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REGIONAL ROOF TRUSS MANUFACTURER FINDS PERFECT MOBILE COMPUTING SOLUTION IN RUGGED ENVIRONMENT 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
C2D rugged tablet PC 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
plans and drawings were produced for each job at the building stage.
Now, with the use of four Xplore C2D 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. Antares Managing Director Peter
King said 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 where 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". Westruss is clearly a very happy Xplore user and Will Ferguson would be happy to talk to companies considering similar applications in a rugged environment. |
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