MailBag Friday (#22)

Every Friday, we dedicate this space to sharing solutions for some of the most frequently asked questions posed to our ThinManager Technical Support team.  This weekly feature will help educate ThinManager Platform users and provide them with answers to questions they may have about licenses, installation, integration, deployment, upgrades, maintenance, and daily operation.  Great technical support is an essential part of the ThinManager Platform, and we are constantly striving to make your environment as productive and efficient as possible. [...]

Monthly Integrator Spotlight

ThinManager Grows With Expanding Operations

When a large globally recognized beverage company needed to expand their North American facilities from coast to coast, they called on the Barry Wehmiller Design Group.  With more than 25 years of experience as a global supplier of manufacturing technology, and over 600 dedicated technical professionals, they were the obvious choice for such a large project.  When it was time to improve and upgrade those facilities, the Barry Wehmiller Design Group called on ThinManager.

“We looked at a number of different options and settled on the ThinManager Platform because of its great reputation as it was created specifically for industrial applications.  It seemed to be an ideal solution for the plant floor.  It doesn’t carry a lot of overhead and it is very easy to install.  That was one of the primary considerations when we chose ThinManager,” said Mike Sommars of Barry Wehmiller Design Group.  He then explained the totality of this large multi-phase, multi-location project that was deployed and expanded upon over a period of time. [...]

ThinManager Q & A with Matrix Technologies

Here at ACP we are constantly speaking to customers and integrators about their experiences with the ThinManager Platform so we can continue to improve our product and provide better service.  Recently, we had an opportunity to speak with Mike Dunstan from Matrix Technologies, Inc. to discuss their ongoing ThinManager deployment for a leading food manufacturer in North America.

Q- How many of their facilities have you performed services as an integrator?

A- Five total.  Four in America and one in Canada. [...]

The 2012 ThinManager Roadshow Rolls to the Finish Line

Earlier this year, we wrote an article explaining the long and proud history of the ThinManager Roadshow.  Since then, the Roadshow has spent the summer traveling across tens of thousands of miles while visiting eight cities, two countries, and hundreds of people all wanting to know how to get the most out of their ThinManager ready thin client systems.

This year, ACP raised the bar by holding the Roadshow at some of the most famous and eclectic locations we could find to make sure that after spending a day talking about how ThinManager increases efficiency managing automated industrial environments, that everyone could have a little fun.  From stadiums, to racetracks, to museums, the legend of ThinManager continues to spread across the land. [...]

MailBag Friday (#19)

Every Friday, we dedicate this space to sharing solutions for some of the most frequently asked questions posed to our ThinManager Technical Support team.  This weekly feature will help educate ThinManager users and provide them with answers to questions they may have about licenses, installation, integration, deployment, upgrades, maintenance, and daily operation.  Great technical support is an essential part of the ThinManager platform, and we are constantly striving to make your environment as productive and efficient as possible. [...]

The Greatest ROI Comes From the Money You Don’t Have to Spend

Last month, we discussed how the often used “Return on Investment” statistic is one that is skewed by the data that is or is not used to determine initial cash layout of a proposed deployment.  However, one important part of that equation that has always been unavoidable when pricing out a proposed deployment is hardware.  When thin clients were first introduced, their initial cost savings over PCs was obvious.  But over the last decade, PC prices have continued to drop while thin client prices have, for the most part, stayed the same.  A quick review of new product press releases this month from manufacturers such as AIS, HP, Acer, and Ncomputing shows that while some thin clients can still be purchased at a very manageable price point, most of the current models on the market can cost up to $700 per unit. [...]

The Benefits of Shadowing Clients

Here at ACP, we have been working tirelessly to discuss and promote the important distinctions between ThinManager and the competition.   The most prevalent of those distinctions is that while other centralized management solutions manage the server, ThinManager manages the clients as well as their connections to the server.  A prime example of this is the Shadowing feature, which is perhaps the most used ThinManager function by customers as well as integrators.

Shadowing is a function that allows an authorized user to view what is running on a remote client from anywhere using a number of methods with just one simple mouse click or keystroke.  For most system engineers, using Shadowing from their Control Room is the most common usage, as well as being simple and convenient to deploy.  This useful feature greatly reduces the time between an operator reporting a problem and an administrator being able to review the current session.   Now an engineer or administrator can simply view the individual session currently running at any client in the facility without having to leave the Control Room.  With Shadowing, it now takes minutes to review a problem client or session instead of hours. [...]

MailBag Friday (#15)

Every Friday, we dedicate this space to sharing solutions for some of the most frequently asked questions posed to our ThinManager Technical Support team.  This weekly feature will help educate ThinManager users and provide them with answers to questions they may have about licenses, installation, integration, deployment, upgrades, maintenance, and daily operation.  Great technical support is an essential part of the ThinManager platform, and we are constantly striving to make your environment as productive and efficient as possible. [...]

Monthly Integrator Spotlight

Stacking up the Benefits:  ThinManager and Rockwell Automation

For nearly thirty years, ESE, Inc, the Engineering Solutions Experts, has seen continuous growth in plant automation engineering.  Headquartered in Marshfield, Wisconsin, ESE specializes in Rockwell solutions for global food and beverage manufacturers. Yet, after years of providing support and upgrades, it became apparent that there was a missing piece to the puzzle.  That piece turned out to be ThinManager.

Contacted by a major cheese processing plant in California, ESE was brought in to upgrade their existing processes with a combination of modern hardware and a Rockwell Automation FactoryTalk View SE distributed SCADA system.  They replaced the older PanelView terminals that were on the factory floor with Allen-Bradley 200R VersaView Industrial PCs, as well as a legacy RSView32 SCADA system to give them more computing power and greater flexibility. [...]

MailBag Friday (#14)

Every Friday, we dedicate this space to sharing solutions for some of the most frequently asked questions posed to our ThinManager Technical Support team.  This weekly feature will help educate ThinManager users and provide them with answers to questions they may have about licenses, installation, integration, deployment, upgrades, maintenance, and daily operation.  Great technical support is an essential part of the ThinManager platform, and we are constantly striving to make your environment as productive and efficient as possible. [...]