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We got a call the other day from a plant manager who had just been placed in a very difficult situation. He had been told that the factory was on the way to company wide implementation of a new ERP system, and he had to provide the ability for all of the manufacturing stations in his plant to record and access inventory data. This company makes various cables and wire harnesses, and he had identified about 40 locations across the manufacturing floor where he needed a workstation.
His concern was brought about by the fact that he had given the matter some thought, and had decided that there were a few impediments to his ability to meet the system requirements in the limited time that he had available. The problems that he faced are not unique to his particular location, but are becoming more and more common as companies demand more information about their process.
The time needed to set up the PCs was a major concern, and for good reason. There is the physical task of simply receiving and unpacking the computers. Then each computer has to be set up, checked out, and have the correct software installed. This could go fairly smoothly or, as is too often the case, could create unforeseen delays.
Neither the plant manager nor any of his immediate staff had the ability to handle the anticipated long-term support of this many PCs. And when he checked with the IT department, they were unable (and unwilling) to provide the resources to support his factory equipment. They had specially trained personnel who stayed in the company's computer room, where they managed the servers and supported the office computer systems. Even though the office workers were already familiar with the operation of a PC, the IT department felt that they were still getting too many support calls from users. Picking up an additional 40 PCs that were to be run by people more used to driving a forklift than working on a computer was not something that they were prepared to do.
When he realized that one of the reasons that the IT department gave for not providing support was that the environment was not suitable for office grade equipment, he investigated the possibility of using industrial computers. The IT department thought that the computers originally selected wouldn't last, and he didn't like the idea of all his PCs starting to fail after only a few months of service. But he was having a hard time convincing management that the additional cost for the industrial equipment was warranted - after all, there were several PCs now located on the floor that had not had a problem in years.
As the plant added products to its catalog, the plant manager had just created new workstations wherever he could find room. Often this meant that people were squeezed into tight areas, with just enough room to handle all of the parts and tools. Add to this the fact that there needed to be aisles large enough to accommodate delivery of parts and pick-up of finished product, and there were many locations where there was not a practical place to locate a computer out of harm's way. And he couldn't disturb production to rearrange the workflow.
Without question, there would be computer failures in the future. Because PCs are so complex and can be so temperamental, he wanted to keep all of his systems identical, but that would require the purchasing of several identical PCs to serve as spares. Sure, they could be set up just like the others at the same time and then put into storage, but this was really just postponing the inevitable. Eventually, one of the floor PCs would die, and they could no longer replace it with an identical model. At that point, they would start to get the variety of PCs that make support so difficult. Variety may be the spice of life, but it creates a very unsupportable system.
All of these potential pitfalls are avoided by the application of a thin client system. Setup time is reduced to almost zero. Once the server is configured with the proper application software, each thin client is installed by simply plugging it into the network. The thin client server goes in the IT department's computer room, and handling the minimal ongoing support of another server is something that they are willing to do. An industrial thin client costs about the same (or less) than a desktop PC. Thin clients also don't face the same mounting restrictions that desktop PCs do. ACP's industrial thin client is smaller than a telephone, and can be mounted to the underside of a table. And replacement clients are always easy to get. Even if the model is different, the functionality is identical. If one of the clients becomes damaged, even a newer client will function as a plug-in replacement. The applications and data reside on the server, and that part remains unchanged.
Using thin clients for factory data collection may not be exciting, but that is really what this plant manager was looking for - a very particle solution to a very real problem. And ACP's industrial thin clients met his requirements exactly.
For more information on ACP Industrial Thin Client computers, please visit our web site at http://www.thinmanager.com
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