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ProActive/PIMay 5, 1999 Stochos, Inc. Develops Advanced Process Improvement Software Stochos Incorporated has developed a unique software system that has demonstrated the ability to reduce costs, improve plant performance and increase the quality of manufactured products. The technology advances in this system will bring manufacturing processes to the next level of quality and continuous improvement techniques. After being operational for only two months, the ProActive Process Improvement System (ProActive/PI) had already saved one company thousands of dollars. Donald Holmes, president and founder of Stochos Inc., said, "Results are good. We demonstrated a potential $250,000 a year in energy savings as well as determined that plant throughput can be increased with no additional capital investment." The plant referred to produces magnesite for Harbison Walker Refractories. Tom Alway, Quality Assurance Supervisor for the Ludington plant said, "I think the power lies both in what ProActive/PI has done and in the historical data analysis and research that went into the project. We needed to follow research discipline." Implementation of ProActive/PI requires a feasibility study, research and data collection before being installed and integrated to the plant process control system. "We learned that we were running our machines far too conservatively," said Dave Stepien, who was Manager of Statistical Management Systems for Harbison Walker."ProActive/PI stretches those boundaries and takes a sustained look at running the machines more aggressively," said Stepien. "Running the machines more aggressively is where money can be saved." The ProActive/PI system was developed for Sun Microsystems, Inc. workstations running the SolarisTM operating environment. The Sun hardware/software combination was chosen because of its consistently high marks in quality and reliability testing. All of Sun's workstations and servers use the powerful Solaris environment with a wide range of features for ease-of-use and increased productivity. The Solaris operating environment is the only operating system that scales across an entire enterprise - ranging from sub-$2,500 workstations to $1+ million mainframe-class servers - giving customers seamless application compatibility to provide investment protection. "We're pleased that Stochos has chosen the Solaris environment for their process improvement system," said Kelly Perey, director of technical computing marketing at Sun. "The stability of our platform makes it a natural choice for factory applications, where safety and predictability are paramount. The ProActive/PI system on Sun is a powerful combination for process manufacturers who want to improve the efficiency of their systems." ProActive/PI is also integrated with Informix SE." Informix® is pleased to provide the underlying database technology for the ProActive Process Improvement System (ProActive/PI) from Stochos, Inc.," said Dan Leighton, Executive Director of Server Marketing at Informix. "With Informix SE and high-speed C-ISAM® handling of data, this Stochos manufacturing system is able to provide customers with high speed processing, reduced costs and increased quality of manufactured products." "ProActive/PI reacts to changes in non-controlled variables, to guide the process to better results in the face of the changes in the non-controllable variables," said Holmes. ProActive/PI benefits include: reducing energy costs, improving yield and quality and decreasing waste. "The cost of the system (approximately $200,000) is repaid many times over with the savings resulting from the use of the system," said Holmes. |
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