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Results
- Accurate, timely entry of critical bar code data to maintain control of processes
- Quick response times-employees are not slowed by process and there is no downtime
- Time savings for IT group by offloading project
- A competitive advantage for the company
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Evy of California, a privately held wholesale apparel manufacturer, needed to get data from their bar code scanners into an application on their host as quickly as possible to maintain control of their operations. WRQ Consulting Services automated the process.
Business Challenge
In the fickle world of fashion, even a manufacturer of clothing for young girls must scramble to stay on top. At Evy of California, getting accurate and timely information on production and shipments is critical. But, when the company upgraded its network, it had to find a new process for entering vital bar code data into their host or lose a valuable tracking tool.
Technical Challenge
Evy is running PCs at remote sites with a serial connection to the UNIX host. In the affected applications, Evy uses a laser scanner hooked up to a serial port "wedge" that scans the bar code and transmits the data to the host, which echoes it to the screen. Employees can input data to the host through either the keyboard or the scanner. Evy wished to eliminate the serial connection to the host and use a Telnet connection instead. They tried to hook the scanner up through a keyboard wedge, but because of the scanning speed, the length of the data, and the speed of the keyboard buffer, this solution did not work. Then, Evy decided the best course was to receive data from a bar-code scanner via the COM port and send it via Reflection's connection to the network. But, Evy's IT staff was already busy, so they called on WRQ Consulting Services.
Consulting Services Solution
The WRQ consultant solved the problem with VBA scripting and two Reflection sessions a background (hidden) session and a foreground session.
Here's how the solution works
The bar code reader is connected to a networked PC via a COM port. When the Reflection background session running on the PC detects a bar code coming in over the network, it grabs the bar code data and passes it to the foreground session, which then relays the data to the host application. Because the whole process happens automatically, Evy's employees never have to wait for processing, and Evy of California has the information it needs to stay on top of its operations.