On August 6, 1991, the first Web page in history was created. Today, 30 years after that distant summer, the World Wide Web has become a decisive protagonist in the private and professional life of each of us. In recent years, the Web and E-commerce have further influenced the way of thinking and working: ordering from a website, monitoring the progress of your order at any time of day, the integration between services of different platforms are just a few. practices and services that have become "indispensable" for each user.
The world of glass production was no exception, the Web has changed everyday practices even within the glass factory: orders that were previously sent by fax or dictated by telephone are now sent by email, very often generated in automatic from management software, or via photos sent by mobile phone.
It also happens more and more frequently that a glass factory, as a subject that provides a service, is "seen" on a par with an online purchase platform: the customer expects, in full autonomy, to be able to place an order, to monitor the status of production, to receive information about the shipment, to communicate the availability of trestles to be collected and so on.
OPTIMA S.r.l., active for over 25 years in the search for advanced solutions for glassware, has long understood and collected these needs and worked to integrate as much as possible the ERP / MES systems of WEB functionality able to offer customers and glassworks services and tools for latest generation for an "Always Connected" glass factory:
- Initially working on the integration between applications and programs born and designed to operate independently, making them become a single whole in which the different worlds are able to "talk" to each other and to transfer data via the Web network.
- More recently, by developing WEB pages, directly linked to the ERP and the MES, which allow the customers of a glass factory to authenticate themselves and proceed autonomously with placing orders, checking the progress of production and checking the plan deliveries.
Connection with Glass Advisor
The first example of integration in chronological order is that with the Glass Advisor portal for the creation of PDOs, Declarations of Preferential Origin: during order entry, once the composition of the insulating glass has been defined, the ERP is able to connect to the Glass Advisor portal and retrieve the data of the technological parameters required by the DOPs in real time. The certificates can therefore be printed directly from within the OPTIMA management system without the user having to make calculations, use external programs, connect to portals, save documents on the computer or other.
Multi plant management
Still on the subject of integration and data transfer via the Web, OPTIMA S.r.l. has long been able to support a multi-plant management of the glass industry: offices and production companies that are distant from each other can still operate on the same centralized database by sharing data and updates in real time. Orders placed by an employee in Milan are automatically visible and available for production in the Rome production unit; vice versa, the phase advances declared with the MES in Rome are immediately available on the computers of the Milan operators or of any other user connected to the same private network and on which the ERP is installed.
Web dashboard
The WEB Dashboards add-on module available for Opty-Way Enterprise allows you to view, using a common WEB Browser such as Explorer or Chrome, a vast library of “dashboards” with production or sales statistics stored in the ERP database. These "dashboards" can be configured in various ways and can be widely customized by the OPTIMA support team or, through the included editor, can be modified by "expert" personnel.
IOrder entry from the web [NEW]
As a first step towards e-commerce practices, OPTIMA S.r.l. has developed a WEB portal directly connected with the ERP management system through which customers can independently enter orders by defining materials, processes, measurements and delivery dates requested using the same items defined within the ERP. The customer inserts the order, the employee of the glassworks merely validates the insertion by sending, if necessary, the order confirmation to the customer and already having the data in the ERP to start production.
Production progress monitoring [NEW]
Evolution of the possibility to enter orders and adaptation to the expectations of each "modern" customer, the connection of the WEB portal with the ERP OPTIMA management software allows the customer of the glassworks to check the progress of their orders at any time. With the MES connected to the ERP, the staff of the glassworks will not have to do anything, it is the customer independently who has full vision of the data updated in real time without having to resort to phone calls, emails or other.
