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Game use on factory-floor computers is no game.
At a Daimler Chrysler plant in
Fenton,
Mo., the IT staff recently noticed an increase in support calls
because the PCs that controlled factory production equipment
were slowing down, often locking up completely. Senior
management was likewise concerned that, in addition to the
hassle of responding to support calls, problems with the
mission-critical software could mean lost dollars, product
quality issues, and possibly, compromised safety conditions.
Upon further investigation, the IT
staff discovered the source of the problem: Employees had been
downloading games that ate up the computer memory required by
the factory automation software. Daimler Chrysler needed to find
a way to remove unauthorized downloaded games that were
interfering with production from the system.
In a similar situation, a
manufacturing plant wanted to manage game use on computer
networks. The IT director assigned an IT staff person to
manually remove all the games she found, and check the registry
to ensure they were gone. He timed her activity. He then took
her pay rate, the average time it took her to scan one machine
and multiplied it by the number of workstations in the company,
and figured it would cost at least $700 each time they conducted
a full search. He also realized that they would have to do this
on a frequent and regular basis to ensure games weren’t getting
in. He took the $700 cost of a manual search and the price of
four licenses of file-filtering software from Apreo to the CFO
and presented his case. File filtering detects and manages the
use of files and applications. Without further question, they
chose to implement Apreo’s software.
Meanwhile at the Daimler Chrysler
plant, the IT staff had also learned of Apreo’s file-filtering
software through a sister plant. Mike Atty, technical support
analyst for Daimler Chrysler, describes his experience with the
software at the Fenton plant: “It was easy to customize and to
install. We were able to configure it in order to monitor only
critical machines. Games could still be downloaded to other
computers in the facility, giving employees a chance to enjoy
recreational activities without jeopardizing the system – during
appropriate times, like breaks and after hours.”
With the software in place, Daimler Chrysler was able to rid its
equipment of unauthorized games and applications, which returned
production to its normal speed and reduced support demands on
its IT staff. Furthermore, the program proved even more useful
when it detected files disguised by savvy users who attempted to
re-introduce the programs under different names, extension
types, or from offline media. Such cleverly concealed files
would have been...
...Continued
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