A day in the life of a Systems Admin

 Technology in Manufacturing The tech topic I am interested in is technology in manufacturing.  The office I work supports a manufacturing plant, and I have witnessed many changes in processes as technology has improved.  Some of these improvements lead to requiring fewer people to complete the same tasks, but more often than not, these improvements have provided opportunities that wouldn't have been available otherwise. Fundamentals Early manufacturing tools could be considered using binary, 1's, and 0's.  Manually switching a lever that releases steam is an example of a switch.  Later on, relays took the place of manually flipping switches and could be used to perform these simple tasks.  Programmable logic controllers, PLCs, replaced relays and allowed building more complex results accepting more input and output.  As technology has become less expensive tablets have become more popular using USB connections for input and output on Windows-based dev...

Computers at Work     In this post I've chosen to discuss the manufacturing industry and computers at work because I have supported computer systems in this field for the last 25 years. During my tenure, I have seen many advancements utilizing computers, increasing output dramatically. As recently as 15 years ago, we would build inventory up in the winter to provide goods to OEMs when their production ramps up in the spring. Keeping inventory is a thing of the past, and now the focus is on quantities of one. One such process involves roll-forming. This is where you take metal coil stock, a big roll of thin metal, and pass it through rollers on a mill, which bends and folds it to make a shape. This shape is then cut to length as it comes off the mill. The sizes are downloaded to a controller where the operator punches in crucial information based on customer, color, and due date. The criteria entered then queries a MySQL database for all the quantities and lengths for the cu...