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August 18, 2010

Using Advanced Print Spooler to Solve Unplanned Downtime Challenge

Filed under: Server Printing — Tags: , , , , , , , — admin @ 5:42 am

The customer associated with this case study is a large Midwestern Health Care Provider comprised of a network of 8 healthcare facilities, 15 affiliates and a 200-member primary care physician network. This health care provider operates in multiple states and provides services to more than 1.5 million people in the communities it serves.

Business Problem – A centralized patient information system from IDX, running on a Tandem system, provides online access to patient care orders, medication information, dietary needs etc. for the patient care providers at multiple facilities.

If a system or network problem occurs, access to the online system may not be possible. In this circumstance, care providers would not be able to maintain the standard of care required for their patients. These outages, although infrequent, necessitated a solution to maintain desired levels of patient care.

Key Technical Challenge – Access to patient information is very critical to continued patient care. A solution is required that allows health care providers uninterrupted access to the patient care information, even if the network or central online system is down. Alternatives to provide this level of fail-safe access were evaluated and found to be either architecturally unfeasible or too expensive

The documents, with data no more than four (4) hours old, that need to be viewable even in a system or network down condition include:

Physician Routing

Medication Administration Guide

Current Active Orders Profile

Ancillary Worksheets

Cardiology

Dietary

Physical Therapy

Respiratory

Technical Environment

Centralized Patient Information system from IDX running on a Tandem system

Remote facilities accessing the IDX system via WAN

Technical Solution

Plus Technologies implemented a document auto archive and retrieval system based on OM Plus Server advanced print spooler software. The central site has an OM Plus server running as does each remote site (see diagram).

The IDX system was setup to print the critical documents to “virtual” OM Plus printers every 4 hours. No other changes were needed to the IDX patient information system.

The central OM Plus server recognizes the document type and adds unit number and document type information to the document’s title to make future lookup of the document quick and intuitive. Then, the document is routed to the appropriate remote facility’s OM Plus server where it is archived for 48 hours.

Medical staff personnel can search for and retrieve any critical document at the remote site, even if the network is down. Documents can be printed on the local network printers or on the remote OM Plus server’s parallel-attached printer if the remote location’s network is down.

Implementation

Installing, configuring and testing were completed in a matter of a few days. Plus Technologies engineers were on-site to assist the customer with installation of the additional OM Plus software at the remote locations and to provide configuration assistance with the setup of archive document recognition and the associated routing to the remote systems.

Other Features

The customer had previously installed OM Plus in their Central location and gained access to all the other features of OM Plus designed to help them control and manage their enterprise wide print jobs and printers.

These features streamline operations and reduce costs related to administration and support and include:

Allows central control and monitoring of the status of printer devices and jobs across the entire organization from a single status screen improving help desk productivity.

Provides a central print management system regardless of what type of system created the document (mainframe, UNIX, Windows, Tandem, etc.) reducing cost and complexity of enterprise print architecture

Ensures delivery of output to its final destination in the correct format.

Greatly reduce help desk calls and maximizes printer availability.

Results

Economical, fail-safe system available to continue patient care even if the online system is unavailable

Patient Care standards not compromised during system/network downtime

Leverage of existing investment in OM Plus to manage enterprise-wide production document

Customer Quote

“Your engineer was a tremendous help to us during the weekend we installed the Unplanned Downtime Solution. After getting the archive solution installed and running, he provided the necessary support … Again, thanks to your engineer’s added support, we had an uneventful go-live.”

Director, Information Technology

Plus Technologies Case Studies

The Plus Technologies case studies series includes real examples of how companies use Advanced Spooling Solutions to streamline operations, reduce cost and/or add functionality to existing business processes. For more information on these case studies, contact Plus Technologies.

Plus Technologies offers advanced Print Spooler, Print Management Software, Document Delivery, Windows Printing and UNIX Printing services and solutions.

Phone – 877-899-7587 (Toll Free)

Outside the US and Canada – 937-384-0444

Email: contactus@plustechnologies.com

August 11, 2010

Streamlining the Management of Print Spooler Output in an Oracle Applications Environment

Filed under: Server Printing — Tags: , , , , , , , — admin @ 8:05 am

The customer associated with this case study is a large, multi-national manufacturer of product branding and labeling systems, inventory tracking systems, retail control systems and pricing control systems. The customer is a $600 million plus company that services over 250,000 customers worldwide.

Business Problem – The customer had completed the migration from legacy mainframe applications to one of the largest Oracle 11i Applications implementations known at that time. Their application servers (hosted remotely by IBM Global Services) run the Oracle E-Business Suite including the Financials, HR, Supply Chain, Manufacturing, Procurement, Sales and Order Management modules. After the migration, they continued to have a very labor-intensive tech support problem related to supporting the print spooler software printing, faxing and emailing of the output created by the Oracle applications. The tech support team was delivering a poor level of service to end-users due to a lack of print spooler functionality and tools, thereby, impacting customer service. There were many delays in troubleshooting print spooler and output related problems causing expensive delays throughout the organization when print problems could not be resolved quickly. Even though they had implemented RightFax fax server software, they still utilized a “print then fax” method to send application output via fax. This method was inefficient at best, but the team had little time available to customize the Oracle environment to utilize the fax solution because their hands had been full with the Oracle Applications migration. More technical resources were needed than originally anticipated to manage the output created by their new Oracle environment. The bottom line was that the costs associated with supporting the new enterprise-wide print and output environment were spiraling out of control.

Objective – In order to improve end-user support and satisfaction, system administrators needed a single, automated, enterprise-wide print spooler solution to manage fax and print jobs and print queues. End-users needed a tool that allowed them to resolve Oracle Application related print issues themselves. Additionally, they needed to provide the ability to securely start and re-start jobs without having root password access to their server, be able to differentiate jobs with different colored banner pages, provide administrators and end-users secure control and access to print jobs from their PC’s (remotely, because IBM is hosting their application servers) even if they had very little or no Oracle or UNIX experience. Finally, they also needed to be able to fax print jobs directly from their application instead of printing them and then faxing them, which had proven to be costly and cumbersome.

Customer Technical Environment

Oracle 11i E-Business Suite

Four servers running AIX 5.1 hosted by IBM Global Services

RightFax fax server software

Over 500 printers and multi-function devices from multiple vendors across ten facilities in North America

Over 10,000 print jobs per day

Key Technical Requirements – Integration with both the RightFax fax system and their email system without requiring any changes needing to be made to the Oracle Applications. Also, they did not want to add client software on the end-users PC’s.

Due to the critical nature of the documents, a fully redundant, fail-over configuration was required. Since the application servers were being hosted, the solution they implemented needed to be able to provide a “wide area”, enterprise view of all application servers, printers (and other output devices) and the documents created by the applications. Finally, because the delivery of the documents created by the application can be mission critical, the solution must support bi-directional communication directly with the printers to ensure and guarantee document delivery confirmation.

Technical Solution – After considering and evaluating several vendors, the customer chose to implement OM Plus advanced print spooler software from Plus Technologies. They chose to implement the base OM Plus server module, the OM Plus Java GUI User Interface for their administrators/help desk and the OM Plus HTML User Interface for the end-users who want to check the status and control their print jobs. OM Plus provides advanced delivery and control of documents across complex networks to multiple destination types including printers, fax, email, and web/intranet sites.

OM Plus was installed on the customer’s Oracle database server to manage and control all of the print/output across the enterprise. OM Plus replaced the native print spooling system in the Oracle/AIX environment. Print Jobs are now “captured” by OM Plus and delivered to the appropriate device, fax system or email system. No modifications were required to either the Oracle Applications or the AIX operating environment. The users just print as they normally do within Oracle, and OM Plus does the rest. Security is enhanced because end-users can access their print jobs without “root” access and can look at any print job they are authorized to see from any PC using their browser. Administrators have a single, easy-to-use tool to solve printing and fax delivery issues in their new environment saving many help desk man-hours each week. Utilizing functionality built into OM Plus, users can also now select Fax as a destination and “print” their job directly to a fax server. No more print and then fax redundancy.

System Administrators see their whole print operation through the centralized administration function of OM Plus providing tremendous efficiency and major cost control. In addition, end-users can utilize the OM Plus HTML Interface to view, manage and control their own print jobs without adding any additional client software on their PC’s. They access OM Plus from their browser.

Implementation – Installing, configuring, and testing were completed in under a week. The customer installed the OM Plus system without any formal training. A Plus Technologies engineer worked remotely via phone to assist the customer with the installation of the OM Plus software and to provide configuration assistance. This level of phone-based service is standard and included without additional charge in all purchases of Plus Technologies print management software.

Results – Utilizing OM Plus allows the customer’s system administrators to centrally manage their print/output to over 500 printers and multi-function devices of various makes and models and their fax and email systems across the entire enterprise. System Administrators see their whole print operation through the centralized administration function of OM Plus providing tremendous efficiency and control. They can access all the features of the system designed to help them control and manage their output to printers, fax or email including re-routing, re-printing, audit, accounting and many other functions. The end-users can resolve many of their print related problems on their own through the use of OM Plus without having to add any client software on their PC. Finally, OM Plus was seamlessly integrated into the customer’s fully redundant, fail-over server configuration without requiring additional technical resources.

The end result for this customer was that the implementation of OM Plus streamlined their operations and reduced the costs related to the administration and support of the output generated by their Oracle 11i Applications, thereby, improving end-user satisfaction and customer service levels across the enterprise.

Customer Quote – “We can now provide a much higher level of customer service because our end-users are able to manage and control their own output. Our company is so satisfied with the OM Plus advanced print spooler software that we have started selling it to our own customers.”

Plus Technologies Case Studies – The Plus Technologies case study series includes real examples of how companies use Advanced Print Spooling Solutions to streamline operations, reduce cost and/or add functionality to existing business processes. For more information on these case studies, contact Plus Technologies.

Plus Technologies offers advanced

August 9, 2010

The Best of Both Centralized and Distributed Print Spooler Solution Models in One Implementation

Filed under: Server Printing — Tags: , , , , , , , , — admin @ 1:00 am

In this White Paper we will examine a dilemma faced by many companies implementing Advanced Print Spooling solutions across multiple geographic locations. That is, how to deploy the Advanced Print Spooler software across multiple sites in a way that allows them to have the advantages of both a distributed and centralized implementation.


While this customer is in the health care industry, we have seen similar situations across many industries. For example, this situation can apply to Banking (branches), Retail (stores), Health Care (hospitals), Insurance (offices) and Manufacturing (production facilities).


Company – The customer described in this white paper is a multi-billion dollar, Fortune 100, nationwide health care organization with the following profile:

• Two large data centers (one on west coast and one on east coast of the United States) each running mainframe and UNIX applications

• Multiple regional centers around the United States running UNIX and Windows applications

• Over 5,000 printers, of various types, spread across the sites listed above, printing patient care and other business related documents

• Document volume in the tens of millions of pages per month


Business Requirements – Given the size and complexity of this customer environment, managing a reliable and secure print infrastructure was more than the customer could handle without an Advanced Spooling solution. Their basic Print Spooler requirements included:

• High availability and delivery fidelity

• Print from any location to any printer anywhere in the organization

• Printer device management tools including automated failure notification

• Intuitive user interface capable of enterprise wide view and job management tools

• HIPPA level security

• Support for multiple O/S’s, applications, document format types

• Local control and centralized control

• Lowest possible license fees

• Efficient network bandwidth management

• Integrate with electronic forms, archiving and other document related software


While assessing the products available in this space, it became apparent to the customer that there were two schools of thought regarding Advanced Spooling software implementation strategy. The two strategies are to use a single centralized print server or installing Print Spooler software onto the various distributed application servers. Both of these approaches have advantages and disadvantages.


Centralized Print Server Model

Advantages:


• Single point of control and enterprise view of all jobs/queues

• Fewer printer definitions to maintain

• Single standard solution

• Less administrator training

• Potentially lower software license fees

Disadvantages:

• Loss of autonomy in local sites

• Implementation requires multiple hops over the network consuming bandwidth and related latency of print times

• Single point of failure (disaster recovery implications)


Distributed Print Server Model

Advantages:

• Local control of local jobs and queues

• Less dependence on centralized support

• Less network traffic

• Improved performance

• Built in redundancy

Disadvantages:

• Loss of centralized control

• Potentially higher software license fees

• More printer definitions to maintain

• Additional training required


The advantages of these print management solutions appear to be largely mutually exclusive of each other. However, this customer desired the advantages of a centralized as well as a distributed model. Specifically, they wanted:

• Fewest possible printer definitions to maintain (implies central)

• Lowest network traffic (implies distributed)

• High printing performance with little latency (implies distributed)

• Local printing control (implies distributed)

• Print from anywhere to any printer (implies central)

• Lowest possible license fees (implies central)

Their most pressing business requirement was how to implement a single solution that gave them everything they wanted, “The best of both worlds”.


Technical Solution

The technical solution implemented by Plus Technologies was based on the latest version of OM Plus, called OM Plus Version 2. This solution allowed the customer to implement a truly distributed print environment while maintaining the advantages of a centralized installation. They have much fewer printer definitions to maintain, an enterprise view of job/queues, a single standard solution, less administrator training, and low license fees.


In an OM Plus V2 implementation, the software is installed on a server in each center. Only the local queues are defined in each center (minimal administration and upkeep). Each OM Plus V2 server has the ability to automatically “advertise” its queues to all the other OM Plus V2 servers on the network. In this way, all queues are available to all systems even though they are defined only once. Each OM Plus V2 user interface allows users (with the appropriate security) to view all jobs and printers on the network from a single status screen. Through OM Plus V2 security, system administration privileges are set up to limit the functions performed locally vs. centrally, giving administrators the control they sought.


When a print job is spooled, the printer definition is looked for on the local server. If the printer is not found locally, then the OM Plus Version 2 server searches the other OM Plus Version 2 servers for the printer and delivers the print job accordingly. This functionality allows all printers to be available to all systems. All local jobs are printed locally ensuring efficient use of the network and low latency/high performance. Software license fees are minimized. Since license pricing is based on number of queues defined on each server, only small licenses are required locally. This means the number of queues and the associated price remained low.


As a result, OM Plus Version 2 provided a true distributed print management solution that eliminated redundant printer definitions across the enterprise, while allowing printing to both local and remote server’s printers.


Implementation

• On site services including installation, system configuration, testing and user training were delivered by service engineers from Plus Technologies.

• The entire implementation was completed and in production within three weeks of the order.

Customer Quote

“Through the use of OM Plus Version 2 we have the flexibility to configure our print server architecture in the most appropriate way for our printing needs. We implement OM Plus on servers where the documents are produced, economically and still can print efficiently from any application server to any printer in the enterprise.”

-CIO


Plus Technologies White Papers

The Plus Technologies white paper series includes real examples of how companies use Advanced Spooling Solutions to streamline operations, reduce cost and/or add functionality to existing business processes. For more information on these white papers, contact Plus Technologies.

Plus Technologies offers advanced

June 12, 2010

Om Plus Print Spooler Solution is an Integral Part of the Toyota Production System at Toyota North American Assembly Plants

Filed under: Server Printing — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , — admin @ 1:00 pm

The Toyota Production System (TPS) is commonly thought of as the most powerful model for efficient design and management of large scale production environments. TPS has helped develop Toyota Motor Corporation from a struggling, small truck manufacturer after World War II to the world’s largest manufacturer of cars by April of 2007.

In order to produce world-class, quality automobiles at competitive price levels, Toyota has developed an integrated approach to production which manages equipment, materials, and people in the most efficient manner while ensuring a healthy and safe work environment.

The Toyota Production System is built on two main principles: “Just-In-Time” production and “Jidoka.”

“Just in Time”

The conveyance of only what is needed, when it is needed, and in the amount it is needed.

“Jidoka”

The ability to stop production lines, by man or machine, in the event of problems such as equipment malfunction, quality issues, or late work.

Toyota’s Business Problem: Print Related Problems Were Negatively Impacting Takt Time and Continuous Flow Processing

Printers located on the assembly line throughout Toyota’s North American Assembly Plants had been installed to print instructions for production line teams. These instructions (known as Kanban) ensure that the production line teams can correctly install parts and components on a vehicle as it moves into their production station.

In order for the Toyota Production System to be successful, a concept known as Continuous Flow Processing, which is based on “Takt Time,” must be maintained throughout the entire production process.

Takt-Time

Takt time is the time which should be taken to produce a component on one vehicle. The Takt time allows Toyota to produce numerous parts of many different types for use in vehicles on the production schedule and to supply those parts to each process on the assembly line at the proper time. This keeps production on schedule (Continuous Flow) and permits flexible response to changes in sales.

Print Spooler Process Problems Required Jidoka

Process breakdowns are not an option in order to maintain the proper Takt time required to ensure Continuous Flow.

However, we all know that printers will fail from time to time. Whether the printer problem is a print spooler problem, a paper jam, a media shortage, or a print job management or delivery problem, print problems do happen.

When a print process breaks down, Jidoka (the ability to stop production lines manually) occurs until the problem is resolved. This prevents quality issues or late work from occurring; however, it negatively impacts Takt time and greatly impaired Toyota’s ability to maintain “Just in Time” Continuous Flow production.

Defining the Business Problem through Kaizen

Improvements and suggestions by Toyota team members are the cornerstone of Toyota’s success.

Using the TPS system of Kaizen (continuous improvement) the Toyota IT team began to spec out a solution to their print process problems.

The IT team determined that a solution was needed to eliminate print problems altogether to prevent negative impact on Continuous Flow and Takt time.

The print spooler solution would need to:

1. Notify their Manufacturing (MRP) Application Help Desk within 60 seconds of any print job delivery failure. That notification must contain enough information for the problem to be fixed quickly and easily.

(a) This needed to be done by translating SNMP error codes from printers to Error Codes used by their MRP Application.

(b) This could not require any changes to their Manufacturing and Production Applications.

2. Be able to re-route the failed print job to an alternate printer at the production station so that Takt time would not be impacted nor would Jidoka be required.

3. Replace the limited print spooling functionality they currently had. (They knew from experience that neither the HP-UX environment that produced the Kanban text data nor the Windows system that merges that text with an electronic form had a print spooling system capable of solving their print job delivery failure issues.)

4. Work with virtually any network attached printer from any vendor

OM Plus Print Spooler Solution from Plus Technologies Eliminates the Print Problems

As a result of the shortcomings in their native print spooling systems, the Toyota IT team determined that they needed to augment their current system. Relying on the native print spooling systems on their servers just was not up to the standards by which Toyota runs their production system. There were too many cases of print job failures causing production line shut downs which translated into production delays and large costs.

The IT team approached Plus Technologies regarding their business problem, and we implemented a print spooler solution based on our OM Plus Advanced Print Spooler, Document Delivery and Printer Management software.

Technical Solution

The OM Plus advanced print spooling system is installed on the Windows System, along with their Electronic Forms package, augmenting the functionality of the Windows server print spooling system on that system.

OM Plus receives print jobs from the Electronic Forms software (without requiring changes to any form or the application), and then OM Plus delivers the kanban print jobs to the printers all around the production floor.

Assured Print Job Delivery

During the print delivery process, the OM Plus print spooler solution opens a bi-directional communications session with the primary printer at each production station and requests SNMP status information from the printer, which provides a detailed status of the printer. OM Plus then waits for the “job complete” status to come from the printer (indicating the job was accepted, printed and the pages were sent to the tray). If printing is successful, OM Plus marks the job status as “printed” and no further action is required.

Print Job Failure Notification

If OM Plus does not receive confirmation from the printer that printing was successful within one minute, or it receives bad status via SNMP from the printer, it updates the job status as “failed”, converts the SNMP status codes to the appropriate MRP Application error status codes, and then updates the MRP Application Help Desk regarding the print failure, in real time.

Automatic Print Job Re-Routing

Once the notification of a problem occurs, the OM Plus print spooler solution directs the print job to the alternate printer at the production station. The alternate printer now becomes the primary printer from that point on and no production line shut-down occurs. Production continues and Takt time is not impacted.

Easy and Fast Problem Resolution

With the information gathered and provided by OM Plus, the MRP Application Help Desk knows when a printer has failed and they know the nature of the failure. This enables them to rectify the situation very quickly and get the printer back online as the alternate printer at the production station, ready and able to take over when the new primary printer has a problem in the future.

Business Results

The first and most important business result that was delivered by the Plus Technologies OM Plus print spooler solution was that Continuous Flow was maintained. Print job delivery problems no longer occur that result in production line shut downs, stopping Continuous Flow and impacting their ability to deliver vehicles to customers.

Costs are significantly reduced and production processes are not impacted any longer when a print job failure occurs.

The MRP Application Help Desk team is now able to provide much faster resolution to printer errors. They know within one minute of a print failure and they receive error status information so they know what is required to resolve the problem quickly.

Finally, as part of the OM Plus print spooler solution, Plus Technologies recommended the installation of a second printer at each production station to permit an alternate delivery option to OM Plus if the primary printer had a hard failure. This ensured a much higher probability of a print failure not impacting the production line.

Customer’s Opinion

“OM Plus solved our problem so successfully that we implemented it in all of our North American Assembly plants.”

Plus Technologies

A Division of Digital Controls

444 Alexandersville Road

Miamisburg, OH 45342

937-384-0444

877-899-7587 (toll free)

www.plustechnologies.com

Joel Vedder
printspooler
printspooler

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