FoCul - IT by Engineers for Engineers

FoCul publishes the FoCul Delivery Toolkit Wiki

Sean Cull — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 22:52:24 +0100

The FoCul Delivery Toolkit is our suite of "off the shelf" products. These are typically applications which we have been asked to develop several times by different customers and where we felt that it would be useful to develop a product which incorporated all of the best practice from those projects.

The applications are highly configurable so that they can be tailored to meet different business requirements. If we cannot meet the specific business requirements then these applications also provide a good foundation for us to build upon.

The Delivery Toolkit products are available to buy outright or to rent on a monthly basis. We are also able to provide the applications as a service ( software as a service - SAAS ) as either Lotus Notes or web based applications.

The purpose behind the use of a Wiki ( as opposed to a brochure site ) is to make it easier for both existing and potential customers to see what is available. Our approach to working with our customers is very hands on and collaborative. We feel that as the content in the Wiki grows it will become a rich resource that both users and potential customers can refer to and also help improve.

The Wiki software itself is the popular OpenNTF Xpages Wiki which is both free and open source. Xpages is a revolutionary new technology incorporated into Notes / Domino 8.5 which makes it much easier to web enable new and existing Lotus Notes applications.

Asset Manager - A New FoCul Product

Sean Cull — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 11:09:28 +0100

FoCul is launching a new product known as "Asset Manager" as part of the Delivery Toolkit suite of applications. Lucite International on Teesside will be the lead customer for this new system which will be introduced in H1 of 2010.

The Asset Manager application allows organisations to manage the knowledge and processes required to maintain and operate Chemical plants. The application is compliments typical CMMS systems such as SAP and Maximo by providing a much richer tool for teams to collaborate within.

The first release will be a Lotus Notes based application but subsequent releases will also include a web delivered option. The application can be delivered as an on premises solution or as a SAAS ( Software as a Service ) offering.

The functionality within the system will include :

Criticality assessment
Asset life planning
Maintenance policy development
Asset spend mapping
Failure Investigation and reporting
Management of protective systems ( trips, alarms etc.. )
Management of technical documentation
Action management

Benefits of the system include :

Significantly improved retention of corporate knowledge
Significantly improved access to key information for the whole asset management team
Improved allocation of resources through increased transparency and prioritisation of asset management activity
Enhanced processes for asset improvement activities
Improved control of action management within the asset management teams

The application also compliments other FoCul products such as :

Document Manager - a system to efficiently manage controlled documents such as procedures and operating instructions

Skills and Roles Manager - a system to efficiently manage skills records, roles and the gap between the skills held and the skills required.

Activities Manager - a system to consolidate actions and activities across a range of sources into one central activities management application

For more information about the system please contact Sean Cull on +44 (0) 1642 919 749

FoCul web outage

Sean Cull — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 22:43:00 +0100

Apologies for our site being down over the last day or so. Our DNS provider ( Dotster.com ) had a denial of Service attack that forced them to change the IP addresses of their name servers.

We are now looking at bringing this function in house

New FoCul flyer published

Sean Cull — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 10:01:31 +0100

“FoCul’s key strength is in understanding our manufacturing environment and translating our needs into solutions that really do reduce costs and improve control”
Stephen Medlock, Senior Engineer and SHE Manager, Lucite international

“Working with FoCul has delivered quality and efficiency improvement to our consultancy processes & services, whilst retaining the ability to customise work processes at short notice to meet specific customer needs”

David Stanier, Principal Consultant , ABB

"Because the FoCul software team are also experienced engineers they understood exactly what we wanted and even helped us with the specification. the result was rapid development of a practical and easy to use system that will ensure good control of modifications in our safety critical environment.”

Nick Gardener, Group Risk & HSE Manager , Elementis

Download PDF

Case Study : Improving the Management of Change Control at a Top Tier COMAH Site

Sean Cull — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 13:26:02 +0100

“The system allows us to quickly and simply track all of our plant modifications—it is much more transparent and the risk assessment tool is far more detailed than the previous paper system”
Jamie Armitage, Cyanides Operations Manager

“The system ensures that each step of the process is properly completed at the correct time”
Mike Twigg, Asset Engineer

Case Study : The ABB pRIME Toolkit : Industrial Collaboration through Lotus Notes

Sean Cull — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 15:37:41 +0100

FoCul worked with ABB to develop a suite of Notes and Domino applications which made it possible for the ABB to carry out these structured asset reviews within a secure IT system known as the pRIME� Toolkit.

The system allows ABB and their clients to work together capturing the asset information electronically so that it can be reviewed during multi disciplinary reviews. The system synchronises data from the different team members through Client-Server or Peer to Peer connections allowing individuals to work in a disconnected fashion on site but to then share their data across the whole team. This functionality also allows the information to be reviewed by specialist Engineers outside of the immediate project team.

As each item is reviewed different stage gates are passed in the workflow process. This locks the documents and allows the overall progress of the project to be tracked by a traffic light system.

Recommendations created during the review are each individually costed and given target dates to produce an investment profile for the assets.

All of the information generated during the study can be automatically transferred to structured reports in MS Word and Excel at any time. The format of these reports are configurable in the field on a project by project basis.

It is also possible for ABB’s clients to view the detail in Lotus Notes, via the web or as static data on a CD or USB pen based html web site.

Clients without a Lotus Notes infrastructure can use the system in full fidelity by using the Lotus Notes Nomad USB pen based client.

Click below to read the full case study.

pRIME 008.pdf

Case Study : Improving Efficiency and Control with Electronic Shift Logs

Sean Cull — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 15:31:02 +0100

As part of a significant business restructuring initiative a multinational chemical producer needed to make significant step change in the management of key performance indicators and other operational data generated by the operations shift teams.

FoCul developed a Manufacturing Information System which allowed the plant operators to use electronic shift logs to capture their observations and data. The logs from the individual operating units are automatically consolidated into team logs and then ultimately a shift log. The individual operators, team leaders and shift manager each sign for their logs using secure credentials.

The information collected from the different production areas is then consolidated through a series of on-screen reports. The top level report is displayed as a colour coded dashboard showing progress against target for the last 24 hours, week to date , month to date and year to date for HSE, production, stocks and OEE.

The system has extensive functionality to export data to Excel where it can be automatically manipulated and graphed. This functionality is used to produce OEE data from the loss time reports recorded in the shift logs.

Data from the system is also exported to other business systems such as the FoCul developed Energy Reporting Application which uses the production volumes in calculating the site energy efficiency.

MIS_released.pdf

Case Study : Paperless Requisition and Invoice Approval System Significantly Improves Efficiency and Control

Sean Cull — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 15:21:16 +0100

FoCul has worked with a multinational chemical manufacturer with sites in the UK to develop and deploy a paperless Indent ( Purchase Requisition ) and Invoice approval application.

Although the company had well established systems for the creation and approval of Purchase Requisitions, Capital Expenditure and Purchase Invoices these paper processes were very time consuming and inefficient. FoCul worked with the client to move to paperless processes using modules from FoCul’s Delivery Toolkit suite.

Purchase Requisitions can now be raised electronically by any authorised person and are automatically routed to the most appropriate person or persons for electronic approval.

Once the requisitions have been fully approved they are converted into Purchase Orders within the existing ERP system by the Purchasing Team.

When the Purchase Invoices are received from suppliers they are scanned and added to the system. The consignee then receives an electronic notification and can approve or reject the invoice in Lotus Notes. Cost Centre owners can access live reports of commitment and generate live spend maps by supplier.

See that attached PDF for more information

Esinda1_released.pdf

FoCul sponsors Elementis Team on Lyke Wake Walk for the British Heart Foundation

Sean Cull — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 15:47:34 +0100

FoCul has sponsored the Elementis team on the Lyke Wake Walk ( 42 miles )

The team finished in 19 hours, well done chaps !

http://www.justgiving.com/lykewake2009heart/

FoCul sponsors Cleveland Search and Rescue Team

Sean Cull — Wed, 20 May 2009 15:54:40 +0100

FoCul has sponsored the Cleveland Search and Rescue Team

http://www.csrt.co.uk/sponsors.php

Cleveland Search and Rescue Team is one of the many mountain rescue teams that exist in the upland areas of the UK.

The Team is made up of around 50 men and women, from all walks of life who are on call 24 hours a day 7 days a week to go to the help of people missing or injured on the North Yorks Moors in the North East of England.

In the Team at present we have salesmen and students, engineers and electricians, doctors and policemen, teachers and retired people to name but a few. All have a background in the outdoors whether as walkers, mountaineers or climbers and all dedicate a lot of their time into their mountain rescue training. None of the Team is paid for their mountain rescue activities.

In order to be prepared for the wide range of incidents that the rescue team is called to deal with during a normal year its members train regularly and must attend a high percentage of the training sessions in order to keep familiar with the complicated equipment that we carry and to learn the latest search and rescue techniques.