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Can you say
"terabyte"?
Why today's foundrymen
have to be data managers, too
by Joe Scarry
Ever since we started CastingTrade.com, I have been getting
a crash course in how data gets stored, updated, transferred,
and protected as it is juggled from one computer to another.
I came to accept the fact that operating an Internet portal
would require a deeper understanding of bits and bytes. But
it wasn't until I saw a presentation in Dallas by representatives
of GM, Ford, and Caterpillar that I realized that data management
has also become a must-have skill for everybody in the metalcasting
industry today.
The subject of the presentation was "Data Exchange Requirements
Now and in the Future," and it set out several concepts that
were very helpful for understanding of what people who buy
castings are growing to expect of the people who make them.
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| (1) How many gigabytes in an engine?
-- Sometimes the easy way to get a handle on a concept is with
a specific example. Keith Heitmeyer from GM gave the example
of a lost foam engine block whose mold design required 11 gigabytes
to hold. (The block actually consisted of six separate "slices,"
and each slice required its own mold and related assembly tools.)
A gigabyte is a million bytes, or a thousand megabytes (MB).
As a point of reference, a standard 3.5" floppy disk holds 1.5
MB, and a Zip disk holds 100 MB. (A CD holds about 700 MB.)
These days, the typical desktop PC comes with 20-60 gigabytes
of hard disk space. So the first problem with many of these
designs is simply having enough memory to STORE them - forget
about the computer power to PROCESS them, or the transmission
speed to SEND them somewhere. (Okay, okay, those engine designs
are generally handled on higher capacity PCs used by engineers
-- referred to as "workstations" -- with much more memory. And
the AVERAGE part size is smaller - about 0.5 gigabyte. But you
get the picture.) The usual solution is 6 mm tape. |
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(2) Data needs "data shepherds" - With original designs
and practical modifications flowing back and forth between
the original equipment makers (OEMs) like GM, Ford, and Caterpillar,
and their parts subcontractors, there needs to be a clearinghouse
or hub, and that needs to be administered by a traffic cop
or "data shepherd," also known as a "data coordinator." This
has led to a newly-evolving role for the pattern/tooling suppliers.
In the case of GM, St. Catherine's is the hub between the
design center in Pontiac and plants such as Defiance, and
others.
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(3) Three little letters: "ANX" -- Another key player
in all of this is an organization called ANX Co. - "Automotive
Network Exchange." This is a network that hosts transmission
of data between automakers and their suppliers in a secure
environment. (ANX services are available for a fixed annual
charge plus low usage fees. An alternative service, AutoWeb,"
provides a similar service for occasional - and much smaller
-- transmissions, but with capacity limits. CAT uses a system
called SIFT - Secure Internet File Transfer.) ANX has a distinct
mission. Unlike the "data shepherds," who make sure that engineering
changes are made according to the desired sequence, ANX is
strictly concerned with security and access: making sure that
the data is available to everyone who is supposed to see it,
and no one who isn't.
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(4) The bottleneck: phone lines - Remember when the
big question was whether you had a 28k or a 56 k modem? It
didn't take long for people to figure out that the real bottleneck
is the ability of transmission lines. Probably the single
most important first step for any metalcaster these days -
Get thee to a T-1 line! To understand why, consider the time
required for each of the available types of transmission lines
to transfer that 0.5 gigabyte it takes to store the CAD file
for the average part:
T-1 line: 1,544 kbps = .193 MB/sec >>>
2591 s = 43 minutes
DSL line: 144 kbps = .018 MB/sec >>> 27,800
s = 7.7 hours
Standard phone line: 56 kbps = .007 MB/sec . . .
. . . . 15 hours!
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| (5) The future: Real-time engineering
collaboration over the network - Of course, what really
has these folks excited is not storage, or security, but the
possibility of engineers in separate locations collaborating
on designs in real-time over the network. There will be abundant
software products - Netmeeting, Sun Forum, SGImeeting, HPVC,
etc. - so the real limiting factors are bandwidth and security.
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And this wasn't the only data management session in Dallas.
For example, "Saving Money Through Casting Process Simulation"
dealt with many related issues of data management. It's easy
to envision a day in the not-too-distant future when data
management issues dominate the session topics at the AFS Congress,
and when we'll all be saying, "Gigabytes were easy
-- it's these darn terabytes that I'm struggling to
keep track of!"
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