Customer

The customer is a leading manufacturer of equipment for the agriculture industry with facilities throughout North America. The warehouse management software (WMS) requires a constant connection to the host application, so the network must be completely reliable at all times, and in any environment.

Challenge

Design a wireless network that provides wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling coverage so that devices can connect to the internal network without the use of CAT5/CAT6 cables. The devices needing to connect to the network include the following:

• LXE MX7 – 1/4 VGA, handheld mobile computer with the Windows CE 5.0 operating system
• LXE VX6 – 1/2 VGA, truck mounted computer with Windows CE 5.0 operating system
• Misc. Laptops & Desktops – Various manufacturers with Windows XP, Vista, and Mac OSX operating systems

In addition to the variety of devices in use is the variety of environments in which the devices will be operated in. The different environments for this particular wireless network design can be categorized as follows:

• Indoor

  • Production: 170,000 square foot facility with 20′ ceilings. Area contains mostly large, metal machinery and conveyors.
  • Warehousing: 300,000 square foot facility with 40′ ceilings. Area contains densely stacked product on 30′ high racking. Product can be any number of materials.
  • Office space: 42,000 square foot office area with 9′ ceilings. Area contains mostly cubicles and a small row of offices.

• Outdoor

  • Storage: 68,000 square foot yard housing metal product. Area is subject to extreme temperaturs – cold and hot.

Solution

Design, develop, and implement a wireless network to provide wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling coverage in all areas needing coverage. The implemented hardware must be capable of withstanding harsh environments, as well as provide efficient coverage zones in the different environments.

The first step in determining the hardware required for proper coverage is to conduct an on site wireless site survey. The site survey tests different access points and different antennas in the many different environments and allows the Systems Engineer to determine the best infrastructure for each environment.

After discussing the initial requirements with the customer it was determined that the Cisco 1240 Series Access Point would meet meet the needs of the Network Admin. After performing an on site wireless site survey it was determined that a combination of antennas, each specifically chosen for the different environements, would be used.

• Cisco Dipole – 2.2 dbi gain
• Cisco Diversity – 4.5 dbi gain
• Cisco Yagi – 13.5 dbi gain
• LXE Spire – 3 dbi gain

Results

The integrated solution resulted in an efficient wireless network that provided adequate coverage in all required areas throughout the 500,000+ square foot facility. The different types of antennas minimized the required number of access points and kept the total cost of the solution well under budget.

Project Background

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.

When hundreds of people across the country fell ill from fresh spinach last year, the widespread panic forced store managers to pull bags off the shelves. As a result, food traceability procedures – the ability to know at all times where food products and all of the ingredients came from and went to – started drawing attention from more than just the FDA.

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.

Customer

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.