Posted on February 20, 2015

As with other technical domains, the lumber industry is following the general trend of gathering more and more data about what is happening in the mill. That information can vary tremendously in its nature, ranging from a live temperature reading, the number of pieces currently in a bin, to shift reports and board tracking data. As the capacity to keep such inputs keeps growing so is the need to catalog and retain the knowledge as much as possible for the longest periods of time.

Autolog recognizes this important requirement and has moved to offer systems with a high degree of robustness which advocate capacity, redundancy and high availability.

More robust hardware has been introduced which provides redundant power supplies, SAS and RAID drives, allowing 2 hard disks to fail while the system remains online and functional. Redundancy and synchronization have also been introduced in software where data is kept live in separate SQL databases on different computers, protecting both from data lost in the case of corruption and downtime. Software is also replicated automatically so that all backups are kept up to date following updates. Accordingly, notifications are sent, be it by email or thru the user interface, so that IT personnel can react immediately as soon as the self-diagnostic engines detect an anomaly.

What does this mean? Large amounts of data can be kept in a more powerful, accessible and robust environment, from production data to board information, allowing a lot more flexibility and power to analyze, simulate, consult, safeguard and troubleshoot. Uptime is greatly improved as well as reaction time in case of emergencies.