Information Tech
Castle's Information Technology Systems have a growing reputation as something very very special. The philosophy behind the system is to integrate every single aspect of the business and to make that part of the system and not a bolt on. Another way to look at it is to say that 'the goal was to eliminate everyone’s little black book'. In order to achieve this it was important to build the system around a substantial and stable hardware/software base.
The current system hardware is composed of a cluster of two identical machines to provide total fault tolerance. Each system comprises of four dual Xeon 3.2 Ghz processors each with sixteen gigabyte of EEC Ram, four 160 Gigabyte mirrored drives for local storage and 1.2 Terrabytes of shared RAID storage connected to 1 Gigabyte Fibre Switches. The system is backed up by LT03 800 Gigabyte tape drives on a rotating five week basis. In the past six years there has been zero downtime due to hardware failure.
The software that runs the system is based around Windows 2003 Advanced Server with SQL Server 2005 Enterprise Edition providing the backend database solution. The production control system which runs the factory is completely written in-house providing rapid development solutions for forthcoming software requirements.
This integrated information technology structure is essential to our long-term strategy.
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Off the shelf applications include:
- Microsoft Office Automation
- SAGE Accounts
- Solidworks / Camworks CADCAM
- Pro Engineer CADCAM
- CMM Software
- Vericut Machine Simulation
- Exam Diff Pro
- Gage Pack
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Our in-house developed applications include:
- Contract Review
- Risk Assessment
- Sales / Production Engineering / Quality Review
- Job Costing
- Real Time Job Tracking
- DNC
- Wages
- Skills / Training analysis
- Real Time Shop Floor Data Collection (utilising fingerprint technology)
- Factory Loading and Planning
- Quality Assurance
- Process Control
- Time and Attendance
- Invoicing
- Purchasing
- Materials Tracking
Customers visiting our facility are always impressed with the high level of systems integration and ease of information retrieval. Utilising a standard Windows interface, our use, transfer and handling of information is leading edge.