· Gestión y marketing ·
T D Law
AFSoftware Limited
67th World Foundry Congress
This paper argues that computer software, including programs designed
specifically for foundries, has grown up over the past few years. It is now
quite straightforward to supply and support foundry management software,
at a distance – even when the distances involved are world-spanning.
This is true of course, only if the software supplied is a true package
which is easily supportable, in the way that an accounting package is a
true package where all users operate with an identical software product...
The suppliers of a major foundry management package (Synchro 32 for
Windows), now support users of their software on four continents via
Internet technology. For the past five years this has been achieved with
remarkable success. Customer responses show the high satisfaction
levels achieved to date in Europe, Australia and the Americas – while
Asian experience is as yet too recent to have been assessed. Previous
attempts at supporting software via conventional methods had been very
unsatisfactory when great distances were involved!
The main mechanism, which has revolutionised software support, is the
Internet – involving the use of websites, software downloads and email
data transfer.
The paper uses case-studies at three very different foundries in countries
on three continents – in Western Australia, in the American Mid-West, and
back home in the UK, to show the problems that were encountered and
how they have been overcome.
The case-studies encompass several major areas of management control
including costing, production scheduling, quality assurance and
commercial management in foundries involving sand casting, investment
casting and die casting.
