Industrial Ceramics
Sanitaryware
v1.0
S.R.C. Engineering S.r.l.
Dormelletto (NO) Italy
Copyright Ó 2000-2002

Presentation
Bar Code
Computer Environment

Presentation

The current development in all technical fields is directly connected to the research of operational conditions aimed at maintaining and improving the industrial yields as to face an always more aggressive competitive system.
Such a market situation has involved ceramics and the production of sanitaryware, which has worldwide a high number of producers for an average of 250.000.000 pieces/year produced.
S.R.C. Engineering S.r.l. has focused the possibility of improving the management of the production of sanitaryware mainly carried out with traditional methods, realizing a highly computerized managing system, thanks to the new information technologies.

Industrial Ceramics is the suite software by S.R.C. Engineering S.r.l. aimed at the computerised managing of the production of a ceramic industry.
Industrial Ceramics Sanitaryware is the program dedicated to ceramic sanitaryware industry.

Version 1.0 of Industrial Ceramics Sanitaryware covers the following areas:

Raw Materials

• Supplier Master
• Raw material Master
• Suppliers’ Price List
• Raw Material chemical analysis for body slips/glazes
• Body slip composition with chemical analysis, their automatic discharge from storage while creating the mixes and their cost
• Glaze composition with chemical analysis, their automatic discharge from storage while creating the mixes and their cost
• Raw Material storage with charge/discharge

• Sets
• Items/Dimensions
• Shifts
• Casting Lines/casters
• Defects
• Production Plans
• Production Scrap
• Moulds
• Bar Code control of the Production Cycle

• Product/defect summary during Inspection with diagrams
• Product/defect summary during kiln loading with diagrams
• Product/defect summary during sorting with diagrams

• Storage/Departments master according to Storage
• Pallet Charge
• Final Product Storage with Charge/Discharge according to Single Product/Pallets

Industrial Ceramics can be defined as a Multi-company program, being able to manage more than one ceramics industries, each with its own structure and production (Sets/Items/Dimension, Storage, Raw Materials, Production).

Bar Codes

The fundamental characteristic of Industrial Ceramics is the production managing by means of bar codes applied to the pieces. The use of this system allows a precise sensing data and information in a computer environment giving a relevant support in implementing ISO 9001 § 4.8 standard relating to indentification and traceability of the product.
Thanks to the use of special labels (resistant to firing and realised according to specifications given by Industrial Ceramics Sanitaryware program) to apply after casting of the piece it is possible to associate to the piece all the information relating to its production cycle as to have in real time both the story of the single piece and statistics on the production.

Coding the single pieces allows to promptly sense any problem in the different steps of the production cycle.
Coding the moulds from which the pieces are obtained allows to sense from statistics possible problems even in the moulds installed on the casting machines.

Production managing with Industrial Ceramics Sanitaryware can be realised with any kind of plant, from traditional to the more technologically advanced one.

Coding the product allows to easily manage piece handling having so up-to-date storage situations and avoid mistakes as shipment of wrong items or in a wrong number, failure in shipment of ordered items, etc. fulfilling so all the requirements of a modern just-in-time production. An up-to-date storage situation allows to better set up the production plans.

Computer Environment

Industrial Ceramics Sanitaryware is a program that suits well to ceramics industries of different size, perfectly integrating with etherogeneous computerised systems.
The typical usage configuration includes a server and various clients connected to each other with a Local Area Network.

The server has the task of collecting and store the information, and usually is not located in the production area: having this function the server must be a powerful machine and the calculation/store capability depends on production (from a few dozens to various thousands of pieces/day).

Clients are far less powerful machines, installed in the production area and supplied with a bar code reader/remote unit.

The following diagramme shows the typical configuration.

When more than one remote unit for data collection is used, it is possible to group the clients in a certain area as to simplify the factory wiring. By this way the data collected on the remote units will be discharged at defined intervals to the server.

The Operative System foreseen for the server is NT Server 4.0/Windows 2000 Server with SQL Server 7.0/2000 as database management system, while for the clients the system foreseen is O.S. Windows 95/98/ME or Windows 2000 Workstation/Windows XP Home or Professional.

However you can use as a server every O.S. with a SQL Server Standard supporting ODBC and SQL ANSI 92.