Using Filemaker to watch Heidelberg Press

[SteveW]

Hi all,

First thread on this site. I feel like I have found a site full of like minded people.

Anyway.

I use filemaker to manage the flow of jobs through the system and now are looking at KPI tracking. I have all stages time stamped and it works well for the office and pre-press staff that work at the computer all the time. The area that does not accurately reflex what is happening is the production floor. The printers sometimes forget to log job on at the start and they just do a quick log on / log off at the end. This then shows that a 50,000 run took 12 seconds to run.

I am hoping someone out there can help me with reading the BDE file out of the management gateway on a CP2000 or Online kit for a Heidelberg press. I know Heidelberg has a solution but this means running there MIS and the years of work I have put into ours I do not want to throw away.

Has anyone successfully been able to read the messages from the press via the BDE file into Filemaker.

I am about to get coding, but if someone could show me a shortcut that would be great.

Thanks

Steve Whatman

 

[pga2]

Steve
I aslo write in Filemaker
I kept mine simple - behind the time sheet recod line I have a set of standards - so when the press operator fills out the time sheet line for the operation he marks that he has carried a say four colour make ready and run say 5000 - he also puts the time taken down - but I am not really interested in that - I then measure the performamce using standard times. What it doesnt do is collect information for us to set the standard times agianst. So I will be interested in the outcome
Peter

 

[honeyf]

Steve

We are looking for an MIS on Filemaker, which one are you using? who supplies? and how much does it cost? Access to technology is difficult in Tanzania.

Regrads
Honeyf

 

[Morning Flight]

Access to technology is difficult in Tanzania.

It must have been even more difficult before the internet! Now that Tanzania has adopted the metric system, make sure that whatever system you find works in millimeters and ISO paper sizes, honeyf. For what it's worth, Morning Flight does, even the forever-free edition.

Hal Heindel
www.morningflight.com