Imperial Tobacco Canada has been Canada's leading tobacco company for over 80 years, producing two-thirds of Canada's cigarettes. The company's locations are scattered, with a corporate office in Montreal, Quebec; a cigarette manufacturing plant in Guelph, Ontario; and a tobacco processing facility in Aylmer, Ontario.

The Challenge: Deploying Inventory Management Software on Moving Forklifts

Imperial Tobacco was dispatching forklifts to move materials and products with an old-fashioned paper-based requisition and confirmation systems. A computer-based system would be faster and more responsive, with greater accuracy and easier record keeping.

The problem -- mounting a computer on a moving forklift. PCs are large, and the vibration and movement of the forklifts are extremely damaging to hard drives. ThinManager Ready Thin Clients provided the solution.

Implementing ACP Technology

Imperial researched Thin Clients and found that ACP provided the features that they needed. They attended an ACP Forum to learn the details and then set about deploying Thin Clients on the forklift project.

They chose Xycom XA3412T units with an integrated touchscreen, powered with 24 V dc from the forklift. The units connect to the network through an Enterasys RoamAbout wireless transmitter. This communicates with the wireless network that Imperial already had in place.

Additionally, each unit has an Intermec 1553 long-range bar code scanner attached to its PS/2 port. This allows the driver to scan material from the forklift and have it qualified by the material verification program running on the terminal server. The Xycom Thin Client displays a Java Flash application that allows the driver to receive instructions from the inventory management system while driving. He then uses the tethered scanner to verify that the correct material is picked up, and delivers it to the needed location. So far, this mobile deployment has been installed on 16 forklifts.

Reliability is a key issue, so a second tier of scanners was installed on stationary Thin Clients. DataLogic Dragon M101 wireless scanners connect to a base station that is attached to the PS/2 port of a Xycom XA1300 ThinManager Ready Thin Client. If the forklifts are unavailable, an operator can carry the wireless scanner to verify the material. The data are sent to the base station and into the system through the Thin Client.

Future Plans

Since the initial deployment, Imperial Tobacco has expanded their usage of ACP several times in Guelph, including deploying ThinManager Ready Thin Clients as HMI workstation upgrades.

One feature that Imperial likes is the Thin Client's flexibility. Units can be given unlimited access, applications, and resources -- or can be limited to a single application with simple settings.

Additionally, the remote management and administration has simplified management and maintenance. Because patches and upgrades are performed on the terminal servers, not the clients, less time is wasted walking to the nodes for management.

Imperial also expanded to a second site, the tobacco processing plant in Aylmer. Because the two sites share a Wide Area Network, Thin Clients and Terminal Servers at the Aylmer site can be monitored, managed, and even shadowed from the Guelph site.

"I don't have to get up out of my chair to manage nodes -- I can manage from afar," says Peter Gilmour, IT specialist, Imperial Tobacco Canada. "I don't have to go across the plant to fix things now. In fact, I can manage the Aylmer plant from Guelph, 75 miles away!"