Making business-related data available for computer processing is aided by some remarkable new tools for improved product design, production monitoring, and elimination of time-consuming paperwork
Russell Kay
Not so long ago, data acquisition for business meant the tedious manual collection and entry on paper of machine and instrument readings and test reports and their later transfer to machine-readable form. This required armies of clerks, verification of all manual entries, and a significant amount of time.
The direct expenses of manual data entry are obvious; yet the hidden costs are likely to be even greater. The amount of time it takes for entries to be made and transferred means that managers are always working with old, out-of-date information. Communication with customers and suppliers is time-cons
uming and frustrates attempts to work faster and smarter.
Also, without real-time feedback on manufacturing processes and output, quality and performance are difficult to monitor and regulate efficiently. Finally, traditional product-design methodologies make it difficult to apply the hard lessons learned on the shop floor--not to mention environmental and safety regulations--to improve the design of newer products.
However, as more of our industrial processes and activities center around information-related products and services, and as even the traditional smokestack industries and manufacturing operations depend on electronic sensors and real-time data, the task of generating and capturing that data for automated processing and instant access becomes critical to continued survival in today's brutally competitive world. With this in mind, BYTE takes a look at data acquisition for business.
Faster than a Speeding Bullet
It is clear that automation today means replacing paper-based
operations with machine processing, electronic telecommunications, and computer-aided methodologies. One of the first areas to benefit from the direct generation and use of electronic data is the administrative function. E-mail and local-area networking, have become critically important to many companies. EDI (Electronic Data Interchange) has made it possible for companies to maintain on-line links with customers and suppliers, cutting the time needed for order processing, inventory maintenance, and fulfillment.
In ``EDI Moves the Data,'' Peter Way-ner discusses the many ways that EDI can replace paper documents with electronic messages. Purchase orders, confirmations, manufacturing instructions, packing slips, invoices, and even payments are now travelers on the electronic highway.
To do this on a wide scale requires standards that ensure interoperability and mutual understanding. Other important issues include the need for digital clearinghouses to route and translate electronic documents; cr
yptography-based document notarization, time-stamping, verification, authentication, and legally binding digital signatures; and finally, digital cash--chump change for the toll booths and shopping malls along the Infobahn.
What's Happening on the Shop Floor?
As production and manufacturing operations become more automated, it is easier than ever to quickly capture the data needed to control these processes, improving quality control and monitoring output closely and accurately in real time. In ``Process Control's New Face,'' Mark Clarkson shows how new object-oriented software tools make it possible to easily represent physical processes in diagrammatic form on a computer screen.
Such displays replace the complex and expensive panels used in nuclear power plants, chemical refineries, transportation and communications routing, and materials-handling systems, to name just a few. Computer-based process-control systems permit quicker development and modification of monitoring systems, as wel
l as more efficient use of operators' time.
These new MMIs (man-machine interfaces) are becoming more affordable as they are made available on commodity-level PCs running Microsoft Windows. Formerly restricted to proprietary hardware and workstation-class systems, MMIs are likely to be used more widely once Microsoft brings out the next generations of Windows and Windows NT that can better support real-time and near-real-time applications.
The Design of a Lifetime
Perhaps the least-known aspect of data acquisition for business involves product design. Several new factors are coming into play as computer-based tools become more powerful and more widespread.
Sara Reese Hedberg, in ``Design of a Lifetime,'' takes a look at a new generation of tools that capture not only the final design specifications and parameters but also the intermediate rationales and reasoning that went into a design process--why certain decisions were made at certain points,
and why other choices were no
t adopted. This data--formerly available, if at all, buried in correspondence and engineers' notebooks--can be invaluable later in the life of a product, as modifications and evolutionary enhancements need to be made.
Another benefit of this new design approach is the early involvement of other company departments that will have to deal with the product later in its life cycle--manufacturing, marketing, customer service, and maintenance. This involvement translates into a better product for the ultimate user, because all areas of the producing company are in the best possible position to support the customer.
The newest design tools and methodologies also reflect the need for eventual recycling and materials reuse. Integrated design that considers a product's whole lifetime, including its ultimate disposal, is changing the nature of many products. Fewer different materials are being used, and products are being designed to be easily taken apart when no longer serviceable--which, of course, tends
to improve their serviceability all along the way and thus may extend their usable life.
Russell Kay is a BYTE technical editor. He can be reached on the Internet or BIX at russellk @bix.com.
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