Computer Technology Support

I am old enough to remember the first time that anyone mentioned the word computer. I and most other people did not know what they were talking about.

My best friend’s father worked on one of the first computers called “Univac.” This was not a desktop. It was the size of a two-story building. That was in the early 50’s.

Then in the 70″s the computers with improved technology started to develop. They had application in business, science and education. They were also being made small enough to fit on a table or desk. (Desktop). Computer software was developed to enhance the needs of business, science, and education.

By the 80’s the desktop computer was starting to emerge in many businesses. The public started using the desktop more in their homes. They were used, for small businesses and for pleasure. The software was enhancing the desktop computer’s ability to help and entertain. The main software that I used was called “Basic.” There were many other types of programs that had been developed for business, science, and education.”Basic” was becoming the main software for the computers using the IBM operating systems. Apple had created their own software and in most cases it was more friendly to the average person when used. The”Basic” program language made it easy to create simple programs such as; games or developing forms, etc. I even developed some short games for may enjoyment.

The first desktop computer that I learned to work on was a “Radio Shack.” The desktop computer took a big floppy disk, about 9″ inches square. Then within few years time the size of the floppy disk went down in size to about 4,1/4″ inches square. While the floppy disks got smaller, the memory capacity of the desktop computer started increasing. It seems to me like the desktop I used in the early part of the 80’s went from about 64k, 128K, to 512K. Today there are desktop computers that have 100’s of giga bite (GB). The floppy disk holds 1.44 mega bites (MB), and the CD’ holds five times that of the 1.44MB floppy. (You need to know the metric measure system to appreciate the jumps from kilo(KB) bites, to giga bites(GB)). The cell phones or most other forms of digital electronic products you use have one hundred to a thousand times more memory of storage than the first desktop computers.

Losing or wiping out your work, after hours of tedious typing, could happen at any time for any insignificant reason. Today’s desktop computers have very few accident where your work is wiped out. In the 80.s you needed to back up your work every five or six lines of typing. I believe that I lost more hours of work on the older computers like the”Radio Shack” than anyone else in the world. When the Apple II’s came out the only time that I lost any work was based on my stupidity

As the 80’s came to a close technology for the desktop computer had grown. There was excellent sophisticated software developed mostly by Microsoft. Everyone one in America was wanting a desktop computer. Creative software, the advent of INTERNET, and the unbelievable speed and memory helped the desktop computer to become a main stay in the majority of homes in America.

At JT Mall of Electronics, (

Where do we in manufacturing find the “edges” that make or break our profit margins? Where do we make the changes in process, the tweaking, that maximize returns on investments (ROI)? More often than not the edges that reach both output and quality goals are found in the efficiencies we make in the manufacturing technique. Today, in many job shops, make-to-order, or mixed mode manufacturers, those efficiencies in production are found in the elimination of waste—a technique commonly referred to as lean. In a lean system the manufacturer seeks maximized ROI by attempting to eliminate the waste of resources commonly found in physical production processes. In effect, the greatest and most fixed resource available to any manufacturer is that of time, and the control of time is something that we in manufacturing are always striving for.

In the performance assessment of any job or work center set-up, we first need to ask ourselves: Does the ROI justify the time, effort, and cost of leaning a particular process? For example, common sense will dictate that it’s not worth the expense of thousands of dollars to fix a process that will take a year or more to recover. Indeed, the ROI in manufacturing set-up improvement is directly related to the expected and/or actual use and output of the process. To truly lean a process, the improvement must be both significant in terms of time and productive in terms of output—a positive ROI. However, as any lean expert will point out, most set-ups can easily be reduced to ten minutes or less.

What, then, are the factors we must consider when looking to lean a set-up? First, as mentioned, volume of output is a key concept in assessing a set-up redevelopment. How many of a particular component do I expect to make in a year? Related is the notion of customer requirements—how often might this process be set-up during this same period? In short, how often will I run the part and in what quantities? It is only in the review of the answers to these questions that we begin to understand the importance of a particular process to our bottom line. With the awareness of value of a process in these terms, we can then begin to look at these cost in longitudinal terms; that is to say, our real costs for a particular set-up over time.

It is true that most shops underestimate real hard set-up costs, leading managers to include “soft costs” (e.g., the value of improved customer satisfaction, etc.) to justify the meager ROI in leaning a process. To truly validate the cost of a set-up, managers should engage a value stream analysis in which every step of the set-up is listed and measured in terms of time spent. Indeed, even the time (and cost) spent in breaking down the set-up on the backend must be included. This data is then compared against the average hours collected in the set-up performance information in the manufacturing database.

Of course, there are several more general steps you can take to help in ensure speedier set-ups—all common sense notions that are, surprisingly, overlooked by many manufacturers. In the world of lean we call it the “low hanging fruit”. For example, have a well organized fixture/tooling area. Always have a dedicated place for each fixture and make sure it is clearly identified. If at all possible, create multiple locations within the plant to store fixtures and store fixtures closest to where they are used.

Another great application is the use of shadow boards to place and store fixtures. Shadow boards provide a simple visual cue in the form of an outline or solid shape that quickly guide the set-up person to where a fixture should always go after breaking down. Some argue that this could be an expensive undertaking, creating dozens of shadow boards to store hundreds, sometimes thousands of fixtures. However, it certainly cannot be as expensive as having a $25 per hour person walking around for an hour looking for a $10 wrench ten times a week—week in and week out. Furthermore, while the set-up person is in search of the wrench the machine needing set-up is not producing parts.

Ultimately, the leaning of a set-up, a process, and even an entire work center involves the simple use of what is often the most basic of common sense observations. Plan and cost the set-up with realistic scenarios in mind. Remember, in leaning a set-up for a truly maximized ROI is to a large degree the controlling of that highly uncontrollable manufacturing resource—time.

globalshopsolutions.com/erp-learning-center/erp-howto-guides/erp-software-selection.asp globalshopsolutions.com/erp-learning-center/erp-howto-guides/erp-software-selection.asp

Dusty Alexander is the President of Global Shop Solutions. Global Shop Solutions is the largest privately held ERP software company in the United States.

Copyright 2007 - Global Shop Solutions. All Rights Reserved Worldwide. Reprint Rights: You may reprint this article as long as you leave all of the links active, do not edit the article in any way, and give the author name credit.

These days, one of the most threatening thing that can happen to a person is that he/she suddenly looses the valuable data stored on his/her computers hard drive. The very thought of losing data from a hard disk, because of weak security measures, is horrible. The only way to avoid such a possibility, if you do not have a restore option, is to back up the data on a regular basis.

Its up to you to decide what you should do to recover the data which was there inside your crashed hard drive. The first thing that you should do is that you should not run the recovery software that you got with your PC. This way you won’t overwrite original files. Now you should contact a reliable recovery company of good repute to restore those files you lost due to disk failure. Some of these recovery companies come directly at your home in order to provide you recovery services. But for home service, they can charge you more.

Format of some files are such that they cannot be recovered. The best example is DWG files or some graphic files. These special files require some media in order to get recovered. There is also a lot of difference between a hard drive crash and hard drive damage. In the latter case your lost data can not recovered while in former case you can recover your lost data. In case of poor security you can never recover the data you lost. You should always keep your data in a safer place in order to protect it.

Some of the commonly used tools to protect your data from malicious programs are anti virus softwares, firewalls and encryption technology. In encryption your data is translated into some secret code and only the person who knows the password or the key is able to decrypt it.

In case of any emergency, always keep few recovery tools ready in order to avoid data loss. One of the tools is back up option. Always keep a back up of the data that is stored on your computer. Store it one some different hard drive or some other storage medium. This way, if your data is lost due to hard drive crash or damage, you will be able to recover all of it. Go for data back up often. To protect your data from others, have preventive measures in place. If your computer is in a network like the internet, then use a good firewall to block any unwanted traffic. Anti virus softwares are also a good way to stop anything that may corrupt the files on your hard drive.

Tommy Jackson owns and operates disk-imaging-software.com disk-imaging-software.com