Philosophies Principles Strategies
"The philosophy is the ‘What’ and 'Why'. It clarifies what you believe in or what you want to do. It also describes why you believe in the approach. The principles are the 'How'. They outline the key strategies you can follow to translate the philosophy into action. " Credit: The Positive Encounter (An Excerpt)
Our products' developments were, and are driven by our base Philosophies. These Philosophies dictated our Principles from which we derived our Strategic Direction. This wasn't apparent to us in the beginning but became more apparent as we matured and these Philosophies became one of our most important driving forces.
As technologies evolved our Philosophies & Principles remained the same but our Product Strategies expanded to meet the growing technical expectations of our customers.
One may think, OK, so What? Well, a Company's Philosophies & Principles dictate how it operates in the Short & Long Term, and this should be important to a Customer!
One of the things you should ask yourself regarding products you have purchased from a Vendor, "Are they going to continue to enhance, develop and support their existing Applications or just support the last release regardless of technology advances and pursue "Greener Pastures"?
That's not to say that a company shouldn't pursue new products as long as they continue to enhance, support, and keep legacy Products relevant using Today's Technologies.
So what are CAD/CAM Integration's Core Philosophies and how do they effect our product developments and our customer support?
The Customer is Always Right
Note: Why is the Customer Number One! Without Customers you have no Business so they must be Number One!
Be True to your Principles
Note: We chose to develop DNC as our base product since several of our Team's Backgrounds included Manufacturing and Machining Tool Controller Engineering and we very careful where we expend our Resources!
Build Supporting Applications around DNC
Note: As the changing Technologies expanded DNC's Scope it reinforced our Principles/Strategies to only develop Ancillary Applications that directly supported DNC.
Make it Ease to Use! Fully Integrate Applications & Modules
Note: ShopFloorManager can be looked at as the PDM for the ShopFloor DNC!
Credit: Wikipedia! A personal data manager (PDM) is a portable hardware tool enabling secure storage and easy access to user data. It can also be an application located on a portable smart device or PC, enabling novice end-users to directly define, classify, and manipulate a universe of information object.
Usually PDMs include password management software, web-browser favorites and cryptographic software. Advanced PDM can also store settings for VPN and Terminal Services, address books, and other features. PDM can also store and launch several portable software applications.
Give Customers more than Features
When you take into account On-Line, Printed "Documentation" and normal Product Features, we believe represents the Extended Features!
What encompasses Extended Features, more importantly, what does it imply for Customers?
Most company's main focus of their website is for Marketing while only providing base Product On-Line Support. To get detailed help they must call the support desk and or use the Product's User Manual.
These User Manuals usual only contain basic product details which can leave a User with unanswered questions. In most Manuals when a User is reading a selected section and needs to investigate a referenced section for a better understanding they have to keep their "finger" in the present section while searching for the referenced section.
If the new section also has a reference to another section eventually they just don't have enough "fingers". Not only that, if they need to jump back and forth to maintain a train of thought it presents a challenge.
To address this limitation CCI has embedded over a thousand links throughout their Detailed User Manual and over a hundred on their Website allowing a User to freely move between referenced sections and return to any previous link/webpage even back to the Index if that was the starting point!
When one thinks about Product Features they usually don't included "Documentation" as part of the equation. This is a Mistake!
A Sophisticated Product generally requires detailed "Documentation" to be available either locally (User Manual) and more importantly on the Manufacture's Website providing a User with access to this information from anyplace and anytime!
Another important Website attribute is providing Help Videos, not Marketing Videos, because sometimes it is better to demonstrate a feature then just documenting it in the User Manual!
Always build on Solid & Flexible Foundations
The Foundational Features are the Base upon which all other Product Features are derived!
Microsoft's Security was not designed for any specific Application but more with an IT's perspective in mind. It obviously works quite well but for use with generic Applications it can be a bit of a nuisance to setup & maintain. It would be nice to set it up once and forget it!
ShopFloorManager addresses this with it's own Security Layer that sits on top of Microsoft's Security providing a more User Friendly & Robust Security specifically designed around DNC & it's Ancillary Applications. This is more flexible and much, much easier to use and Manage.
ShopFloorManager uses the Security Layer's User Groups, and once created and assigned Access Rights it is a simple task to assign Users to any number of User Groups where they inherit the Access Rights to SFM's Applications & Features.
After the initial Microsoft security is setup it almost never needs to be changed!
After our first 10 years of software development we had gained extensive experience using the C language and developing software for the Operating Systems Unix, DOS and the Novell Network.
With the advent of Microsoft's Visual Basic and it's Database Access it was obvious to us that these Technologies were game changers for the Industry. So our next logical move was to develop all our applications around these "Technologies". As it turned out this was the correct move!
At the same time Software Engineering was maturing and starting to move to a Layered Software Architecture Model and we eased into the Model steadily incorporating this software engineering paradigm into our development.
As we developed and enhanced our software this model turned out to be our development paradigm. Inspired by this model we designed and created a Central System Foundation around which all of our Applications were integrated.
This approach allowed our software applications to inherit a consistent and unified look & feel while providing for securely exchanging real-time data and information.
When Users open Applications like ShopFloorMonitoring, ShopFloorDNC, ShopFloorDocuments, ShopFloorOperations, etc. they simply appear as an integral part of ShopFloorManager instead of a list of disjointed applications! Guess What? Our Applications are Fully 100% Integrated!
This "Model" was extended so every Application's supported Modules are an integral part of the Application and are accessible from the displayed Tool Bar! Anytime an associated Machine, Resource Collection, ShopFileCabinet, etc. is clicked the appropriate "Document" is displayed.
Any displayed "Document" that is highlighted and Right Mouse Clicked, provides a Menu with every possible action that can be taken. A User never losses their train of thought or place within the Application. Never!
The Master Document Control Module provides a common interface to all of the base Applications and sits on top of ShopFloorManager's Security Layer. As with all of ShopFloorManager's Applications & Modules it is fully integrated!
The most important feature of any Document Control System is how it manages all of it's "documents" including Security, Accessibility, Consistent look and feel, Ease of use, etc.
The following presents a brief description of what's included in this Module:
Master Document Control Supports the following Applications & Utilities:
Master Document Control Provides the following Services:
Where an Applications' Features Generate Benefits
