Where did the time fly? In three days, we accomplished and learned so much from each other as well as from the keynote speaker, Andrew Tarvin. Andrew kicked off the event with an inspiring presentation on the importance of fun in the workplace. Since Americans spend over 90,000 hours at work in their lifetime, Andrew reminds us that we need to make this time as happy, efficient, and effective as possible.
Andrew charged everyone with seeing and doing something different based on his humor-infused presentation. With this reminder, A+W employees and customers set out to inject some humor into our engaging discussions.
With a buzz in the air, A+W customers and employees were ready to start learning. The learning began with Eike Luh’s presentation on using real-time quoting from your online webpage with a product called A+W iQuote (https://www.a-w.com/us/products/a-w-clarity/a-w-business/a-w-iquote/). Our web-based interface allows direct communication between yourself and your customers. A+W iQuote provides fabricators the opportunity to reduce errors and costs by having clients enter the information directly on your website.
Two sessions on Monday that evoked a lot interest from A+W customers were presentations by our partner companies: Smart Builder and Viprotron. Viprtron’s patented scanning systems can detect defects quickly and efficiently, inspect glass for quality and dimensions, and measure and minimize anisotropies in façade glazings.
Did you know about all of the comprehensive reports you can create with A+W software? If you’d attended the Reporting sessions for A+W Business, A+W Production, and A+W Business Pro, you’d have learned how new reports, such as the SSRS reports, can help you cook your machine capacity all while better understanding your backlog and today’s needs.
Did someone say Capacity Planning? During Dave Cox’s presentation, he taught everyone how to check their production capacities, order statuses, and possible deliver dates, while also keeping track of machinery usage via Production Terminals. By filtering what needs to be done on a daily basis, A+W customers can better keep track of their facilities’ capacity.
During each presentation, many tips and tricks were shared with customers that can help them utilize their A+W software to its fullest. It is these tips, tricks, and nuances that many customers stated were the main reason they attended Converge 2019. Come join us in 2021 and learn tips and tricks that will help you run your facility more efficiently and effectively!
A+W managers also shared news about exciting new products coming out. First up was A+W iShape (https://www.a-w.com/us/products/a-w-clarity/a-w-business-pro/a-w-ishape/). With A+W iShape, a template is photographed with a smartphone camera surrounded by printed reference points. These reference points fasten to a wall and correct any photographic distortions. With the image taken, it is emailed and displayed in A+W CAD Designer, where it is transformed into a stream of points defined by arcs and lines. To further process the image, the user compensates for any distortions before transferring to a CNC machine.
Another product receiving much fanfare and interest was A+W Smart Companion (https://www.a-w.com/us/media-center/news/scan-smarter-with-smartphones/), which allows users to employ their smartphone as their scanner. Smartphones utilizing A+W Smart Companion, available for both iOS and Android operating systems, are replacing industrial barcode scanners. A+W Smart Companion replaces both the barcode scanner and acts as a mobile information terminal. Employees can display the locations of order components and the content of racks making communication bidirectional. Invalid bookings are now obsolete, while the read quality of each scan improves. A+W Smart Companion can also scan multiple barcodes at once (e.g., edge labels on a rack), which saves time, thus making work more productive with fewer errors.
A third new product discussed with customers was A+W IoT IoT (https://www.a-w.com/us/products/a-w-clarity/a-w-business/a-w-iot-smart-office/), which enables a collection, processing, channeling, forwarding, saving, evaluation, and analysis of structured and unstructured data. The IoT platform is central to storage and processing of data from a wide variety of sources – computers, machines, documents, people – in various output and target formats. Based on these data warnings, actions can be triggered, such as doing maintenance on a machine.
Overall, Converge ’19 was an excellent opportunity to bring executives, employees, daily users, and customers together to exchange ideas and help guide the future of the software development program.
