Blog on rugged field technology products

Only 2 years after producing the case study on their use of Xplore tablets, Westruss had to return a unit with a broken screen.  They just don't last very long do they!

It seems that even an Xplore ultra rugged tablet comes off second best to a  40+ tonne flat bed roller.  One of the mobile tablets was apparently left on the truss bed by accident and the roller did its work on the wooden frame and barely felt the bump of the Xplore iX104C unit.

At least it was then thin enough to post back to us :)  

Providing industry and other agencies with geological maps of NSW is the responsibility of the Regional Mapping Program of the Geological Survey of New South Wales which is part of NSW Department of Primary Industries. Based in Maitland, in the State’s Hunter Valley, this group conducts on-ground field work that enables the development of additional ‘layers’ of descriptive data that expands on that generated through aerial geophysical surveys and historical information.

“Working in remote and rugged environments is demanding on our people and their equipment”, says David Robson, Chief Geophysicist heading the project for Geological Survey of NSW.   DPI came to Antares, a specialist mobile computing provider and software developer, wanting to graduate from using palm-held PDAs for this task. “We have recently implemented three Xplore ruggedised tablet PCs with the ‘AllVue’ screen and have six more on order”, said David. “We are happy with their performance and our staff like using them”.

Orange (NSW) based roof truss and building frame manufacturer Westruss has recently embarked on a plan to move to a totally paperless factory. Westruss chose the Xplore iX104C rugged tablet PC supplied by Antares Corporation as the hardware platform for what is a very dirty and challenging production environment and management and factory staff are delighted with the outcome. Having achieved a flawless implementation in its truss factory, Westruss’ next step is to do the same in its frame production area.  Prior to the current drive to stream-line its factory operations, up to 100 pages of engineering plansand drawings were produced for each job at the building stage. Now, with the use of four Xplore tablets and third party engineering software, factory staff take design drawings and specifications straight off the company network and proceed to finished production in a completely paperless operation.  This automated operation also provides valuable and necessary real-time progress monitoring for each job which has obvious advantages for management and customer liaison personnel.

Westruss IT Manager, Will Ferguson reports that the company “has not had a single problem” since implementing the new system using the Xplore ruggedised tablets and expects that positive feedback shared with their software suppliers will inevitably see other similar manufacturing operations adopt this same technology.  “We looked at all other rugged and conventional tablet PCs but could not go past the Xplore because of its durability,toughness, tolerance to temperature extremes, ability to withstand water immersion and our extremely dusty environment” advised Mr. Ferguson.

We (Antares Team) would suggest that “It is hard to imagine a better demonstration of the rugged qualities of the Xplore than at Westruss where the production area is partly open to the weather (which in Orange can be very hot in summer and extremely cold in winter), where the gear can get wet and where it needs to cope with inevitable rough handling in a factory environment.  The equipment may get dropped onto sawdust covered concrete floors”.  One of the Westruss PCs is mounted on and controls a large saw and so needs to be able to withstand significant vibration.  It does this without missing a beat. “It was also important to us to go with wireless communication as we have a large gantry crane in this factory and so overhead cables would represent a hazard” added Mr. Ferguson.

Prior to the Xplore purchase, Westruss had used regular laptop PCs but had experienced an unsatisfactory failure rate and reported that “all the keyboard keys were smashed-in after a while which is why we were attracted to the touch-screen capability”.