| BUSINESSWEEK ONLINE : AUGUST 7, 2000 ISSUE | ||||||||
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| SPECIAL REPORT
Plant Manager in a Box When it comes to management foisting new technology on factories, ''the plant-floor guys normally look at each other and roll their eyes,'' says Andrew J. Weiner, chief information officer at Myers Industries Inc. in Akron. But not last year, when he visited the Dawson Springs (Ky.) plant of Myers' Buckhorn Inc. unit. ''Five minutes into the meeting,'' he recalls, ''they all started asking questions about what else it can do.'' ''It'' is, in this case, BizWorks, new software from the interBiz Solutions Div. of Computer Associates International Inc. It harnesses intelligent agents, neural networks, and expert systems to tackle thorny problems, such as making sense of all the data gathered by factory sensors. The first application involves predicting when big injection-molding machines at Dawson Springs are about to turn out defective products. After training neural-network watchdogs with past production data, the engineers put BizWorks to work early this year. It monitors data coming from the machines, looking for conditions similar to those that resulted in bad parts. PAGER ALERT. Buckhorn is also testing a link to customer service and sales. When BizWorks spots a looming problem, it checks to see which customers ordered the products that machine is scheduled to make. If the problem threatens delivery to a key customer, the sales and customer-service managers get a pager alert. Eventually, Weiner sees BizWorks uniting the different computer systems at Myers' 65 branches. ''It can really create new business opportunities by putting management back on top of the technology horse. We'll be able to decide what information we want, and tailor BizWorks to provide it, instead of tailoring management practices to the software.'' That was just a dream yesterday, Weiner says. By Otis Port _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ BACK TO TOP |
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