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Case Studies
HP Labs – Bristol
Danfoss Flowmetering – Stroud Case Study 1
Huntleigh Healthcare – Luton
Danfoss Flowmetering – Stroud Case Study 2
Postaweb – Bristol

Hewlett Packard Labs – Bristol
You've heard the phrase 'HP Invent'; this is where they do it.

The Problem
HP Labs regularly produce a number of computationally-intensive console mode (DOS box) programs that need to be run repeatedly with different input data. The programs compute mathematical models that take a long time to run, but are very important to HP's on-going research.

The engineers who produce these programs needed a way to submit the programs into a 'processing farm' so that they could be run automatically and in parallel in order to speed up the overall throughput.

Additionally, the engineers required a way to monitor what was going on and cancel running programs if necessary. Also, output from the programs which had previously appeared on screen would have to be captured.

The Solution
An Access database file is used to record 'Jobs' that are required. A Delphi user interface modelled on Explorer was provided so that a small number of engineers (5 or so) could submit, monitor and control jobs executing on a large 'farm' (up to 300) of PCs.

Installed on each PC in the 'farm' (normal user's PCs throughout HP Labs) is a service application written in Delphi which downloads programs and data to be run on the user's PC during idle time. When each program is complete, its captured output is placed back into the Access database for the engineers to view. In this way, it is possible to leverage the power of hundreds of PCs without their users being aware of any performance drain. As the average PC spends more than 90% of its time idle, this solution represents a huge increase in throughput for this very important part of HP.

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Danfoss Flowmetering – Stroud Case Study 1
Danfoss Flowmetering manufacture magnetic flowmeters ranging in size from 6 to 2000mm in diameter. These meters measure the flow of water (or oil, or beer etc.) by measuring the effect that the moving liquid has on the magnetic field generated by the meter.

The Problem
For these meters to be useful, it is vitally important that they are properly calibrated. Danfoss have 5 "Calibration Rigs" on-site in Stroud ranging in output from 3 to 1500 Litres-per-second. A solution was required that would fully-automate these rigs under the control of a single PC per rig.

The Solution
Essentially one huge robot, each rig is composed of a weighing machine, many valves, laboratory counter, digital voltmeters, water pump and so on. many different hardware interfaces have been employed such as GPIB, RS232, HART, OPC to communicate with disparate devices using a number of industry-standard and proprietory protocols. This is a large project, with approximately 30,000 lines of Delphi code written so far. 2 rigs have been commissioned so far, with the remaining 3 to be completed by April 2003.

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Huntleigh Healthcare – Luton
Huntleigh Healthcare are the UK's leading manufacturer of hospital bed systems, offering a comprehensive range of products ranging from simple anti-bedsore products to full-blown intensive care systems. Additionally, Huntleigh have a sizeable rental business covering both long and short-term rental of their bed systems. Huntleigh Healthcare are a global company, also having rental businesses in the U.S., Australia and France.

The Problem
Huntleigh's ageing rental invoicing system needed replacing. A much more comprehensive system was specified, encompassing not only invoicing, but asset-tracking, depot and laundry management and a high degree of integration with distributed devices such as PDAs.

The Solution
MultiSoft UK have provided Informix development and UNIX C development skills and advice regarding methodologies. Many technologies have been employed such as MSMQ, Web Services, COM, DCOM and SQL Server Merge Replication. MultiSoftUK have written UNIX C programs that can post messages into MSMQ on Windows 2000 Servers. Such cross-platform integration essential in real-world systems, but can very often be the most difficult to achieve. MultiSoftUK's experience at both UNIX and Windows development makes it the ideal choice for this kind of development.

In addition, the Huntleigh Rentals system is a true global system, being both multi-language and multi-timezone on each client. An on-going project in four phases, phase 1 went live in April 2002 and phase 2 went live in February 2003.

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Danfoss Flowmetering – Stroud Case Study 2

The Problem
Referred to by Danfoss personnel as 'T' Factory, they have instituted an assemble to order manufacturing system that requires warehouse staff to complete the customer's order from sub assemblies kept in stock. Software was required to instruct warehouse personnel on which assemblies should be combined to complete a customer's order. Additionally, documentation and packaging labels needed to be printed and the serial numbers of the assemblies used allocated to the customer's order for traceability.

The solution
As Danfoss's main manufacturing and planning is handled by SAP, MultiSoftUK had to work closely with Danfoss staff to achieve the proper level of integration required. Once the SAP data was made available, MS SQL Server was used to store details of uncompleted production orders, minimal bills of materials, assembly stock levels and assembly serial numbers. A Delphi application was written to allow the warehouse staff to 'Complete a Production Order' by simply nominating which assemblies were being allocated to it from a drop-down list. Upon marking the Production Order as complete, all documentation and packaging labels were printed out using Crystal Reports. Completed order data is then loaded back into SAP nightly. As a result, Danfoss were able to significantly stream-line their production facility, reduce customer lead times and complete the development of the software with no customisation of SAP itself thus keeping project costs low.

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Postaweb – Bristol
Postaweb Outdoor Marketing Systems is a Bristol-based Bill Posting company with satellite branches all over the south east. In addition, Postaweb are the producers of the Postaweb online Bill Posting verification system that is used by a number (approx 18 so far) Bill Posting companies country-wide.

The Problem
Due to the distributed nature of Postaweb's business (a central database in Bristol and 21 satellites) a solution was required that properly implemented an n-tier distributed system.

The Solution
Leveraging Borland's 'DataSnap' distributed technology, MultiSoftUK have produced a set of Client and Middle-Tier applications that allow Postaweb to manage their distributed data effectively. The whole system is run through a web-based application server with an Interbase 6 database tier.

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