In an age of environmental friendly automobiles, going green slogans, and overall feelings of conservation, Lyn-Tron has begun to take the first steps towards “Going Green.” As the Director of Information Technology, I teamed up with the VP of Operations, Josh Holley, and together we developed an idea of an electronic picking application for our shipping department. In conjunction with Limelyte Technology Group, Inc., we worked long hours and had even longer meetings planning and reworking ideas.
First thing we had to do was electronically scan the data of every inventory box that we currently have into our database. After some number crunching, we determined that the amount of time needed for scanning (one weekend) simply wouldn’t be enough. Our inventory consists of roughly 54,000 boxes, at a processing rate of 30 seconds per box (if things were perfect), and working 10 hour days; it would take us 37.5 hours!!! Well, there was our first mistake; considering we told everyone that we could have the project complete in a weekend.
Next came getting all of the computers ready for the big day. I thought about this project a lot. So much that I would wake up in the middle of the night, after dreaming of new ideas/problems, and write them down. The day before the big weekend move finally came and I was in charge of putting together 6 workstations. I stayed late at Lyn-Tron, with Rob from Limelyte, until we had all the computers on rolling carts and everything was looking ready. We didn’t test the stations much that night. After all, I had one station working flawlessly. If everything works on one computer fine then it should work on the others as well. Right?
Finally, it was the morning of the project. I had at least 15 people coming in over the weekend for overtime pay. The CEO, CFO, and two Vice Presidents also volunteered their time. We were all ready to go. As we left our initial training meeting, people were manning their stations with symbol scanners and laptops in hand. Then it happened.
It started with a couple people first. Their scanners weren’t working, and then the keyboard was acting up. Next, the program crashed after the first entry, and finally the wireless was disconnected. Before I knew it everyone was down! AAAArrrrgggggg! Everyone was clocked in and the overtime was accumulating at a very rapid pace with nothing working. One hour turned into two. People were standing around and I was feeling totally at blame. It was mentioned to me that perhaps we should send people home and just do it another weekend. I was close, that’s what I kept telling people.
Finally, after about two to two and an half hours, Rob and I got the machines up and running. It wasn’t pretty how we jerry rigged some things, but they worked none the less. People we’re working and after the initial scare we didn’t have another major hiccup for the rest of the weekend.
So, what’s the moral of my embarrassing story? When it comes to I.T. a certain level of preparation has to be obtained. Just because you have something working perfectly on one machine doesn’t mean that it would work on another computer with identical hardware. I spent the better part of a prior week working on that test laptop fixing bugs and other inconsistencies. Over the course of that prep week I must have installed/configured things just so they worked.
And what about Lyn-Tron’s shipping department? Well we’re extremely close to launching our “paperless” world. Once the last of the boxes are scanned into the database, we will be able to use our wireless scanners. I can sleep soundly at night knowing that I played a part in saving some trees.
Jeff Nichols
Director of Information Technology
