Many little things add up to a big thing.

We at MEX are having an interesting year in making changes in MEX and FleetMEX, making it better for all our users.

None of these things are enormous.  They are little things that our users want changed or made better.  And we have been slowly implementing them to make our products do what customers want MEX to do.   And we are starting to notice that all of these little things make up a bigger thing that can work so much better.

Some of the changes, with some having already been done and released, include:

·         Quick edit.  This allows for the fast editing of work orders if there are a lot.  This has already been added and is available in 14.0.3.0.

·         Fast print.   Where a very fast method of printing a work order, purchase order or invoice can occur.

·         Test and tag.  At the user conference this year we discussed and even designed something around this and hope to have it in MEX.

·         On line ticketing.  A ticketing system for all customers to track there bugs, issues and requests.   Again, partially designed at the user conference.

·         New reports.  Have added a few in this year already but have more coming.

·         Photos and videos.  Greater use in the requesting and work orders.

·         On line catalogues.  Creating a way for any user to link on line catalogues into the MEX catalogue.

·         Security.  A new lot of standardised security groups.  In process now and should be released soon.

All of these little things add up to simplicity and efficiency in using our products.

And if you have any ideas on further things to do, then contact me and lets discuss little things that add up to big things.

What is Preventative Maintenance?

Last week I was at a client’s worksite, speaking with the foreman about what we considered to be good Preventative Maintenance.  We went back and forth, differing on some details, however we both agreed it is an issue of great importance for the longevity and management of company assets.   

Most companies practise some sort of preventative maintenance – or, at least, try to – however, this is usually limited by distractions in the workplace.  Servicing, routine change outs, manufacturer specifications and shut downs at Christmas affect the regularity maintenance can be carried out.

To combat this I’ve come up with a small, easy to remember piece of advice.

“If something has a repetitive cycle of failure, use preventative maintenance.”  It’s that simple.

Here’s a quick’n’easy example.  A pin on an actuator arm falls off every week or so, which requires the mechanic to be called to repair.  Thus, the preventative maintenance solution is to replace the pin weekly.  

Here is another example.  If a motor overheats every three months due to rubbish build-up, then, every month the engine must be cleaned down.  

Preventative maintenance is looking at what causes failures and applying the remedy proactively.  It is about minimising loss.  These losses can occur through; downtime, double handling, decreased customer satisfaction, operational health and safety and asset damages.

Your program should be revisited constantly to assess what is working and what is not.  This becomes a balancing act of maintenance versus cost.  Which, in time, can be perfected through experience, testing and automated services.

I missed my friend's 30th birthday!

I missed the 30^th birthday of an acquaintance/work collegue/entertainer/teacher/study partner and, in recent times, friendship coordinator.

How could I miss such a milestone in their life?

Simple, I was playing on my iPad.

The official 30 year anniversary of the personal computer was celebrated on the 12^th of August.  I, like many, didn’t realise the humble PC was quite so mature.  Aside from business purposes, or my sons gaming enthusiasm, the personal desktop computer hasn’t gained too much of my attention over the last couple of years.  I use my laptop daily, my iphone by the hour and my iPad whenever I’m not using the other two!  Well it seems that way sometimes.

This realisation put me into research mode, and due to the relevance of the iPad to my business, I figured it was time well spent.

I found, in this Forbes Magazine article, that iPad sales are now digging directly into computer sales for PC companies and even Macs!  It’s great to see the iPad is taking hold, especially after only 15 months in the market.

Seeing stats and figures like these, give me confidence in my decision to develop MEX CMMS for the iPad.  As businesses utilise the iPad more and more, acceptance, and the ‘want’ to use it in new ways, increases.

Feel free to share your first computer stories!

Keepin' CMMS green

In these times of increased environmental awareness, carbon taxes and the ‘hot’ topic of global warming, companies are crying out for green solutions for all parts of their business. 

Paper is old news, I like trees and want them to live long and happy lives.  In my business, more and more we are trying to find ways to cut back on paper usage.

Did you know that just by using one less ream of paper per day you can reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 2000kgs and save 25 trees per year!

With that in mind we have started putting forward our MEX CMMS iPad application as a ‘green’ alternative.  It negates the need for paper-based log books and gives our customers the opportunity to embrace a greener way of working that can hopefully carry forward into the rest of their lives! 

MEX and Ideablade

Australia’s most trusted CMMS solution uses DevForce to get their application to their customers—no matter what the client technology.

MEX’s business spans dozens of industries and thousands of users. In order to reach them all, MEX has developed products that can work on the desktop, the web, phones, and other mobile devices. MEX currently runs on all of the following client platforms: ASP.NET, Microsoft Access, Silverlight, Windows Mobile, and WinForms, and now iOS on the iPad.

You’d think MEX would need a small army of developers to code for so many clients, but they did it all with four developers … and DevForce.

Matthew Calcutt, Products Manager at MEX, explains,

“All the time we invested into server-side coding we wanted to be re-usable in the future with any front-end. DevForce allowed us to upgrade our current business object layer and create a re-useable data layer for basically any client platform needed.

Without DevForce, we would have had to do a lot of data calculating at the database level in views/stored procedures or else client-side (which doesn’t lend itself to re-usability). Using DevForce’s custom properties, all the labor is done server-side, which is normally the more powerful side, and keeps the client-side simple and adds to re-usability.

The DevForce OData API side of things really came into its own and ensured that all client requests flowed through the same server-side security, validation, and other business logic as our .NET clients. We took advantage of this to transmit business objects—extended by our own custom properties—rather than have to deal with raw database data.”

By building their infrastructure with DevForce, MEX was able to reuse their client-side code with multiple front-end clients, so no matter what platform their customers want to use in the future, be it iOS, Silverlight, or HTML/JS, they'll be ready.

Read the full article and learn how Matthew and the team used DevForce to put MEX on the iPad.

Protect your business from costly rewrites in today’s rapidly changing world. Download DevForce Universal 2010, get the infrastructure right, and drive multiple client UI technologies.

Have questions? Contact us and we’ll be happy to help. Call 510.596.5100 or email sales@ideablade.com