We won an award - (aka Ruby (and Python) right bang in the Enterprise)
Posted by Ian J Cottee Fri, 08 Dec 2006 08:34:57 GMT
Although I’m a deep rooted cynic of such things I was rather pleased to be phoned last night to be told that one of our systems had won an award. (Search the page for Blue Fountain)
The system in question took a large part of my life last year and made a lot of us in Blue Fountain work the hardest we’d ever done. It was originally fronted by Zope/Plone and backended with Python and SQLObject. The frontend became Ruby on Rails and the backend remained Python with pure calls to SQL through Psycopg. Now more work on the backend is being done with a mixture of Python and Ruby.
It talks to the Toyota production lines, sends information to the Futaba production line (3D barcodes scanned in by their weld cells), gets the parts onto the right lorries back to the main Toyota factory (we get a request to make parts for one car – but the parts for each car are required at different points on the Toyota production line). It has a system of wireless scanners to record when the lorries were loaded and sent back (with another barcode printed on one master production sheet). It also transmits EDI data to a legacy Futaba system in Japan. It monitors incoming signals for any anomalies, transmits warnings to a bunch of alarms wired throughout the factory, has a parallel system working in backup and runs matching between Futaba data and Toyota data to clarify the end of month invoices between the two companies. It provides status screens for both those in Futaba and those in Toyota. It works day and night with the Toyota shifts and has a weeks break during Toyota shutdown in the summer and at Christmas during which times we usually prepare it for it’s next incarnation.
The name of the system is Dove and was based around an older system we wrote a few years back for another supplier for Toyota. Since Dove was written two other systems have used it’s code – one for Toyota and another one for the Ford production line.
Congratulations to everyone who worked on it – you know who you are.
All of this is based on 100% Open Source software. Enterprise ready? I’ll give you Enterprise ready.
(These are my opinions not Blue Fountain’s. Go to their website if you want to read the corporate blurb)
well done john and ian and all the team at bfs :)
Very impressive sounding application. The fact that it’s built entirely upon open-source technologies is particularly interesting (and inspiring). Congratulations on the award!