From: "Rich Gauszka" 


"RobertB"  wrote in message
news:missinglink-B91E11.10461620122006{at}news.barkto.com...
> In article ,
> "Rich Gauszka"  wrote:
>
>> from the assembly line to the office staff -
>>
>> http://www.macworld.com/news/2006/12/19/miniford/index.php
>> If you've driven a Ford lately, chances are a Mac mini deserves some of
>> the
>> credit. Ford Motor's contractor has installed the Apple-made computers in
>> two of the automaker's northern Indiana factories as part of a sequencing
>> solution to boost assembly line efficiency.
>>
>> "Mac minis are cost effective and they are reliable
machines," said
>> Jonathan
>> Schalliol, vice president of business development and chief financial
>> officer of Information in Place. The Bloomington, Ind.-based company is
>> responsible for the development and installation of the Mac minis in
>> Ford's
>> plants. "We did a lot of research and determined they were the best
>> deal."
>>
>> ...
>>
>> A total of 14 Mac minis running on Intel Core Solo chips have been
>> operational at the plants since early November, helping Ford assemble 800
>> cars a day. So far, everything is working perfectly, according to
>> Schalliol.
>>
>> As a result of the testing to put this project together, Schalliol said
>> most
>> of the people at his company, including the office staff, are now using
>> Macs. For those that need Windows, the company has purchased the
>> Parallels
>> Desktop for Mac virtualization software.
>>
>> Ford is not the only company to benefit from the research and development
>> that Information in Place has done. Schalliol said his company plans to
>> bring the hardware/software combination to other outfits in the next
>> year.
>
> I wonder what they're using them for (at Ford, that is)? I would have
> thought they used PLCs on the assembly line.

sequencing - I didn't include the entire article - from the link
----
Information in Place's Mac-based system aims to solve those problems.
"The software [called PickIT] will tell the workers if they are
inserting the wrong part or if they don"t follow the sequence,"
Schalliol said. "Each Mac mini has a touchscreen, which is used to
default past a missing part if it's not available-that is then recorded and
labeled to come back to at a later date."

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