Computer Software!

Computer software and software control data.

The heart of the matter.

What is computer software? Now there's a question!

That's quite an appropriate question for that excellent page title because,
computer operating system software, within a machine information system installation, is right at the heart of the system.

The history of computer software and science began long ago, way before the modern High Level Language (HLL) programming disciplines of the computer industry that are in use today. As far back as the 1950's would you believe, well it's true I can assure you and I find that fact quite amazing!

There has always been a steady and definite progression from the mechanical inventions and mathematical theories of yesteryear. An un-stoppable progression towards todays modern Graphical User Interfaces (GUI) and megabit speed optimized applications we take for granted most days.

But from those first tentative steps of the binary one's and zero's of relay contact embodied machine language in electro-mechanical computers, formed the basis for a massive world-wide computer industry. Even before the first forms of the computer as we know it today existed.

A big chunk of that industry is computer software, which is nowadays of course a science of its own right. Computer Aided Manufacturing (CAM) software forms a part of that science, right along side it is Computer Aided Design (CAD) counterpart.

Computer diagnostics software and computer monitoring software were needless to say inevitable given time. And with the advances in software application execution speeds and really intuitive GUI programming, are today truely indispensable tools.

BUT; there's always a but, computer monitoring software comes in many different guises and purposes.

There will always be several ways of going about the underlying control of a system. Even several different methods and styles of system, accounting business computer software and computer diagnostics software systems to name a couple.

I have yet to see two different systems operating with similar operation layouts. But even so, they all work under the same basic concept.

There are two types of machine information systems, 'Passive' and 'Active', which type you would go for depends on your machines and how much 'central' control you desire.

We will be concentraiting on the passive types as the active machine information systems functionality can generally be viewed as an (expensive) add on. Click this link for a brief explanation of the system differences between passive and active.

Pretty much all of the systems I have seen give the impression of a one off project. This means the program has been specially written for the specific application and equipment. Not always a bad thing, but there are drawbacks.

It also means however that any changes which need to be made, also have to be done especially for you. Yep you've guessed it, you're a captive audience. Obviously, this could be a cost disadvantage.

Just like the motorway service stations, when you need petrol you have to pay their price! This can be a bit of a shock if there's not an agreement in place to deal with changes.

In this situation such an agreement is normally part of the overall package. I would certainly make sure this is covered before going ahead with any installation in these circumstances.

You can be fairly sure that all of these machine/management information systems work by gathering signal information at the front end. This would be from sensors on the machines, button panels and switches used to give the machines state at any given time.

The data collected from these signals is then sent to the host or master display computer. This normally done at one minute intervals or there abouts, there's not much to be gained by trying to do this any quicker.

Frequency machine control data. Explain software data frequency.

Sensors on the machines would provide product count, good and bad. If the machine is running, stopped, being setup or under maintenance. Also if the equipment is running whether the production on or running empty. This maybe for a warming up period for example.

If there is not a direct speed signal available this can be worked out by the host computer software, as can other information. For example, machine efficiency, average production rates etc.

Have a look at specific computer lead reviews, tried and tested.

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