Custom Apparel Manufacturer Goes Live With Omnitrol Networks Real-Time Manufacturing Visibility Solution

Business intelligence at the Edge increases efficiency, cash flow, and throughput

SANTA CLARA, CA (September 15, 2009) – After a brief configuration and deployment process, Bay Creek Manufacturing has successfully implemented the OMNITROL Real-Time Manufacturing Visibility solution to increase efficiency and productivity at its main production plant in Mountain View, Missouri. Bay Creek manufactures uniforms such as track suits, and band and cheerleading uniforms for schools and colleges. Every order is unique with respect to quantity, size, style, colors, braid, embroidery, and tackle twill, so that it is not unusual to have well over 15,000 units on the shop-floor on any given day.

"Bay Creek Manufacturing represented a highly complex and customer-driven operational environment" said Sieg Weber, Director of Engineering at Omnitrol Networks. "We are delighted to successfully deploy our unique real-time visibility solution without impacting their operations. It was easy for Bay Creek’s personnel to deploy the solution and rapidly accomplish operational efficiencies in their process."

Due to the relatively short order cycle times, Bay Creek Manufacturing required automated collection and integration of real-time operational data to help them identify orders at risk of being late, increase throughput, and make immediate business decisions. The problem was compounded when Bay Creek recently added a third manufacturing plant to meet increasing production requirements. "Manual work-order tracking across all three sites was proving virtually impossible. Bay Creek needed a solution that would provide real-time visibility of not only the Mountain View factory, but eventually across all three facilities,” said Sieg Weber, “while keeping the total cost of ownership of the solution as low as possible."

The OMNITROL Real-Time Manufacturing Visibility system is designed to provide automated business intelligence and real-time operational dashboards, scorecards and alerts. The OMNITROL solution is the industry's first fully integrated sensor-based application network that securely integrates business process intelligence with real-time sensors on the shop floor.

Among the benefits Bay Creek Manufacturing cites is complete visibility of the shop-floor. "I can view the complete status of my operations and quickly identify at-risk orders from my desktop", reported Mark Odom, Bay Creek’s Vice-President of Manufacturing. "Instead of discovering late orders through missed delivery dates, thanks to the Omnitrol Networks’ solution, I am always in the know, and my operations have transformed from a reactive to a pro-active environment where I can address the issues before they escalate into customer problems".

The OMNITROL Real-Time Visibility Manufacturing solution allowed Bay Creek to automatically:

Enable clients to check the status of their orders in real-time through a web portal
Accurately track real-time forecasted production against MRP schedules
Track employee timing and job schedules as they happen
Reconcile multiple job order pairing
Attach digital content such as photos, and quality records to job orders

Bay Creek employees immediately took to the new OMNITROL system with a minimum of training. "It allows them to easily input the status of orders and the activities they are performing," says Mark Odom, "rather than filling out paperwork. This increases the overall throughput, all with only a small investment and no real change to our existing manufacturing processes."

About Omnitrol Networks

Omnitrol Networks Inc. is a leading provider of real-time operational visibility and traceability solutions that integrate advanced wireless, mobile handhelds, RFID and sensor technologies. The company's award-winning OMNITROL software has pioneered the market for “Always On” real-time business intelligence, supply-chain traceability and automation for shop-floor operations. The OMNITROL’s unique edge-centric solution architecture delivers the industry's first complete business intelligent solution for real-time shop-floor to top-floor collaboration at the lowest total cost of ownership in the market. Omnitrol Networks Inc. is a privately held company with corporate headquarters in Santa Clara, California, USA. Additional information about Omnitrol Networks’ products and services are available at www.omnitrol.com.

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Omnitrol Networks
info@omnitrol.com
Tel: 408.919.1100

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It mitigates technology investment risk by minimizing integration with existing legacy systems; enabling customers to migrate at their own pace while still being future-proofed.

Louis Bianchin,
Senior Analyst,
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Omnitrol’s cutting-edge solution suite automatically collects information from a large variety of sensors and, through predictive analytics, delivers real-time visibility with accurate forecasting between business partner operations. Potentially, any control system or middleware may help an end-user integrate back-end and shop-floor but Omnitrol infrastructure extends business intelligence directly from the operations-floor without the complexity of multiple software layers, thereby minimizing total investment and improving ROI.

Arunkumar J,
Program Manager,
Frost & Sullivan
Omnitrol Networks has become a major force in the industry.

Joe Leone,
President & CTO,
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The OMNITROL appliance's network and business application convergence, compounded by its dramatic economic value proposition, is rapidly transforming the landscape of the real-time enterprise network and appliance-based service delivery.

PG Menon,
VP Marketing,
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Successfully deploying asset tracking solutions in the enterprise requires an integrated platform that reduces costs, risks and complexity. Omnitrol's scalable open platform is enhanced by adding Wi-Fi RTLS functionality using Ekahau's RTLS and its open XML/HTTP software interface.

Antti Korhonen,
President & CEO,
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Business leaders should care about the benefits that a solution like Omnitrol's could bring to the inherently complex manufacturing models that automotive, aerospace and other large discrete manufacturers face.

Dan Miklovic,
VP Manufacturing,
Gartner
Our current focus is on lean manufacturing, common systems, and ergonomics. To prepare for the next step function improvement in aircraft manufacturing, the Advanced Manufacturing Research & Development organization is exploring network enabled manufacturing, Omnitrol Networks helps us create such an environment by providing the capability to collect, analyze, correlate, and act upon edge device and applications data in a highly adaptive, real-time environment.

Bryan Dods,
Senior Manager, Aerostructures Manufacturing,
Boeing Corporation
The PCB tracking solution combines Texas Instruments’ experience in electronics manufacturing along with our core competency in RFID with Omnitrol Networks' Work-In-Process application appliance.

Mikael Ahlund,
Director of Asset Tracking,
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I can view the complete status of my shop-floor and quickly identify at-risk orders from my desktop. Instead of discovering late orders through missed delivery dates, thanks to the OMNITROL solution I am always in the know.

Mark Odom,
Vice President of Manufacturing,
Bay Creek Manufacturing
Working with Omnitrol Networks to add UWB capability to their best-in-class WIP visibility solution will offer customers the solution they are seeking to improve their work-in-process operations.

Greg Clawson,
Vice President of Worldwide Sales and Marketing,
Time Domain
The OMNITROL appliance has developed a powerful new paradigm in real-time Work-In-Process visibility and traceability. By combining all the computing, networking, and software resources into a single physical device, Omnitrol Networks is going to be a catalyst of the IT transformation that will support the proliferation of intelligent edge networks.

Joseph Robin Mathews,
Associate Editor,
Silicon India
With OMNITROL, end users will not have to upgrade their entire infrastructure to adapt to the latest technology change or workflow improvement. The OMNITROL encapsulates complete business services intelligence on the work-floor where business operations happen.

Brendon Ouimette,
Analyst,
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Omnitrol Networks' offering combines middleware, device management and networking functions that reduce costs and time-to-market for real-time RFID-based edge services. We look forward to continued collaboration with Omnitrol to bring the benefits of RFID to our customers.

Terry Pruett,
Director of Channel Development,
Alien Technology Corporation
Omnitrol's ability to automatically monitor and track what is happening on the factory floor without user intervention is a unique differentiator. It eliminates inconsistent or inaccurate reports of work in process.

Stephanie Neil,
Senior Editor,
Managing Automation
The aerospace and defense industries are constantly looking for better ways to manage complexity. Among their goals are the creation of ‘sense and respond’ supply chains that help warfighters increase availability of their weapons systems to ensure mission readiness. Omnitrol Networks’ award-winning track and trace infrastructure solution is a proven, scalable and elegant approach to help existing ERP, MRO, and logistical systems achieve these goals in the aerospace and defense sectors.

David Croop,
CEO,
Croop-LaFrance Inc
The OMNITROL solution provides Hobart’s manufacturing team with real-time visibility on all our customer orders without any impact on our operations. The solution eliminates the tasks of order tracking and manual entry. More importantly, the solution makes us a better partner to our customers by automatically sharing critical order information with them 24x7.

Rosemary Brester,
President,
Hobart Machined Products
Most middleware is limited, requires extensive customization making it difficult for use to integrators like us.The OMNITROL supports not only all types of wireless, barcode and RFID technologies, but also sensors and PLC systems simplifying integration with our customers installed infrastructure while providing the flexibility to expand, improve and scale their business processes without incurring high costs.

Paul Pope,
Vice-President and General Manager,
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Omnitrol’s web-based in-production dashboard provides us with a unique Work-In-Process solution that is expected to deliver the next level of process innovation and change order management.

David Hall,
SVP and General Manager,
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This low cost solution can help to transform the business relationship between customers and their key suppliers and deliver better and faster product.

Andrew Hughes,
Director,
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We are delighted to be working with Omnitrol as it will strengthen our existing capabilities within BT Supply Chain Solutions and enable us to better address our customers’ requirements to improve the operational efficiency of their supply chains. The versatile OMNITROL platform allows BT Supply Chain Solutions to quickly customize solutions, and to meet individual customer needs.

Keith Sherry,
GM,
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The OMNITROL solution delivers a new generation network appliance encapsulating all RFID processing and management, thereby eliminating back-end development, reducing setup and support costs for edge deployments.

Andrew Nathanson,
Director of VDC's Automatic Identification and Data Collection (AIDC) Practice,
VDC Automatic Identification
I was extremely impressed with the capabilities of the OMNITROL appliance approach, and its ability to rapidly create and deploy intelligent edge manufacturing services, which led me to select Omnitrol Networks' solution for my laboratory. The new OMNITROL-based network gives us more flexibility than today's approach, making our research more timely and applicable. In addition, the OMNITROL's capability to integrate with all devices on the shop floor, including PLCs and new sensor technologies like RFID, is giving our students and industry partners access to the latest leading edge technologies.

Can Saygin,
Director of the MSA and Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering,
UTSA
The OMNITROL PCB tracking solution using TI’s RFID chips allows us to automatically maintain traceability on each component that goes into the products we build. We have been able to replace tedious manual scanning with a completely automated process.

Heinz Hornung,
General Manager,
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