferred by the end user after a hands on demo was undergone.

Once the hardware was determined it was time to develop the custom software.  The software would be required to meet the following guide lines:

1. Integrate bar code scanning to eliminate the possibility of user error
2. Walk the user through the inventory entry process step by step
3. Easily export the data from the device to the host application

After working with the end users and inventory managers, the custom application was able to capture all the necessary data from the user, and easily export that data to the host PC.  The programming language of choice was Microsoft C# because of its ease of integration with the Windows Mobile operating system.

Results

A method of capturing inventory levels by eliminating the possibility of human error while recording SKUs, and entering data into the host.  In addition to the elimination of human error was the increase in employee productivity.  By scanning a single (pipe delimited) bar code they were able to replace the manual entry of four individual fields of data – all of which took time and money.

A few screen shots of custom application:

The screen that greets the user when the device is started allows them to specify what action they are performing. In this case they can choose either a ‘Charge Out’ or a ‘Warehouse Return’, as those were the two possible procedures for this specific application.

Upon clicking either ‘Next’ or the tab title ‘Account’, the user is prompted with the following screen – asking them for an account number and work order number.  There is more to this screen than meets the eye because certain GL Acct # inputs would prompt the user for specific values – WO#, Item#, etc.  All of which would be recorded in the back end and exported later.

This brings us to the area of the application that helped eliminate the possibility of human error, and drastically improve efficiency.  Because much of their inventory was bar coded in ‘pipe delimited’ format, we were able to allow the user to scan a bar code to capture all the data that was needed: Warehouse Number, Bin Location, and Item Number.

Once the user hits enter they were able to submit the data, which would write it to an XML file on the device and allow for ease of export once the device was connected to the host application.

The beneficiary of this Miles Data solution is a leading global provider of residential heating and air conditioning and commercial hvac solutions that reliably improve indoor environmental quality. The company provides energy efficient commercial air conditioners, chiller systems, hvac controls, hvac parts & supplies, and building automation systems that contribute to sustainable building design.

Challenge

Track un-painted compressor tanks which were currently being marked by hand with white chalk. The chalk marks were difficult to read, provided no image stability, and offered no opportunity for automatic data collection.
The goal was to provide a pressure sensitive label that could be printed on-demand at the production line and applied directly to the un-painted surface of a curved metal compressor. The label would be expected to adhere to the compressor as it passed through several paint stages including: a rigorous paint preparation process, a powder coated paint process, and an oven drying cycle. It was imperative that the label adhere to the compressor through the entire process as stray labels could potentially clog various draining mechanisms. Because the label would often be applied only seven minutes prior to the paint preparation process, the application required an aggressive, quick set adhesive.

Solution

After an initial phone consultation to review the application, an on-site visit provided an in-depth look into the current system and the desired outcomes of a re-design. Several synthetic label materials and thermal transfer ribbon formulas were tested. The materials that helped meet all criteria were a white polyester label facestock with high-tack permanent adhesive combined with Miles Data ribbon formula AE428 and Zebra 105 model printers. Each label was printed on demand on the production floor and included a 7 digit number (human readable from 8 feet away) and encoded as 2D Data Matrix symbol for auto tracking.

Results

The benefits of the new marking system are numerous. Compressor tanks are tracked efficiently and accurately. Information is timely because of the ability to print on-demand on the production floor with a networked industrial  thermal transfer printer. Loss of labels and information is virtually eliminated because of the durable face stock, aggressive adhesive and durable ribbon formulation. Encoding the 7 digit numbers as a 2D Data Matrix symbology requires less space on the label and allows for automatic data collection resulting in fewer errors and enhances employee productivity.