Esempi di
applicazioni
NYNEX Mobile uses WinWedge(SoftwareWedge
for Windows) for remote data collection at Cell Sites
NYNEX Mobil Communications Company is
one of the nation's leading providers of cellular telephone service,
currently serving over 400,000 customers throughout the Northeast.
NYNEX Corporation is one of the seven regional companies formed by
the Bell System breakup. With a recent merger with Bell Atlantic,
NYNEX Mobile's service areas throughout the Northeast are some of
the most challenging in the world.
Auto ID Inventory Control Problem
NYNEX Mobile Communications needed a
way to provide rapid on-site inventory of its AT&T communications
equipment. A system of automatic identification was decided upon as
the most reliable, accurate and controllable. This involved
providing each piece of equipment with its own bar code label. The
data accessed by this bar code included information about the piece
of equipment including its serial number, its warranty, its exact
location and detailed technical information. NYNEX field
representatives perform an inventory of their cell sites (an
industry term describing a communications network of transmitters
and receivers that will transmit radio communications) by going out
to the sites and scanning the bar code on each piece of equipment
with a Symbol LS2020 bar code scanner. This scanned data needed to
be fed into a database, "Escort", running on the field
representatives' laptop PC. The laptop was then to dial though a
modem to the company headquarters to enable rapid and efficient
inventory of fixed assets.
The Software Wedge Solution for
Data Collection into Lap-top PCs
A keyboard wedge could not be used to
input the scanned data as lap-tops do not have detachable keyboards.
The Software Wedge for DOS (DOSWedge) solves this problem as it can
run on any IBM compatible PC (including laptops and palmtops) and
requires no hardware. The RS232 output scanner just need to be
plugged directly into the PCs' serial port. DOSWedge not only has
all the features of the most powerful and expensive hardware wedge (such
as data parsing and filtering, keystroke macro insertion and
date/time stamps) but it also buffers the input better so it is more
reliable it is more portable, less expensive and will never break!
It can also be installed on up to 32 serial ports on one PC to
collect data from many devices simultaneously. Hence for reading
scanned bar code data into any IBM compatible lap-top NYNEX found
DOSWedge to be the best solution.
DOSWedge also comes with many
powerful utilities. The utilities can be used to automatically dial
a modem, send data out the serial port or read data to a disk file
in the background. Hence it is able to instantaneously transmit
scanned data out via a modem to any destination. These are very
powerful features for fast and accurate on-site data collection and
transmission such as required by NYNEX.
Hence NYNEX Mobile Communications
used DOSWedge to assist in providing rapid inventory for its AT&T
communications equipment. NYNEX Mobile has had this system in
successful operation since early 1992.
Benefits
- Ability to interface scanner
directly to remote laptop computers
- Cost effective
- No lost data
- Automatic dialing of modem
- Real time inventory control
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