Open Systems

Moving to Open Systems

Plant personnel wanted to take advantage of newer software to implement a more easily maintained solution. For example, they wanted to allow managers to build their own customized reports. Since Oracle and Access were already used at the Kansas City plant, Bayer wanted to use them to create a Multi-Trip Container (MTC) tracking system. The new, client/server-based tracking system would allow the company to adapt to its constantly changing needs.

The company chose EnvisionIT Software’s VisualFLOW, a plug-and play, object-oriented manufacturing integration program. VisualFLOW integrates various heterogeneous systems with no computer coding.

The MTC runs on a VAX/VMS server. New Microsoft Access client server software screens provide local users with an interface into the data as well as allowing manual transactions to be entered from various PCs located throughout the plant. Intermec’s integrated bar code scanning terminals (Model 1516A02) running custom-designed data collection software are used for data entry. VisualFLOW runs on DEC’s ALPHA server under Open VMS, moving data into an Oracle database. Data can be downloaded to the MTC from any of several locations throughout the plant.