As a temporary workaround for the Internet Explorer 9 memory hogging problem described earlier, PC-Topp Terminal pages will automatically refresh every 60 minutes, causing a momentary flicker, and potentially displaying the start page of the terminal (and not the page that was last being viewed). We do however watch out for ongoing user interaction and delay the refresh until we are have not seen any user interaction with the page for a reasonable time.

This workaround now makes it possible to use Internet Explorer 9 with PC-Topp's terminal pages without suffering the effects of long term memory loss inside Internet Explorer 9.

However, any other problems Internet Explorer 9 still has will not disappear with this trick, so users may still experience browser failures and similar effects in PC-Topp under IE9, the same effects Internet Explorer 9 users experience in popular Internet services like Google's www.gmail.com.

From now on PC‑Topp can automatically sign in the crew leader at the beginning of a shift. This saves him the trouble of having to sign in explicitly which is sometimes forgotten.

This optional feature can be activated in the Dataset Parameters.

Internet Explorer 9

When working with PC-Topp.NET in Internet Explorer 9 you may face difficulties like unexpectedly high memory usage or browser crashes.

These are Internet Explorer 9 specific problems; in Internet Explorer 8 PC-Topp.NET is stable and runs with the usual reliabilty.

Microsoft has admitted the memory hogging problem in Internet Explorer 9 (see http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2572253/en-us); concerning the browser crashes a Microsoft statement is still pending.

Our developers are currently trying to find a workaround. However, in the meantime resp. as long as there is no official Microsoft fix we recommend using PC-Topp.NET with Internet Explorer 8. We will inform you via this blog as soon as there is a solution available.

Internet Explorer Add-Ons

No matter which version of Internet Explorer you are using, Internet Explorer add-ons can cause performance and stability problems in PC-Topp.NET.

Therefore, we advise you to disable all Internet Explorer add-ons like search engine toolbars, social networking tools etc., except those you absolutely need.

You can find instructions on how to disable add-ons here:
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows-vista/Internet-Explorer-add-ons-frequently-asked-questions

For getting a better overview of the overall performance of machines and crew leaders the following four new reports have been implemented:

Overall Machine Performance

Overall Machine Performance by Crew Leader

This report is almost identical to the Overall Machine Performance report but it additionally shows figures for the crew leaders.

Overall Crew Leader Performance

The Overall Crew Leader Performance report shows performance indicators by crew leader for the selected period compared with average values since the beginning of the year. The report contrasts the crew leader’s monthly performance values with the average of the year. Graphical indicators show if the crew leader performance has improved or changed for the worse.

Imagine one of the machine operators in your plant has an accident due to issues warned against in the safety instructions provided to the crew. How to prove to your insurance company that he has disregarded or failed to read them?

What It Is Good for

This is where the new Safety Instructions functionality at the PC-Topp.NET Machine Terminal and Multi Machine Terminal comes into play:

• It forces crew members who haven't signed in at a machine for a certain period of time to take note of important information (e.g. reminders to wear safety clothes, hints on things to keep in mind or changes in the workflow etc).
• It allows you to prove that a crew member has acknowledged important information so you aren't liable for damages incurred through non-observance.

How It Works

• If a crew member who hasn’t signed in at a machine for the specified number of days signs in at the Machine Terminal a dialog prompts him to read the safety instructions for this machine.
• This dialog appears if the safety instructions file has been modified, too. Everybody who signs in at the machine for the first time after the modification is prompted to read the changed safety instructions.
• At the same time the feature demands confirmation by a superior that the person in question has done so, thus guaranteeing that users really view relevant information and don't just skip the dialog.
• The Safety Instructions feature is best used in conjunction with the PC-Topp.NET Messaging functionality. It can alert the supervisor by email or text message in real time that a crew member has to read the safety instructions, thereby automatically creating written evidence of the procedure.
• Moreover, when the supervisor comes to the workstation of the person in question to give his confirmation he can print out two copies of the safety instructions, have the person in question sign both, and file one copy in the crew member's personal record.

If the new feature is used as outlined above, your personnel is kept up-to-date on important information, and at the same time the fact that staff members have received this information is fully documented to protect you against unjustified claims.

How to Switch It On

To activate this feature you have to:

• Upload a safety instructions file to the PC-Topp server via the Machine Settings page (Machine Terminal tab),
• Define how much time has to pass after the last sign-in of a crew member for the safety instructions to be displayed (in the DataSet Parameters, Machine Terminal tab).

• The overview can show more quality checks at a time because the quality checks are listed in a timeline, additionally organized by check type (rather than just by chronological order as before).
• Whether upcoming, pending, or already performed, all quality checks remain in view (whereas in the vertical layout you see mostly the pending and upcoming ones).
• The status of the quality checks is instantly visible thanks to their color codes which are similar to the PC-Topp order status colors:
  • Yellow – Upcoming quality checks
  • Blue – Due / imminent quality checks
  • Gray – Performed quality checks
  • Red – Expired quality checks
  Additionally, failed quality checks are marked in red, passed quality checks in green:
  

You can switch the quality checks to the new view in the Machine Terminal tab of the DataSet Parameters page:

Due to their pink background color, orders flagged as "Forbidden" by Planning or Sales clearly stand out in the machine schedule of the PC‑Topp.NET Conversion Machine Scheduling page. As of now, you can spot orders flagged as "Suspended" by Planning or Sales more easily, too: They are displayed with a pink order number.

In the PC-Topp.NET Machine Settings, you can now configure set-up times for up to seven different ink colors. (Before this was restricted to max. four ink colors.)

This way the set-up time for orders with four or more ink colors can be calculated more precisely than before and thus the total work time calculation is more accurate.

We are currently reorganizing our customer response management to further improve our customer support in terms of reaction time and solution quality. In order to streamline our handling of customer inquiries we have introduced a new central e-mail address for support requests. As of now, please exclusively use this e-mail address if you need our support.

Nouvelle adresse de support de PC-Topp

Afin d’améliorer notre support concernant le temps de réaction et la qualité des solutions nous avons réorganisé le système de réponses de nos clients.  Nous avons introduit une adresse e-mail centrale spécialement conçue pour les demandes de support : Désormais, veuillez utiliser uniquement cette adresse si vous avez besoin  de notre support.

Neue Mailadresse für den PC-Topp-Support

Wir reorganisieren derzeit unser Kundenreaktionsmanagement, um unseren Kundensupport im Hinblick auf Antwortgeschwindigkeit und Qualität der angebotenen Lösungen zu verbessern. Zur Optimierung der Bearbeitung von Kundenanfragen haben wir eine neue zentrale E-Mail-Adresse für Support-Anfragen eingerichtet. Bitte wenden Sie sich ab sofort ausschließlich an diese Adresse, wenn Sie per E-Mail Support anfordern möchten.

support@pctopp.com

Alternatively you can give us a call on / Ou bien vous pouvez nous appeler au / Oder rufen Sie uns an unter +49 (911) 994000

In the past, if you wanted to execute a password protected action at the PC-Topp.NET Machine Terminal you had to re-enter your password for each following restricted action as well which could be quite bothersome.

This policy has been changed to make consecutive restricted actions easier: After a user has authenticated himself for a password protected action his user rights remain extended for one minute so he doesn’t have to enter his credentials again for the next restricted action.

So far, article comments, special instructions etc. used to be immediately visible at the PC‑Topp.NET Machine Terminal only up to a certain length.

In order to make all comments attached to an order readable at a glance, a Comments sub tab has been added to the Machine Terminal Orders tab. There you now find a structured list of all special instructions, article comments, customer complaints, and extra customer information entries for the current order.

And what’s more, the order comments sent via OTDATA (which were missing until now) are displayed in this new tab as well.

• Machine operators can closely monitor corrugator production without having to stay next to the machine controls.
• No matter where the members of the machine crew are working, everybody can see in advance when the next change of flute type, board grade etc. is due so the team can better prepare for a smooth transition.
• Everybody at the corrugator is immediately alerted to downtimes.
• Supervisors and all staff at the machine can effortlessly get information on corrugator performance with just a glance at the overhead display at all times, without having to leave their workstation.

Customizable Range of Production Figures

There is a wide scope of production information available for displaying with the new feature. The figures and texts to be shown can be easily personalized according to customers’ needs. Some possibilities would be:

• Production Figures of the Current Shift, e.g.
  
  • Current speed
  • Program number, board grade, roll size, flute
  • Total meters produce and average meters per minute for the current run and shift respectively
  • A forecast of meters to produce until the next change of board grade, roll size, or flute type
  • Shift duration
• Production Figures of Previous Shifts
  
  • Shift duration, total meters produced, average meters per minute
• Current Order
  • Order number
  • Customer name
  • Sheet size
  • Quantity
• Downtime or Off-Line Alerts
• Freely Configurable Messages

The displayed information can optionally be toggled in certain intervals, e.g. from production times to produced and scheduled quantities or other information of interest, or even between production figures and announcements or text messages for special occasions like visitors in the plant etc.

How to Get the New Extra Large Display

Basically, all you need is a license, an idea of what you want to display, and a large screen. So if you are interested in taking advantage of the new possibilities provided by this functionality, please get in touch with us:

Contact the PC-Topp Team

Both the PC-Topp Label Designer and the PC-Topp Label Printer have been reengineered to support Windows Vista and higher. Besides, both applications now offer several functional enhancements but maintain full compatibility with their predecessor version.

PC-Topp Label Designer

PC-Topp Label Printer

The PC-Topp Label Printer lets administrators view and modify pallet labels from production history in case a pallet label has been damaged or a label’s data needs to be modified.

The application has been refined to no longer block the print server during startup and loads much faster than before.

The Label Printer’s new search function makes it easy to locate all pallet labels printed for any order. Likewise, in the detailed label view (opened by clicking any label in the overview) the pallet label data can be searched by field name and content in an Excel-like interface.

Besides, the Label Printer allows displaying the different label designs to be printed for the selected print job (e.g. additional labels to be printed at first for each pallet or after the printout for all pallets). And what’s more, you can now create pallet label designs including sample data from any existing label.

For better usability some small modifications have been made to the PC-Topp.NET reports.

Easier Access to Personalized Reports

Besides the standard PC-Topp reports, the PC-Topp.NET Statistics page now shows all your personalized reports, too. At the bottom of the toolbox you will find a new section “Personalized” containing your customized reports.

Send Reports by E-Mail

If you need a PC-Topp.NET report outside of PC-Topp or on a different computer you can now easily e-mail it to your own address right from the page that generates the report (instead of downloading it to the workstation’s hard drive).

On the Reports page, below the usual links for print-out or output as an Excel file, additionally a link saying “Send to (user name)” can now be displayed which sends the selected report to the address provided in your PC-Topp.NET user profile.

If you want to use this feature please contact us so we can configure it for you.

The Quality Check Shift Report which used to be available only in the Statistics section of PC‑Topp.NET is now accessible at the Machine Terminal, too. It is displayed in a new sub-tab of the Shift Report tab.

Thus the machine operator can now view information on the results of all quality checks during the current shift right at the machine.

The PC-Topp.NET Messaging app adds the iPhone to the list of options for receiving alert messages from PC-Topp.NET. You can get the app at the Apple App Store

The PC-Topp.NET Messaging system alerts supervisors and managers to production incidents or system events via e-mail or SMS text message. With the PC-Topp.NET Messaging app you can now get those alerts on your iPhone, too.

The app lets you receive information on production events or system incidents on your iPhone in real time. It can alert you to events like downtimes, overruns and quality checks, send status messages or report critical user actions.

You can let the system warn you e.g. if a machine has a breakdown longer than 30 min or you can receive notifications if a quality check has expired, or failed.

A wide range of message triggers is already implemented in the PC-Topp.NET Messaging system (some for free while others require a license) and can be further extended on short notice.

Get the PC-Topp.NET Messaging App at the Apple App Store

For some reasons like very complex product shapes or limited machine capabilities it can be necessary to die-cut orders in two passes. In addition to Second Pass Printing, PC‑Topp now also supports second pass die-cutting.

The necessary data, i.e. cutting die number, location, availability and date of use, can be sent via OTDATA, the extension of the Order Entry / Update screen has to be specifically configured. If you are interested in using this functionality please contact the PC‑Topp Team.

Articles consisting of several parts like e.g. boxes with removable top are produced in several order parts. For better coordination all parts of an order are now displayed in an overview in the General tab at the Machine Terminal as well as in the Order Summary. To make sure the appropriate amount of items is produced for every order part you can now see the number of items produced or scheduled so far for all order parts.

If several orders for the same article run consecutively on a machine there is no set-up time between those orders (as the set-up needs to be done only for the first of those orders). This leads to incorrect goods counts because if the machine runs at full speed while processing those similar orders it is as good as impossible to manually push the Order Change button at the PC‑Topp.NET Machine Terminal at the right moment between orders to properly close them.

Therefore a new option has been implemented in the Machine Terminal section of the PC‑Topp.NET Dataset Parameters which lets you allow the system to do automatic order changes under the following conditions:

• The order has the same spec number as the following one.
• The machine is last in the order's machine sequence.
• The order’s good quantity equals its ordered quantity.

With this feature you can make sure that the number of products for such orders is always correct.

In case you need to modify the quantities of any in such a batch of similar orders you find them in the Orders to Close list in the Palletisation tab.

As of now you can sign in at a machine right at the Multi Machine Terminal without deviation to the Staff Time Registration page.

On the Corrugator Control page the sign in functionality has been added as well (Personnel tab).

For more precise scheduling it is now possible to enter the expected end of current downtimes at the Machine Terminal and Multi Machine Terminal. This automatically corrects the calculation of the end of the current as well as the following orders. As scheduling will adapt accordingly this will make sure that the displayed situation is as accurate as possible.

The PC‑Topp reporting module has been enhanced by a new functionality for group-wide reporting. The system now allows larger enterprises owning several plants, sometimes located in different countries, to analyze all their sites’ performance at a glance with PC-Topp’s group-wide reporting tool.

You can easily compare production key figures of all sites in an enterprise by e.g. grouping them by country and site, or you can create reports comparing the performance of either all conversion machines or similar machines across the group.

The only technical requirements for using group-wide reports are that the same version of PC‑Topp.NET and SQL Server must be installed at all sites as well as stable HTTP or TCP connections to allow access to all PC‑Topp service PCs within the group.

The scope of group-wide reports available under the Group-Wide Reporting license will be extended in the future. Customized reports can be created on demand; please contact us if you want a personalized group-wide report.

Currently available Group-Wide Reports

PC‑Topp’s calculation basis for estimating order end time has been improved. Basically this means that for calculating an order’s speed we have modified how PC‑Topp allows for downtimes during an order’s production.

In the past, the system used to take into account every downtime, regardless of its length, for order end calculation. Therefore long downtimes during an order’s production lead to an unrealistically long expected order duration.

To improve this, the following changes have been made:

• Mini downtimes are always taken into account.
• For all other downtimes a maximum duration can be specified in the DataSet Parameters.
  • Downtimes exceeding this maximum duration are ignored for calculating order end times.
  • For downtimes below the maximum you can specify which type of downtime should be taken into account for calculating order end times (order, machine, or operator related).

(By default, the maximum downtime duration is 30 minutes, and only order related downtimes are taken into account.)

This change helps estimating order end times in a more realistic way.

The PC-Topp statistics page now contains a new report called “Corrugator Production by Board Grade and Roll Size” in the section Corrugator > Production Statistics. This report gives you an overview of the corrugator production of the selected period by flute type, board grade and roll size. The production totals per board grade are broken down by roll size.

The freshly created Events & Actions module is a versatile tool for triggering messages on all kinds of unexpected events or situations needing close control. It is highly customizable and can make information on all sorts of events available via a wide variety of media and devices inside as well as outside PC‑Topp, thereby extending PC-Topp’s informational power beyond the system itself.

From downtime alert e-mails to a supervisor and Twitter threads on quality checks to status messages to Management members’ SmartPhones, everybody in charge can receive real time alerts in his preferred technological environment. This ensures that relevant information is noticed in time.

Monitor All Actions and Events

You can closely cover all sorts of user actions and goings-on in production or in the system itself, whether it is unexpected events in production, situations you want to keep an eye on, or system problems. A wide range of message triggers is already implemented and can be further extended on short notice.

The following types of events are currently available, some for free, while others require an additional license. (For a full list of all supported events and more information on event pricing please read PC-Topp.NET Events & Actions)

• Unexpected or Undesirable Production Events, e.g.
  • Downtimes
  • Excessively long production times or shifts
  • Over- or underrun orders
• Production Events Indicating or Potentially Causing Irregularities, e.g.
  • Use of the “Undo” functionality at the Machine Terminal
  • Manual runs
  • Pending confirmation of the next order
  • Pending or failed quality checks, failed quality checks that nevertheless got backup approval etc.
  • Production material not prepared
• Production Situations or Events Where Extra Attention Is Advisable, e.g.
  • Special or problematic orders (with production control code, internal complaints, …)
  • Password protected actions
• System Related Events and Problems, e.g.
  • System failures (backup failed, terminals off, …)
  • Program Memory full
  • Archiving required

You will find more detailed information on event types and pricing on the following page: PC-Topp.NET Events & Actions

Send Alerts to All Types of Recipients and Media 

Messages can be used very flexibly in a variety of ways to inform certain people or to trigger predefined actions. They can be targeted not only to individual recipients or predefined groups of users or staff members, but also to PC-Topp terminals or even to external services or media.

Or they can trigger actions like setting off devices like alarm lights etc. Currently the following recipient types and target media are supported:

• E-Mail
  You can send messages to
  • Individual e-mail addresses or recipient groups, including all persons signed in at certain machines or machine groups (machine tables)
  • Personnel Numbers
  • PC-Topp Users
  The system allows easily configuring individual messages as well as creating and using your own HTML e-mail templates.
• New (Jan 20, 2011): iPhone Message
  The PC-Topp.NET iPhone app lets you receive information on production events or system incidents on your iPhone in real time. You can get in the Apple App Store.
• SMS Text Messages
  You can also send messages to a mobile number in SMS format (provided you have an e-mail / SMS server). This greatly helps keeping the persons in charge up to date on the current situation in the plant as the recipient isn’t bound to a workstation to stay informed.
• PC-Topp.NET Message
  You can send messages to all PC-Topp.NET users in general or to selected PC-Topp.NET users only.
• Publish in Twitter or in an RSS Feed
  Twittering messages or publishing them in an RSS feed is an interesting way of distributing information beyond the limits of the system to make it available to many people without having to target them individually.
• Log File Entry
  Another possibility is to have a log file entry written as soon as an event is triggered, thereby creating a history of events.
• FTP Upload
  You can also trigger a file upload to a server via FTP with an event.
• Set Off Alarm Device
  It is even possible to make an event message trigger a visual alarm by setting off a police light, e.g. to alert personnel present on the shop floor to downtimes etc.

On demand, new events can be easily and rapidly implemented at little additional cost to meet each customer’s individual needs.

If you are interested in using Events & Actions please don’t hesitate to get in touch with us.

If a corrugated plant produces orders with more colors than its conversion machines can print at a time those orders have to be printed in two passes.

PC‑Topp.NET Conversion Scheduling now better supports this way of production by displaying the colors for each printing step of an order. The colors appear in one line per printing pass, those for the current production step in black, the others grayed out. A tooltip shows the full color name.

Let PC‑Topp.NET help you to improve production flow in conversion by ensuring that materials required for production on the machines are available on time. The new Material Preparation Terminal is a valuable instrument for avoiding machine downtime in conversion due to missing materials.

At the new terminal the status of the materials required for all scheduled orders is displayed with colored dots. The personnel responsible for readying inks, dies, pallets etc. can see at any time whether everything is prepared for producing an order and, if not, what is still missing.

The items to be prepared can be individually configured; the available options are:

Color Coded Preparation Status

Unprepared items appear as white dots (). After having prepared an item for an order the person in charge clicks this item’s status dot to change it to “ready” (). In case it isn’t available (due to damage, insufficient stock etc.) he can set its status to “not ready” ().

The overall preparation status of an order only changes to “ready” if all individual items required for an order are marked “ready”. As long as the materials for the order are only partially prepared (e.g. the inks and the dies are ready but the pallets aren’t) the order’s overall status remains yellow (), indicating that the preparation has begun but isn’t finished yet.

If the mouse is moved over the overall status indicator for an order’s machine or for the order itself the status details of all required materials are shown in a tooltip. Thus it is easy to keep track of an order’s overall preparation status and to check what is still missing.

(Orders with nothing to prepare are marked with .)

Customizable View

By default the orders are shown by start time so the ones that have be prepared next are always on top. Thus the person in charge can always make sure he doesn’t overlook imminent orders which are not yet completely prepared. But if he wants to prepare the materials for all orders scheduled on a specific machine he can switch the view to display just this machine.

Print Out Material Preparation List

Staff members responsible for readying production materials can’t always stay within eyeshot of the Material Preparation Terminal. They can export the list of orders to prepare in PDF format for printout so they can take the materal preparation list along.

There is a new link in the PC-Topp.NET Conversion Machine Scheduling page toolbox that lets you print out several job cards at once in PDF format. You just need to select the orders you want to print out (via the checkbox) and then click “Print Job Card”. This feature is very useful for planners because they can print out the job cards for the program of the day in just one step.

There are new options for configuring the Production Today section in My PC-Topp available that are interesting in plants with more than one corrugator. The configuration page (reachable via the Configuration link in the lower right of the Home page and the Corrugator menu page) lets you select whether the production figures should be displayed:

1. For Each Individual Corrugator
   One line per corrugator, new default setting.
2. Totaled for All Corrugators
   One line summing up all corrugators, old default setting.
3. For Each Individual Corrugator and Totaled for All Corrugators
   One line per corrugator plus one totals line.

Following a prompt from a customer, we have created an alternate path to attach special instructions to each production step of an order.

In addition to the comments fields available in the order and in the order data transfer, you can now attach a Production Control Code to each operation (machine) of an order. That code then makes a predefined text message appear in the order, on the Job Card, in conversion machine planning and of course at the Machine Terminal.

Examples of such predefined messages would be “FOUR COLOR PRINT” or “RE-WORK AFTER CUSTOMER COMPLAINT” and similar messages for situations that occur again and again.

The instruction messages and associated Production Control Codes can be pre-defined in a corresponding table found in Settings where it is also possible to print a summary of all Production Control Codes and their meaning.

Order specific quality checks at the PC-Topp.NET Machine Terminal are a powerful instrument for making sure that your products conform to the given quality standards. They are highly configurable and can be adapted exactly to your needs. A quality check’s execution is defined by its content (e.g. ink viscosity, bar code, caliper,…) as well as by the following factors:

• Interval of execution Quality checks are executed periodically; the intervals between the quality checks can be defined very flexibly, e.g. every 15 minutes, every third run, after every order etc.
  • New: Quality Check at Shift Start
    Forces the user to execute the quality check by blocking every other action until the check is done.
• Conditions of execution
  Quality checks can be restricted by specific conditions. Currently, PC‑Topp.NET supports the following conditions four of which have been newly added:
  • New: Customer Name
    Applies to orders for the specified customer.
    (Please note that even slight spelling differences like e.g. Universal Plant vs. UNIVERSAL PLANT can cause errors.)
  • New: Customer Number
    Applies to orders for the specified customer number.
  • Extra Customer Info
    Applies to orders by customers marked for the Extra Customer Info functionality.
  • First Run
    Applies to orders resp. articles that run for the first time.
  • New: Next Machine
    Applies if the next machine of this order is the given one.
  • Last Machine
    Applies if the current machine is the last before Shipping in the current order’s machine routing, i.e. for finished goods orders.
  • Die Cut
    Applies to orders that are die cut on the current machine.
  • New: Scores
    Applies if the order has either corrugator or conversion scores.
  • Print
    Applies to orders that are printed on the current machine.
  • Preprint
    Applies to orders that are produced with preprinted liner.
  • Customer Complaint
    Applies to orders for which a customer complaint has been entered.
  • Article Number
    Applies to orders with the specified article number.
  • Rework
    Applies to orders returned by the customer that have to be rerun.
  • Number of Printing Colors
    You can define a number of printing colors and an operator (EQUAL, NOT EQUAL, LARGER THAN, LESS THAN).
    Applies if the number of printing colors in the current order equals the predefined number of colors and if the predefined operator applies.
  • Color and Print Unit
    You can define a color and the position of the color resp. print unit in the printing sequence.
    Applies if the predefined print unit contains the predefined color, e.g. if color no. 3 is black.

The Products section of our homepage provides more in-depth information on the PC-Topp.NET quality checks

If you would like us to implement specific quality checks for you please contact us: Our Contact Page

So far you could exchange or remove a machine in an order’s machine sequence in PC-Topp even when this order was already scheduled on the machine in question.

Modifying the machine that an order is currently running on in this order’s machine routing leads to unexpected effects at the Machine Terminal in question. Therefore as of now you can only change a machine in an order’s machine routing if the order does not currently run on this machine.

This means that the machine routing of orders which are displayed on a blue background in the PC-Topp order lists (= scheduled in the past on the machine in question) can’t be modified or deleted any longer.

Running the archiving procedure for PC-Topp statistics interferes with other PC-Topp modules accessing statistics. Most importantly, the archiving process impairs the PC-Topp.NET Machine Terminal functionality. Besides, when using the classical program for editing and printing production statistics PC-Topp users are forced to interrupt their work while archiving runs.

To avoid such disturbances a new automatic archiving mode has been implemented that can be configured in the PC-Topp Communications Control.

Statistics auto archiving can be set to run on a specific day of the week. Ideally you would configure the auto archiving procedure to run on days with minimum activity in the plant when nobody is disturbed by it.

(Consequently, in the classical program for editing and printing production statistics the PC-Topp users won’t be bothered by the blue info screen any more.)

If an unspecified downtime with a certain duration (no mini downtime) has been recorded at the PC-Topp.NET Machine Terminal the system prompts the user to enter a downtime cause by showing the downtime start and end on the Downtime button in the lower right corner of the terminal interface. So far the operator was reminded of missing downtime causes only for the last recorded downtime. (The causes for all earlier downtimes in the shift had to be entered via the Shift tab.)

As of now, PC-Topp.NET asks the user to assign reasons to all unspecified downtimes during the current shift, i.e. starting from the last downtime, all downtimes without cause are presented. When the operator has entered a cause for the downtime currently displayed in the button the next downtime in the queue is shown.

The new Quality Check Shift Report shows all quality checks done during the selected shift(s). For each order all quality checks are listed with execution time(s), results and the responsible crew member. If a quality check has expired or failed it is color highlighted.

Additionally, the Quality Check Shift Report contains a shift summary with the attendance times of the crew members, the number of quality checks per crew member, and an overview of this shift’s passed, failed, and expired quality checks.

PC-Topp customers who manually enter new orders into the system (instead of using the automatic order transfer from the host) will find this new feature convenient.

If you have new orders for standard American type (FEFCO type 201) boxes you needn’t input all data by hand any more. If you enter the inner box dimensions PC-Topp can now automatically calculate the following values from them:

• Sheet format
• Corrugator scores
• Conversion scores
• Box type

If you enter the internal box dimensions via the “Input Box Size” dialog in the Order Input / Update screen and press Alt-E the above values automatically appear on screen:

This new functionality saves work and prevents input errors that inevitably occur when order data are keyed in manually. If you are interested in using it please contact us:

http://www.pctopp.com/en/about_us/contact.mspx

You can now adapt the columns displayed in the PC-Topp.NET Machine Terminal, the Multi-Machine Terminal, and the Machine View to your individual needs and preferences.

• Machine Terminal
  The machine schedule at the Machine Terminal allows you to insert as many columns as you like in which you can display any desired content, be it order fields, personalized fields or even information provided by external data sources. You can arrange the columns in your preferred sequence and width; the number of possible columns is only restricted by the screen size. Besides, you can also modify the font size and type of the "Due", "Order" and "Available" columns to make them more easily readable.
• Machine View
  The new display options apply to the Machine View, too. The Machine View lets you create your own individual information board by inserting any number of columns (i.e. as many columns as the page width allows) in the machine schedules. And you can personalize those columns in the same way as at the Machine Terminal.
• Multi-Machine Terminal
  Here only the width of all columns can be customized.

If you are interested in using this option please contact us so we can make the necessary changes:
http://www.pctopp.com/en/about_us/contact.mspx

The file upload functionality in Extra Customer Information has been implemented for article codes, too. So now in the Article settings page you can attach a virtually unlimited amount of article specific details in textual as well as graphical form (ideally in PDF format) to any article code by uploading a file for this article.

This document is then automatically made available at the PC‑Topp.NET Machine Terminal (in the comments section of the General tab) whenever this article is produced. This feature provides the operator with much more article specific information than the system could store so far, helping him to ensure optimal production.

Besides, the article specific file can be accessed in the Order Summary, too.

The End Shift dialog for closing a shift at the Machine Terminal or the Multi-Machine Terminal now contains a new checkbox saying "All Personnel Will Leave". This new feature permits signing out all staff signed in at this machine during the current shift at once.

This has some advantages:

• The machine operator who often does the signing out for the whole crew needn’t sign out every single crew member individually.
• The sign out times for all personnel at this machine during the current shift are unified and they are identical to the shift end time. So you can make both shift end and personnel sign out happen at a specific point of time, e.g. 17:00, instead of having everybody sign out between e.g. 16:57 and 16:59 and then closing the shift at 17:00.

The feature has to be activated via a special data set parameter. When available it is switched off by default so if you want to use it you have to switch it on by clicking the checkbox.

On a small scale, the former PC-Topp.NET Flop Ten functionality already allowed storing and displaying short texts on customer particularities. This basic feature has been renamed to Extra Customer Info and extended so that one PDF file per customer can be accessed directly in PC-Topp.NET. This lets you store much more customer information than before because a PDF file can contain any amount of text as well as images.

Besides PDF files the functionality also supports text documents of all file types and graphics file formats. (The files must be stored in a dedicated folder on your network. Additionally, the customer with whom the document is to be associated must be entered in the Extra Customer Info list that you can access via “Settings“.)

The documents associated with a customer will be displayed in all places where PC-Topp.NET shows Extra Customer Info (ex Flop Ten) texts. Currently they are accessible via the General tab of the PC-Topp.NET Machine Terminal. If there is a document available for the customer whose order is currently running a PDF icon is displayed in "Instructions & Comments" next to the Flop Ten image. Clicking the PDF icon opens the document. In the future links to customer specific documents will be provided in the other PC-Topp.NET pages displaying Extra Customer Info texts, too.

There is a new link in the PC-Topp.NET Waste Reasons page toolbox that lets you print out all detailed waste reasons in PDF format.

The PDF file contains code, name and position of all waste reasons, ranged by group like on the web page.

On the PC-Topp.NET Articles page a PDF report showing all article comments has been added. You can create it by clicking the toolbox link “Overview of All Article Comments”.

It lists only those articles that have a comment and helps you to quickly spot and sort out unwanted article comments.

In March 2010 Microsoft will release a Windows update including a browser choice screen that asks you to select your preferred web browser. (Microsoft does so to comply with the settlement with the EU in autumn 2009.) When that Windows update is run on your computer this is what you will see. (Click to enlarge.)

Screen 1	Screen 2

PC-Topp.NET is designed exclusively for Internet Explorer (version 7 or higher) and is not supported under any other browser.

Selecting a standard browser other than Internet Explorer will start PC-Topp.NET in an unsupported browser. This will lead to serious malfunction of PC-Topp.NET!

Therefore we strongly recommend not to select a browser in the browser choice screen but to inform your system administrator!

It might even be advisable for him to disable the browser choice screen altogether.

How to Block the Browser Choice Screen (Microsoft Education Partner Network)

PC‑Topp now supports information on stereo and tool location. Location data for two stereos and one tool can be sent to PC‑Topp via the new location field that has been added to the order data and OTDATA interface.

Likewise the stereo / tool availability module including the AVDATA interface allows specifying the location of stereo and tool numbers. If the location information is not specified in the stereo / tool availability module or AVDATA interface, this is ignored in order to not erase any existing information about location in particular orders.

(The stereo and tool location feature used to be available only as a personalized option; it has now become a standard PC‑Topp functionality.)

In the near future the location data will be displayed in the PC‑Topp Order Summary and the Job Card, the Conversion Machine Schedule, the Machine Terminal, and the ink, stereo and tool requirements lists.

There are two ways to create this report:

• Order Data Transfer Information by Category During Default Period of Time
  On the Order Transfer page you can click the PDF icon in the header of each category (new, updated, deleted errors) to create a report with the order transfers in just this category during the period of time displayed on the page (14 days by default; longer periods can be set on request). 
  
• Free Choice of Category and Period of Time of Order Data Transfer Information
  
  Clicking the “Order Data Transfer History” link in the bottom of the Order Transfer page will open a new page that offers further options for customizing the report. You can select
  
  
  • Whether you want to output all or just selected categories of order transfers,
  • The period of time the Order Data Transfer Report should cover.

• Production History Data
  PC-Topp uses production history data for calculating article specific speed and waste under the following conditions:
  • In the Article Configuration the article history is enabled,
  • There is production history data available for this article,
  • There are no article specific settings.
  Using history data for calculating the orders’ speed and target quantity offers significant advantages:
  • Differences in the production of individual articles are allowed for.
  • Corrugator Scheduling gets more precise because it can take real production data into account.
• Article Specific Settings
  If there is no history data available for the article PC-Topp checks whether this option is set. It can be used for difficult articles to enter speed and waste figures derived from practical experience.
• Machine Specific Settings
  If there are neither history data nor article specific settings for the article then PC-Topp falls back on the machine specific settings. (Machine specific  waste is defined under “Calculation of Target Quantity” on the Machine Settings page.)

As of now any application that can access the PC-Topp SQL Server database can print bar codes. The first example of this new option is the new PC-Topp.NET corrugator material list. It is now available as a Crystal report in a standard as well as a personalized version that supports bar codes.

The new material list displays the actual program sequence, i.e. the sequence at the corrugator (not the sequence in Program Memory). Much like the classical material list but in a clearer structure, both versions of the PDF material list show

• The required quantities per program and paper code in meters and kilograms, organized by outside liner resp. single facer,
• The total quantity to produce per flute type,
• The roll size distribution per paper.

If subsequent programs require the same paper and roll size on the same single facer then the required quantity for this paper code is totalled in the first program where this paper is used.

Additionally, the personalized extended version of the new material list supports paper bar codes for reading with a bar code scanner. The paper bar codes are displayed next to the respective paper codes in a large font size so they are easily scannable with a pistol bar code reader.

The Personnel tab of the PC-Topp.NET Machine Terminal has been equipped with the password-protected possibility to sign in as an engineer (provided the user is marked as engineer in the Personnel Numbers page).

With this new functionality, an engineer can leave comments on the problems he has attended to that will be displayed in the shift report. Besides he can make sure that the time spent fixing a problem will be registered as such.

The dialog for entering comments on articles available in the General Tab of the Machine Terminal has been enhanced to allow entering more than just article comments. It now offers the following options:

• Article Comment
  As before, comments are saved for the article in question and will be displayed at each run of this article.
• New: Production Comment
  Comments are saved in the statistics for this order and will be displayed in the shift report.
• New: Internal Complaints
  Internal complaint comments are saved in the statistics along with their complaint cause and will be displayed in the Internal Complaints report. (This comment type only is available if there is at least one internal complaint defined in the Downtime Causes page.)

The Article Performance Report which used to be available only for the conversion machines has now been released for the corrugator(s), too.

As its conversion machine counterpart, the report lists orders by article. It shows information on produced vs. waste quantity, production time, speed, and trim for the individual orders as well as the totals of the article they belong to. (Partial runs are greyed out.)

The PC-Topp.NET backup functionality now better ensures that in case of data loss there is a current backup available.

• If a backup has failed a warning message is displayed throughout the system.
• The system checks for the last successful backup and, if necessary, prompts the user to run backup more often.

As of now PC-Topp lets you define default reasons for downtimes and waste. This feature prevents unaccounted-for downtimes and waste in the statistics. (You have to use the Detailed Waste functionality for this feature to be available for waste.)

In the Waste Reasons page and the Downtime Causes page there is a new option to mark the default reason in the detailed view of each waste reason resp. downtime cause. If this is checked the default reason is marked with an asterisk in the overview. Setting a default reason has the following effects:

• Default Waste Reason
  If Detailed Waste Entry is enabled and a default waste reason is defined PC-Topp automatically assigns this default waste reason for waste quantities below a certain customizable limit.
• Default Downtime Cause
  All downtimes the user doesn’t specify a cause for are automatically assigned the default downtime cause.

So far the PC-Topp Machine Terminal has warned the operator with a message in the toolbox if the ordered quantity of the current order is exceeded.

Additionally the Machine Terminal now also displays an alert in the toolbox if according to the machine counter more has been produced than fed into the machine (i.e. if  for the current order the produced quantity is larger than the quantity available from the previous machine).

The new PC-Topp.NET Machine Terminal succeeds the PC-Topp Machine Terminal that still ran with legacy PC-Topp components in the background.

The PC-Topp.NET Machine Terminal is entirely free of any classical PC-Topp Windows programs. It has been designed to provide the full functionality of the old PC-Topp Machine Terminal plus many extra features.

• Palletisation Module Integrated into the Machine Terminal
  • Allows printing pallet labels with the correct quantity of products per pallet right at the machine.
  • The quantity on each pallet can be entered / modified individually; likewise pallet labels can be printed for each individual pallet.
  • PC-Topp.NET assigns SSCC numbers to all pallets und stores pallet information for use by a warehouse system.
• Fast Order Finishing
  • Smoother production flow thanks to the possibility to finish an order with one click instead of entering all its production data. The next order can be started immediately.
  • Orders finished with this one-click option are collected in a list to be closed for good when the machine operator has time to spare. He can then modify quantities, times and waste if necessary.
  • If the correct quantity on the last pallet is entered palletisation is updated right away and a correct label is printed for this pallet.
• More Precise Machine Schedule Due to Entry of Waste and Stock Quantities During Run
  • Entering waste quantities and quantities added from or transferred to stock during production allows correct calculation of order end times. The following orders’ start times are adapted so the machine schedule is closer to reality.
• New Counter Software Helps Keep Production Data Up to Date Even Without Server Connection
  • Thanks to a locally installed counter module production machine speed and downtimes are recorded even when the Machine Terminal web page is closed or the PC-Topp server is offline. (Order changes can’t be recorded without server connection, though.)
  • As soon as the communication with the server is re-established downtimes are recorded subsequently and statistics and performance graphs are updated.
• Innovative Quality Checks
  • In contrast to the predefined and limited classical quality checks the new quality checks can be defined in any desired number.
  • They are fully customizable and can be defined to exactly meet your needs.
• Extensive Shift Information Available at the Machine
  • For the current as well as for any past shift performance figures, key shift and performance data and the shift report are accessible in the Shift tab of the Machine Terminal.
  • Downtimes can be modified, order comments can be entered.
• Display of Article Comments, Flop Ten Alerts, Internal Complaints at the Machine
  • The General tab lets you enter article related comments that will be displayed at the Machine Terminal whenever an order with the same article number is run.
  • Likewise, the Machine Terminal displays information on Flop Ten customers and internal complaints in the General tab so the machine operator immediately sees them.
• Improved Staff Time Registration
  • The functionality for signing in / out at the machine has been brushed up and shows an overview of the personnel who have signed in at the machine during the current shift along with their times of presence.
• Send Messages to Any PC-Topp User or Machine Terminal
  • The Machine Terminal allows sending messages to any PC Topp user or other Machine Terminal. Incoming messages are shown in the toolbox so the operator can’t overlook them.
• Use the PC-Topp.NET Machine Terminal with a Touch-Screen
  • If the Machine Terminal is run on a touch sensitive screen all interaction can be done with a tap of a fingertip which makes using the Machine Terminal much easier and more direct.
  • All page elements are extra large for good readability and usability.

In the Plant Summary the performance column of the machines can now be switched to displaying the number of quality checks run during the respective shifts (total number of quality checks as well as number of failed and expired quality checks).

Besides an icon in the upper right corner of the machine boxes indicates if there have been any overly long set-ups or downtimes. A tooltip informs on the details.

Some plants bundle orders that consist of the same article into one large parent order that is split up into several successor orders for further conversion (e.g. customer specific printing etc). A new option has been added to the Machine Settings that allows treating pallets for orders that are the parent order of an order web and run on this machine as the last operation before the successor as external pallets on this machine. 

A new column has been added to the Waste Terminal interface that optionally displays either the number of sheets or cuts per order.

Moreover there is a new marker for orders whose pallet labels are already printed.

PC-Topp has been equipped with the ability to trigger all kinds of actions relating to providing production information and dealing with production incidents, from interfacing with external information devices to forced machine stops.

For example, PC-Topp now supports external display devices for production information like large scale display panels for permanently up-to-date production data as well as warning lights (e.g. for downtime alerts on the shop floor). This opens a wide range of potentially interesting uses.

Update April 7, 2011:

• As of now, this feature is available exclusively as a part of the new PC-Topp.NET Event Messaging System.
• Now up to three devices (e.g. police lights mounted in different positions on the shop floor) can be switched on and off simultaneously if an event occurs. (Using this feature of course requires adequate hardware, i.e. a USB Switch3.)

PC-Topp now makes a great scope of data on order changes available for customized use as well as in the standard PC-Topp.NET version.

The PC-Topp.NET job card lets you track any modifications made to the order in question with ease: The Order Change History section shows all changes in detail.

Moreover, under Order History you will find a list of all orders consisting of the same article as the order in question.

If an article is run for the first time on a machine (First Run) the PC-Topp Machine Terminal can show an alert and a user-defined message asking for extra attention. The PDF conversion machine schedule for print-out now contains this information on First Run orders, too.

Besides, if a tool or a stereo is unavailable for an order in the printable PDF conversion machine schedule this order is marked with a color-coded dot like on the Conversion Machine Scheduling page.

Now the PC-Topp.NET Palletisation Terminal lets you re-label already produced pallets without losing their SSCC number. This is useful if you want to produce orders that first go to stock and are later split up among several customers. The original SSCC number is retained so the system doesn't lose track of those re-labelled pallets.

The slider for marking the number of days with medium resp. low priority orders to take into account in Automatic Optimisation now has two additional markers showing the number of days preset for the flute type in question in the Optimisation Parameters.

Moreover, if you change the slider settings to override the Optimisation Parameter settings the system will remember them for 5 minutes.

If you open a linked order's Order Summary in PC-Topp.NET now its position in the order web is made clearer and the production status of all orders of the order web is displayed.

Besides personalized order information (order.isc fields) can be fully displayed by double-clicking the personalized order information section.

The PCTopp.NET Machine Settings page now offers the new machine types "To Stock", "From Stock", "Predecessor" and "Successor". 

(So far the conversion steps "To / From Stock" (for orders with sheets / products taken from or going to stock instead of a preceding or next machine) as well as "Predecessor" and "Successor" (for linked orders) could only be modelled with the help of a workaround: The machine types "NIL Corrugator" and "Shipping" represented them in PC-Topp.)

The calculation of order duration in PC-Topp has been significantly enhanced. The system can now use the statistics data of an article's production history to calculate the production time of orders for this article more precisely.

For any article you can define if its set-up speed, production speed, and target speed should be either of the following:

• The speed settings of the machine(s) the article will run on
• The statistics data of the article's production history
  You can define in detail
  
  • if the article history data should be used for all articles with valid data or for just a selection of articles,
  • conditions for the validity of the article history data (maximum number of days in the past, minmum number of runs)
    
• A user defined speed
  

You will find more details here: PC-Topp Products: Multi-Machine Terminal

The Statistics section in PC-Topp.NET has been thoroughly revised and reorganised to make the PC-Topp reports more accessible. At the core of new structure is the new Statistics page which presents all production reports available in PC-Topp in a clearly organised list view.

In this list view, thumbnails and short descriptions let you easily identify any report. If a report is available as a modern PDF Crystal report as well as in classical form the classical version appears to the right of the PDF report.

For quick access to your favorite reports you can mark any report so it appears in the My Reports & Frequently Used Reports section in the top of the Toolbox where the reports you use most are shown as well. A quick selection feature offers one-click access to reports covering typical periods like the last week or month.

For better overview, the reports are grouped by the following categories:

• Plant lists all reports containing data of corrugator and conversion machines,
• Corrugator is for corrugator specific reports,
• Conversion is for conversion specific reports.

These categories are further subdivided into gruops like Shift Reports, Production Summaries, Performance etc. to make it easier to find individual reports.

The last category Others contains reports on order backlog and material requirements.

• The Shift Report tab now shows performance data for shift and current order.
• Downtime reasons and times can be modified in the PC-Topp Machine Terminal as well (so far only possible in the classical Machine Terminal).
• A flashing red icon in the tab navigation informs on order comments for conversion and pending quality checks.

A new PC-Topp.NET page allows defining pallet types available for selection in palletisation as an alternative to pre-defined pallet types.

PC-Topp.NET offers several new tools for measuring efficiency in production based on the concept of Overall Equipment Efficiency (OEE). OEE is commonly used as a key performance indicator in industrial manufacturing processes. 

Overall Equipment Efficiency

OEE essentially is the ratio of actual productive time to planned production time.
It is calculated as the product of

•  Availability
  Takes into account downtime loss. Calculated as the ratio of run hours to work hours.
• Performance
  Takes into account speed loss. Calculated as the ratio of actual run speed to target speed.
• Quality
  Takes into account quality loss. Calculated as the ratio of good produced quantity to total produced quantity. 

The OEE indicator offers an excellent way to monitor and improve the efficiency of your manufacturing process. (For more details on OEE please see http://www.oee.com) 

PC-Topp.NET Overall Equipment Efficiency Reports

There are two new reports available in the PC-Topp.NET Statistics which let you quickly assess the productivity of your corrugator and your conversion machines respectively.

They offer production and performance figures for each day, week or month of the selected period, plus totals, and an OEE evaluation.

Additionally, the Overall Efficiency Report for the conversion machines contains charts that let you evaluate each of the individual OEE factors and the overall OEE at a glance.

OEE Indicators in the Small Plant Overview 

The small Plant overview in the My PC-Topp area on the main menu page now includes a new view (no. 6) providing quick access to the OEE values of the current shift for all your machines.

The Plant Performance Report gives a comprehensive overview of production key figures for all machines including the corrugator(s) within a selectable period. As of now the Plant Performance page generates the report as a PDF file embedded in the page. This makes the report easier to use outside of PC-Topp (e.g. for print-out or emailing).

Waste at the machine occurs in three distinct locations:

• Before the machine
• During set-up
• During production

Waste entry in the PC-Topp Machine Terminal is done in separate fields to reflect those locations.

Those waste quantities can be further subdivided by defining detailed waste reasons in the PC-Topp Settings. An example would be:

In the Detailed Waste Report, the waste is then shown in detail, along with totals for each location.

If you have already been doing detailed waste entry using the old personalized module, please contact us so we can switch your plant to the new functionality.

A more detailed explanation how to enable and use the detailed waste reasons in PC-Topp.NET can be found here:

Detailed Waste Reasons in PC-Topp.NET

The PC-Topp Corrugator Scheduling page looks a little different now: Next to each grade there appears a percentage plus two new buttons.

A closer look reveals that the percentage equals the trim result of Optimisation, provided the automatically preselected orders are left unchanged. In effect, PC-Topp tells you up front what result Optimisation will show:

	Good results are shown on a green background.
	Bad results appear red.

The primary interest for the planner is that he can concentrate on the difficult grades, i.e. the bad results, from the start. Once those grades are done, the remaining ones will be easy.

In effect, if he wants to, the planner can use the arrow button next to a good result to transfer it to Program Memory without going through Optimisation. And if he is happy with all remaining results, he can transfer them all at once by clicking on the arrow button on the top of the page.

The pre-calculated results use the white must orders and blue optional orders of the days preset for the grade's flute type in the Optimisation Parameters page (in the Settings menu). Manual changes of the preset number of days with blue orders (with the slider) are taken into account by the pre-optimisation. But you have to press the Recalculate button to see how this will affect trim.

Red icons appearing in front of the optimisation result warn you if any of the orders selected for optimisation have been ignored or only partially scheduled.

	The optimisation result will lead to leftover medium priority orders.
	The optimisation result contains partially scheduled low priority orders.

Whenever the orders of a grade change, the pre-optimisation automatically reassesses the situation and displays a new result. In particular, this can mean that - when you use upgrades to solve a problem on one (red) grade, a previously green result will turn red. (Grey results show that PC-Topp is aware that the previously calculated result must change, but a new result hasn't been calculated yet.)

A new PC-Topp report is now available which lets you assess at a glance the quantity of finished goods and waste per order within a given period of time.

The report lists all orders produced within the selected date range and shows

• the number of ordered and scheduled products per order,
• the number of produced sheets vs. good sheets on the corrugator,
• the number of good products per order and machine along with the percentage of waste occurred on this machine,
• the total quantity and waste percentage for each order covering all machines it ran on,
• the totals for the selected time span.

The report allows you to quickly scan all orders produced and pinpoint orders with excessive waste, and then to analyze on what machine the waste occurred.

From the beginning, PC-Topp has been able to show a one-character field next to the due date, the so-called Date Code, to let users know whether the due date was meant as "exactly on that date", or "earliest" or "latest", to name just a few.

In most plants, that feature remained unused, and in plants where the host system did send data in that field only few people, if any, understood the meaning of the letters appearing next to the due dates.

PC-Topp now offers a table in which the meaning of each code in use can be explained. The corresponding note appears in the Order Summary below the due date.

On the Corrugator Scheduling page, the first column in front of today's orders shows programs waiting in Program Memory (usually in 1000 m²) for the corresponding grade. A dark yellow background indicates that those programs already have a starting time and program number, while a lighter background shows new schedules that are not tied and numbered yet.

A click on that field shows details on those schedules, and lets you recall some or all of them. (Of course, care must be taken not to recall schedules where production is imminent or has already started.

When a grade you are about to schedule shows such a number, then recalling the existing schedules and doing optimisation for all orders together will give a better overall result in most cases. After a recall, the pre-calculated result will change after a short time to reflect the changed situation.

The listings of PC-Topp Paper Codes and Board Grades are now available as PDF files in the new design of all PC-Topp Crystal reports, or can be downloaded as Excel files. The new output formats offer several advantages: The PDF documents are more nicely formatted and yield A4-sized, easy to read print-outs compared to their classical predecessors. They appear on-screen first and can be sent to the printer only if a hard copy is needed. The PDFs and Excel files can be emailed or stored on your hard disc for further use. The Excel files can be used for importing data to other applications, e.g. databases or word-processing programs.

Step by step, all parameter listings will become available as PDF and Excel files, thus eliminating the need for printing through the classical PC-Topp modules.

The downtime causes defined in PC-Topp have different effects on the calculation of times in the PC-Topp production statistics.

These effects are best explained by taking a look at the basic hierarchical concept for calculating production times in PC-Topp.

The following diagrams illustrate how the PC-Topp times are based on each other.

Focus on Stopped Time and Machine Productive Time

Here the PC-Topp times are visualized by stripping away one after the other of the different stopped times from the machine’s available time. The final result is the time during which the machine actually produces goods.

 Focus on Downtimes during Run and Set-Up

Downtimes can occur during set-up and run. Therefore in this diagram the Work Hours are divided into Run Hours and Set-Up Hours which are again subdivided into Net Set-Up and Run Hours vs. Down Hours during Set-Up and Run.

This is necessary to determine the time during which the machine actually runs without interruption by downtimes. Of course the Down Hours during Set-Up and Run equal the Down Hours in the above chart.

The above times are the basis for calculating speeds in PC‑Topp: The Run Hours can serve as a reference value for estimating the Planning Speed (used to compute how long an order will run). Speeds calculated using the Net Run Hours offer a guideline for a realistic machine Target Speed.

Board Grade and Trim Statistics

The Crystal report “Board Grade and Trim Statistics” lists production data on board grades by flute type. It shows production totals as well trim and average roll size within the selected date range for each grade, flute type, and roll size.

Separate summaries by flute type and roll size are additionally illustrated by pie charts.

The new report doesn’t show upgrade cost, like the classical report does. For analyzing upgrades, a new report will be available allowing more detailed analysis.

Corrugator Production by Day

This report shows production totals separate by shift for each day in the month (or other selected periods).

Corrugator Speed by Flute Type

The reports starts with a graphical view of day by day production speed for each flute type for a month, following by the underlying figures for each day.

The palletisation functionality available in the PC-Topp Machine Terminal is now also available as an independent new PC Topp Terminal.

The PC-Topp Palletisation Terminal is designed for the following purposes:

• Re-printing a label that has been damaged or lost
• To correct palletisation information and print new labels when palettisation was changed.
• To print labels at a central location, for machines with no terminal or where the label printer has failed.

The Palettisation Terminal is available as a stand-alone station, or can be reached from the PC-Topp Supervisor Terminal.

Operation is straightforward: You type in the order number, and identify whether you want shipping labels (by selecting the last operation) or internal labels (by selecting the corresponding operation). The terminal then shows the palettisation in the screen known from the Machine Terminal, offering all functionality like changing pallet information, or printing selected labels, or all labels for the order at a time.

Paper Requirements by Roll Size and Week

The new Crystal report “Paper Requirements by Roll Size and Week” substitutes the classical report “Paper Requirements by Weeks”. It calculates the amount of paper required to produce all orders remaining to be scheduled on the corrugator.

The Crystal paper requirements report offers more reliable forecasts because it takes into account paper consumption data of the past: The distribution of the required amount of a particular paper over the different roll sizes is now based on the data of the same week in the previous year, in order to correctly reflect seasonal influences. (If there is no data available for that week in the previous year, then the last three months are taken as calculation base.)

Paper Consumption by Roll Size

The second new Crystal report "Paper Consumption by Rollsize" takes the place of the classical "Paper Consumption List".

Like the classical report it lists the consumption figures during a selectable period of the past for all papers, as well as their distribution over the available roll sizes. What is new is the nicer and clearer layout plus the fact that, like all Crystal reports, the report can easily be emailed as it is provided as a PDF.

PC-Topp.NET now offers a growing number of reports in a new style, as Crystal reports. They take the place of existing classical reports, or offer new information, both in a modern and fresh design.

The new reports can be identified by a PDF icon in PC-Topp.NET. Clicking on such a link generates an Adobe Acrobat PDF document that appears on the screen almost instantly, no more long waits required. You can already find them in several PC Topp.NET pages, their cover settings, production reports and schedule printouts.

Many reports are not really needed on paper; the PDF format allows easy on-screen viewing, or to save the report to a file that can easily be emailed. If a printed report is required, the PDF can be sent to any local or network printer. Many reports can also be downloaded as Excel spreadsheets, for further analysis or external use of the data.

Great care has been taken to make the new reports compatible to the existing classical reports: They will contain the same data, and deliver identical results. Many reports will contain additional information compared to their ancestors, and all are presented in color, well structured and easy to read. Footnotes appear on many reports explaining values that are not instantly understood.

The scope of available reports will steadily grow in the near future. They will open up further valuable new sources of information for planning, production and management.

PC-Topp.NET prints pallet labels in real time at the machine: Ideally, the person at palletisation will find just one label in the printer when he needs it, the label for the pallet he is just finishing. This is ensured by printing the label when the pallet is half full (or alternatively at the beginning or at the end of the pallet).

This gets desynchronized by waste during production: The counter shows the pallet as half full, but in fact that quantity is not reached yet. Small differences are not a problem, but when the waste goes near the quantity on a pallet the user will find two labels in the printer, the right label and – on top of it - the label for the next pallet. Of course, this can lead to errors.

Therefore, we created buttons to enter waste during production to re-synchronize the label printing in such a case. And while we were at it, we added a few more buttons, to make the solution complete.

Set-Up Waste

Sheets used during set-up are usually waste, and the terminal can be configured to count set-up waste automatically (the number can be corrected manually during or after set-up). Set-up waste is entered in sheets (and not in finished goods, e.g. on a die-cutter).

Production Waste

Waste occurring after set-up is entered as the number of faulty products taken out before palletisation.

Waste Before the Machine

Sheets sorted out before feeding them into the machine have no influence on label printing synchronisation. But if a high quantity must be sorted out, then PC-Topp's estimated ending time should be adjusted. To do so, enter the waste before the machine using the corresponding button (quantity is entered in sheets).

Sheets From / to Stock

Like waste occurring before the machine, sheets added from stock (or excess quantities not converted but moved to stock instead) can change production time quite dramatically. Therefore, we added a button that lets you change the quantity that will go through the machine by entering the number of sheets going to (or coming from) stock.

This information is not stored at this time. We have future plans to keep quantities moved into stock in memory so that the terminal can later suggest what quantities (and from which production orders) could be added from stock for a given article.

Products Moved to Stock

A final button added at the end of the machine lets the crew reduce the quantity going to Shipping or to the next machine. This is useful if e.g. printing is done for a big overrun coming from the corrugator, but because the customer accepts only exact quantities, only a smaller number must go to the die-cutter.

The reduced quantity gives the order a correct duration on the next machine and thus allows more precise planning.

The entries are not stored, however: Again, we have future plans to create a memory of quantities of an article (or semi-finished goods) moved into stock, so that they can later be identified and retrieved.

The PC-Topp Machine Terminal has been enhanced to meet customer needs for printing pallet labels with the correct quantity of products per pallet right at the machine and for assigning a unique identification number to pallets for use with a warehouse system.

The Palletisation tab in the Machine Terminal (to be found under the Order tab) can handle internal pallets as well as pallets intended for the customer and serves the following purposes.

Flexible Pallet Label Printing at the Machine

The Palletisation tab lets you print out pallet labels at the machine. Labels can be printed in the following ways:

• Label by label – the label is sent to the printer when the pallet is half full so that it is always ready when the crew needs it
• All labels at once at the start of each order,
• Individually when required (e.g. when a label is damaged or wrong)

The label for the last pallet is only printed when the order is finished and the quantity on the last pallet is clear. The system also makes it easy to e.g. move a small quantity on the last pallet onto the last full pallet (or the last two full pallets), and to reprint the labels for those pallets with the corrected quantity.

Assigning Unique IDs to All Pallets

Whereas in the past PC-Topp.NET only printed pallet labels without retaining the information on the pallets, the system now creates a data base entry for every pallet it processes. PC-Topp.NET assigns a unique identifier to each pallet by generating an SSCC number, an ID capable of identifying any single unit (pallet) produced by any company worldwide.

The pallets information is kept in PC-Topp’s database ‘forever’ and may be useful e.g. in tracing where the problem on a pallet sent back by the customer comes from, a particular operator or a bad paper reel.

The main use of that database is, however, to inform an external warehouse system of the pallets it will be receiving, and to give it the exact quantities and other pallet data. The system ensures that the warehouse system (or ERP) receives a record for each pallet that will enter the warehouse, and that no pallet will be published that eventually does not arrive there.

Manage Every Pallet Individually

Not only the quantity for the last pallet can be different from the rest of the pallets, there may be other differences as well: There may be several ‘small’ pallets, or a part of the order is put on pallets of a different size or type (because the order is palletized alternatingly on tall and low pallets, or because there were not enough pallets of the right type in stock).

In short, any detail of each single pallet will reflect reality exactly, and the label will contain the right quantity and other information for each and every pallet.

The graphical user interface shows the pallets in an easy to understand and intuitive way, making it easy for any machine operator to make the required entries or to re-print a label.

Better User Interface, New Options

The PC‑Topp.NET Downtime Causes page combines breakdown causes, scheduled downtimes and internal complaints plus the freshly introduced downtime category "Machine Shutdown Reasons" in a single page. The downtime categories can be selected via the tabs at the page top.

This is what sets apart the four different categories:

Like before, the causes in each category are broken down by groups. It is easy to create new groups and downtime causes, or to edit entries.

Flags for Breakdown Causes

For the breakdown causes you can now say whether the downtime is machine related, or order or crew related. Note that any combination of those flags is possible.

These flags are not evaluated in most PC-Topp reports, except that some statistics show downtime totals grouped by these flags. However, they are available in PC‑Topp's SQL Server database and can be used in personalized reports.

Like before, you can say which downtime causes are supposed to appear on each machine, to exclude causes that don't apply. However, this "filtering" still needs to be done in the "classical" Downtime Causes program (DOS).

A more detailed explanation of the effect each kind of downtime cause has on the calculation of production times in PC‑Topp is available in the news entry Calculation of PC Topp Times for Statistics Explained

It can happen that gaps appear between the produced orders on a conversion machine, in particular if production data entry was manual (no Machine Terminal).

Those gaps usually do not reflect reality correctly: Either an order is missing where the gap is, or the machine was closed during that time. A new link now appears next to such gaps offering a quick way to close the machine for the corresponding time period.

This link appears instead of the link "Move following orders" that is offered next to a gap between planned orders. For produced orders, moving many orders at a time is not useful as it would give faulty starting times to potentially many such orders.

Historically, PC-Topp would either calculate the duration of an order by itself - based on conversion machine parameters - or the user could tell the system how long he estimated the duration of the order from start to end. Of course, that duration could also be received from the host system in the Order Data Transfer.

While this seemed sufficient for planning purposes, this approach had the disadvantage that the set-up time was always based on machine parameters even for orders with a manually given duration. This made it impossible to compare the actual set-up time to the target time for such orders where the set-up was more difficult than for a normal order.

Therefore, it is now possible to specify also the set-up time for an order, either manually or in the Order Data Transfer.
This opens the following options for the calculation of the total duration of an order.

Set-up time calculated Based on number of colors and die-cut or not		Run time calculated Based on machine's average speed
Set-up time given By host or manually		Run speed given (Indirectly based on total duration)

Obviously, the run speed does not appear in the order data or in the data transfer; it is specified indirectly by giving the total run time to maintain compatibility with earlier versions of the order data transfer.

This means that instead of sending a set-up time of 27 minutes and a speed of 5000 / h, the host must calculate the run duration based on the quantity (e.g. 10000) and give PC-Topp the result for the total time (0'27 + 2'00 = 2'27).

Future improvements are planned: In a future version PC-Topp will be able to use a given set-up time and speed per article, or base the entire calculation on past experience with previous orders for that article.

On the Machine Load page, so far you didn't have a chance to see whether the brown (scheduled) and red (full) days on a machine contain orders that will be late.

Now a small violet sign with a white exclamation mark tells you at first sight if you are in danger of running an order too late. There are two kinds of situation that this icon warns you about:

Orders Scheduled Late on a Machine
The violet icon tells you that there are orders threatening to be late on the machine in question and thus won't be delivered in time if nothing is done about them. When you click the icon the dialog displaying the day's orders opens, and orders scheduled late are marked by a red due date so you can easily find them to mend the situation.

Machine Load Is Too High to Produce Unscheduled Order in Time
The violet icon is also displayed when the machine load is higher than the machine capacity on that day (red background) and there is no chance to put the surplus load on any previous day, either, because the capacity on earlier days is insufficient. Therefore one or several unscheduled orders pre-planned on this machine can't be produced in time to meet their due date.

However, if you click the icon expecting to find the unscheduled late orders highlighted in the day details as well you might be disappointed: Unscheduled orders are not marked in red (except when their due date has passed) because the system can't predict which of them you will schedule on time using the available capacity on earlier days.

The Corrugator Control page fulfills two main purposes:

In the corrugator control room it functions as the online connection between corrugator and Planning. The Corrugator Control page lets the corrugator operator transfer runs to the Dry End controller and change the run sequence while keeping Program Memory and Dry End controller synchronized.

Furthermore, the Corrugator Control page lets the corrugator crew print out a variety of production documents like corrugator programs, cutting and material lists or pallet labels right at the machine.

Elsewhere in the plant, e.g. at the Wet End, the Corrugator Control page allows printing corrugator schedules and material requirements but without the possibility to make sequence changes or to transfer runs to the Dry End controller.

More Control for the Corrugator Crew, Program Memory Always Up to Date

The Corrugator Control Page changes PC-Topp's approach to the link between Planning and the corrugator: Originally, the On-line Link program was run on a PC in the planning office. When new schedules were ready, the planners used it to transfer them to the corrugator.

Now, the Corrugator Control Page is used by the corrugator crew, directly in the corrugator control cabin, for the same purpose. This not only gives the crew much more control over what programs are downloaded to the corrugator, it also allows PC-Topp to follow corrugator production more closely.

Before, new programs were sent by Planning always to the end of the queue of schedules waiting to be produced. If such a new schedule needed to be run earlier, the corrugator crew had to make the necessary sequence change at the Dry End controller computer, which had the advantage that they maintained full control over what was happening at the machine. Planning could not simply make a sequence change without informing them, or without their okay. The disadvantage was that the schedules in PC-Topp's Program Memory usually stayed in the old, now obsolete sequence.

Now, Planning simply releases new schedules for production, and they appear at the end of the queue of schedules waiting for production. If a sequence change is needed, the corrugator crew makes it right there in the Corrugator Control Page, which is usually much easier than using the corrugator's own user interface. The sequence at the Dry End controller computer is automatically kept in sync with the changes done on the Corrugator Control page.

Moreover, the Corrugator Control page automatically synchronizes Program Memory with the new sequence. This way, the actual program sequence is always visible in Planning as well as at the corrugator.

With the Corrugator Control page, runs can be transferred to the Dry End controller computer either manually or automatically. The automatic mode always keeps enough programs in the queue to maintain a smooth production flow. Optionally, the Corrugator Control page can only be used for displaying and printing programs and paper requirements, without the functionality for modifying the run sequence.

Changing the Production Sequence

The Corrugator Control page displays the runs in the corrugator queue marked with padlock symbols. They show the status of each run and allow you to change it.

	Runs whose position can't be changed anymore because they are either already being produced or very close to production.
	Runs that have already been transferred to the Dry End controller computer. Those runs are locked, i.e. their sequence can't be changed. If you want to modify the position of those runs you can unlock them with a mouse click on the green padlock. Unlocking a run means that it is temporarily deleted from the Dry End controller computer. The run is retransferred as soon as the desired sequence has been established.
	Runs that are in Program Memory but haven't been transferred to the Dry End controller computer yet. You can change their position anytime.
	Runs whose position in the queue of the Dry End controller computer is different from their position in Program Memory. This happens when runs are manually inserted or when the sequence is modified at the Dry End controller computer. These runs can be changed after unlocking them with a click on the padlock.

The queue always starts with one or several red padlocks, followed by runs with a locked padlock symbol (ideally all green, after changes done at the Dry End controller some of them may be orange). The last run with a locked padlock marks the end of the schedule that has already been downloaded to the Dry End controller. After that point, all runs have open padlock icons.

Sequence changes in the section marked with open padlocks can be done directly. If however a change is needed in the locked part of the queue, then the corresponding runs must be unlocked first by clicking on the padlock symbol of the first run in the locked part of the schedule.

A new PC-Topp.NET page has been created to supplement (and eventually substitute) the classical Conversion Machines Settings. The Machines page offers some convenient extras the old version doesn't have.

View Machines by Machine Type

New Machine Features

• Die-Cutting
  PC-Topp wants to know if a machine can die-cut and if so, whether it exclusively die-cuts or can do more than that. The die-cutting type of the machine is displayed as a small symbol in the overview:
  

  Type	Symbol	Example
  Rotary Die-Cutter		Ward
  Flatbed Die-Cutter		Bobst
  Any Other Machine That Can Die-Cut (Gluer, Slotter, Inline Machine)		Rapidex
  No Die-Cutting	no symbol	Martin Printer

• Number of Print Units
  This value is needed for the automatic sequence optimisation in conversion machine scheduling, as it determines when an ink change is required to accommodate the colors of the next job.
• Whether Box Size or Other Measurements are Shown at the Machine
  If the machine is marked as a box maker the following values are displayed at the Machine Terminal (unnecessary for e.g. machines that just print or for die-cutters):
  • Internal dimensions
  • Sheet Size
  • Scores on corrugator and conversion
  • Tear tapes

Graphical Machine View

Clicking the "Edit" link to the right of each machine opens a graphical view of this machine like at the Machine Terminal. It shows you the machine design and its relevant parts in more detail. This detailed view also lets you modify the three new fields discussed above.

For viewing and updating the other machine settings PC-Topp.NET relies on the classical Machine Definition program: Click the link "Further Settings for this Machine (DOS)" and the DOS program will open.

In autumn 2006 the PC-Topp 2000 Machine Terminal Intranet page has been substituted by the much improved PC-Topp Machine Terminal.

The old Machine Terminal page was an important step toward PC-Topp's becoming a full Intranet and Internet solution. Yet its interface was too limited. It didn't offer enough space for all relevant information. Besides, the data was displayed in small fonts that are hard to read from even a little distance. And it offered only a small part of the functions the classical program provides.

The new Machine Terminal has been thoroughly revised. Among the most obvious enhancements is its optimisation for use with a touch-screen. You can now optionally operate the Machine Terminal with a finger tip (provided the machine is equipped with a touch-screen). And all information is displayed in large fonts for better readability.

The classical Machine Terminal still runs alongside the PC Topp Machine Terminal but many of its functions are now available on the PC Topp Machine Terminal page, too. Besides, some new functions have been added. To accommodate all those features the interface is now structured by tabs that bundle the Terminal's functions.

1. General:
   The General tab is displayed by default when the Machine Terminal is started. Here you find an overview of the most important data on the machine itself, its production status, and the current order, illustrated by a graphical schema of the machine that shows the production process along with the relevant figures. In the future, waste entry right at the machine will be possible here, too.
2. Order:
   The Order tab is divided into sub-tabs. "Data", the primary sub-tab, shows the summary of the current order. The further tabs offer access to PDF files of stereo, forme, and article (if available) that open directly within the page.
3. Schedule:
   Here you find the machine schedule, now vastly larger than in the old Machine Terminal page, and easily readable. A click or finger tap on the links of any order opens the "Order" tab and displays the sub-tab you viewed last.
4. Personnel:
   In the near future this tab will provide the Come / Leave functionality of the classical Machine Terminal. Personnel can log onto and out of a machine here or change to a different machine within the Web page instead of having to switch to the classical Machine Terminal.
5. Messages:
   PC-Topp.NET's messaging module has been embedded in the Machine Terminal so you can send messages to any PC-Topp.NET user and to any other Machine Terminal right from the Terminal page. Messages to the Machine Terminal are displayed as pop-ups in the toolbox so they can't be overlooked.
6. Quality Check:
   Another new feature available at the new Machine Terminal page are the Quality Checks. In spite of its name the functionality isn't connected to the quality checks in the classical Machine Terminal. Even though it basically does the same it is much more powerful. Whereas the classical quality checks are confined to a fixed set of possible quality checks the new functionality lets you run self-defined quality checks that you can adapt exactly to your needs. You can precisely define conditions when these new quality checks should be performed. And if there is a customer complaint for an article or if a customer is marked as Service customer or Flop Ten customer the system triggers a quality check-like message to make sure you notice.

On the Corrugator Scheduling page, only grades that have orders to be scheduled for the corrugator are of interest, all other grades are omitted to allow the planner a concentrated view on the grades he needs to work on.

However, any grade that has no orders to schedule in the range of days shown, but where there are runs in Program Memory waiting for production, should also appear, in order to show the planner all grades with runs in Program Memory for the selected flute type.
This situation is rare, as most grades that are being produced do have orders for the near future waiting and thus are shown along with the Program Memory info.

The page has been revised slightly and now shows even grades where there is nothing to schedule for the immediate future when they have runs waiting in Program Memory. As a side effect, the total of the Program Memory column is now always compatible with the numbers shown for each grade below.

In the TGV Machine Load machines often appear to be fully loaded because Planning has decided to produce similar orders together even though their due dates lie still far ahead, i.e. if those orders were scheduled according to their due date instead of their format the machine would have some free capacity left. Now the TGV Machine Load helps you find this hidden capacity.

The tool looks for orders that are scheduled earlier than required by their due date. It then displays the machine load situation as if those orders were scheduled in time to meet their due date but not earlier than necessary. The potentially free working hours per day appear as small white figures in the summary bar of each machine that indicates the machine load status.

Like this it shows where you can create free capacity by moving those early orders. So if e.g. you have to decide whether a rush order can be inserted into the existing schedule the tool makes it easier for you to find a day to squeeze it in.

You can switch on this functionality in the new section "Find Free Capacity" in the Machine Load Toolbox. If you click "Move Orders" you will see the number of potentially free working hours of each scheduled day displayed in the summary line of each machine. In the day details you can then look up the orders that could be moved to insert more urgent orders.

Take a look at the new feature at http://demo.pctopp.com.

Corrugator Scheduling has become even easier and more powerful: It is now possible to activate Automatic Upgrades in the Corrugator Scheduling tool box.

When Automatic Upgrades are activated, PC-Topp automatically selects orders from selected other board grades as optional orders (blue) in addition to the orders from the grade you're about to schedule. Optimisation will make use of them if the result can be significantly improved. Of course, just like with manual upgrades, the cost of the upgrade is taken into account, and upgrades will only occur if the resultant total cost per 1000m² warrants that additional cost.

Which grades exactly are looked at when you schedule a particular grade is defined in the Options page for that grade: You can specify a list of up to 10 compatible grades from which orders will be upgraded if it makes sense. Of course, you could also allow for downgrades, but who would want to do that!?

Shortcuts for Opening and Closing Shifts

To open or close an entire shift, just click on the shift letter that precedes the opening and closing times of that shift. Of course, the old links on the top of the dialog are still there, for the same purpose.

More Intuitive Display for Shifts Starting Late or Ending Early

Previously, a shift that ended early looked a little odd: PC-Topp showed e.g. 05:00 - 13:00, and only on second looks would you discover a break from 11:00 - 13:00 and understand that the shift really ended at 11 a.m. on that day.

Now, the same situation is simply shown as 05:00 - 11:00, as one would expect.

Production Targets are calculated as a snapshot of the current schedule situation at the exact (theoretical) moment of the shift change, they reflect what Planning had committed to deliver during the following shift.

The Production Targets page shows these targets along with the current production, showing at any time whether actual production is on target (100%), or above or below. The crews at the machines can use that indicator to see how they are doing, and starting out at 100% it should motivate them to stay at or above 100% even if the schedule changes during the shift. That way, the production totals at the end of the shift will more likely match the objectives.

As a new feature, the corrugator's production targets can be added to that page (which until now only showed the conversion machines' targets).

There is a new red alert box in the My PC-Topp section of the main menu page. It warns you if there is something badly wrong with the system itself, or certain planning situations have occurred that require your attention.

Of course, that notification is only visible on the PC-Topp start page, and so you don't miss an alert while working on a different page, we have added a Red Alert icon on all other pages (top right, near the Print Preview icon). It flashes for 15 seconds after a problem was first found, and then remains on screen, but less prominently, until the problem condition is resolved. A click on the icon takes you to the home page where the problem can be seen in detail.

The system alerts you to difficulties of the following kind:

• An order has arrived in the order data transfer that can't be produced in time.
• The production statistics need to be archived because they contain records that are older than 6 months (6 months are the default setting and can be changed to a different value.)
• Some station is blocking backup.
• The Program Memory has to be cleared up because someone forgot to delete the produced programs promptly.
• A problem occurred during the transfer of Paper Stock data:
  • The host system has sent a paper code that is unknown to PC-Topp.
  • The stock for a particular paper and roll size appears more than once in the file.
  • The stock date is either incorrect, in the future, or too far in the past.
  • Incorrect numeric values appeared for roll size or stock.

The Corrugator Monitor has been improved again to offer additional information for the user.

Next to the Day Info, the user can look up the next programs following the current run, to stay informed about the schedule sequence as well as upcoming paper size or flute type changes.

The new information box appears on the right hand side of the Entire Day box, and users can hide it to view the Current Program Details box again by clicking on the link in its head section.

There are many pages in PC-Topp.NET that remember your personal settings. Users can for example have direct links to the customers they work with most, the machine codes can appear in the toolbox in the "right" sequence - most pages have some kind of setting that can be personalized.

Similarly, it is recommended to set the number of lines shown in order lists to maybe 75 (to be able to smoothly scroll through the list), and to disable permanent page refreshes in favour of a 2 minute holding time during which any updates of the current page are only signaled on-screen but do not cause a full page refresh.

The problem was that a new user first had to configure all those settings, on all pages, to have PC-Topp configured "nicely".

The new feature makes it a lot easier for new users: The administrator can now designate a "model user" whose settings are used whenever a new user is created, saving you the trouble of manually presetting all necessary options for the new user.

To make the new feature work for your site, select a user account that has settings for all pages that will look good as a starting point, and check the little box in front of "Model User".

Now whenever you create a new user account PC-Topp.NET copies the settings of the model user to the new account. Another way to copy the model user's settings to one - or many - users is via the link "Copy Account Settings" on the bottom of the list of all users. Click it, select your model user from the dropdown list of potential models and then select the user(s) who should receive the model's settings.

A new feature of PC Topp.NET in Conversion Machine Scheduling performs a repetitive and time-consuming task that so far had to be done by the planner. The new link "Optimize This!" (displayed below the cart as soon as you select an order) helps the planner by automatically putting the orders in an optimum sequence, making sure that all orders are on time, similar jobs are together, minimizing the number of ink changes, etc.

The resulting schedule is optimized in many ways, and you will not very often find a sequence that would be more logical or better. However, you may have reasons to make manual changes for certain orders, reasons that will often be unknown to the system. So, let PC-Topp create a good sequence as a starting point, and then refine it further with a few manual modifications.

This is how you can use the new feature:

Usually, you will want to keep the beginning of the schedule as it is, because it is already at the machine. So, select the first order in the schedule that can be moved, and click "Optimize This!". PC-Topp will establish an optimized sequence, and eliminate any overlaps, gaps, or other mistakes.

Or, mark the first order as before, plus select other orders to integrate into the schedule. To add all orders of a day, click on the first order, then Shift-click on the last order of that day. Again, "Optimize This!" will give a good schedule that makes sure all orders are on time, and in the best possible sequence.

If you want more in-depth information on this subject please read our page "Automatic Optimisation in Conversion Machine Scheduling".

Pull planning means that orders are scheduled on the first conversion machine before they get scheduled on the corrugator. Such orders used to be marked with a yellow dot where otherwise the corrugator finishing time would appear.

That yellow dot has been replaced by three new icons which tell the planner not just that the order isn't scheduled but also in which part of the corrugator schedule it will have to go to be produced in time.

	-	This is what the old yellow icon used to be: It says that the order is not in Program Memory. There is time enough to produce it after the end of the current corrugator schedule.
	-	The yellow icon indicates that the order will need to be integrated into the corrugator program that is being prepared: It must be integrated somewhere in between the un-numbered programs that are already in Program Memory.
	-	The orange icon says that the order must be inserted into the schedule that is currently at the corrugator, as it must be finished at a time before the end of the current schedule (before the end of the last program with a program number).

Each order in PC-Topp has a due date. An order is considered on time when it is ready for delivery on that date.

So far, that was the case if the order was finished on the last machine at any time on the given production day. However, in most plants the production day ends at the end of night shift, in the morning of the following date: Thus, an order was still 'on time' when in fact it could be delivered only the day after the Due Date.

This has been changed: We can set an installation parameter that specifies a more realistic time by which the order must be finished on its due date, for example 5 p.m. (Please contact us to make that change on your system!)

Specifying a Finishing Time for Individual Orders

Independently, it is now also possible to send a finishing time for individual orders in the Order Data Transfer. PC-Topp will use that time as the target time, and will signal that an order is late if that time is not met by its schedule.

In Corrugator Scheduling, PC-Topp used to always propose the 'normal' roll sizes, according to the corrugator settings. Now it is possible to have the right paper size appear automatically for Pre-Print grades, or other grades that are only available on certain particular paper sizes.

Go to the Board Grade Settings page and select a pre-print grade. You will find a set of new fields on the bottom of the page where you can define the correct roll size for this grade. Once you save the new settings, Optimisation will automatically propose the right roll size when you schedule that grade.

In the past, many customers wanted to be able to attach comments to breaks etc. in the Machine Timetable. We have now implemented a functionality that lets them do that, and that can also be put to use in many other ways.

The new comments can be attached to any day in a machine's timetable and appear on top of the corresponding day in Conversion Machine Scheduling. Thus they can explain why a machine is open (or closed) on that day, draw attention to the fact that the shift ends 2 hours later (see also Improved Machine Timetable), but they can just as well be used for general reminders, information on personnel, or a comment on a particular order on that day's schedule.

To enter a comment, click on the Timetable icon of that day in Conversion Machine Scheduling. You can use the feature to attach a remark to a particular break or order by clearly specifying it in the comment, e.g.: "09:00-09:30: Maintenance of feed unit!"

The comments will slowly find their way also into other pages where information is organized by day.

So far, orders in PC-Topp.NET could be viewed by customer name, board grade, conversion machine, and article number. Now the scope of order views has been extended by two further pages:

The "Orders by Stereo" and the "Orders by Forme" page show all orders with a specific stereo or tool at a time, listed by due date. If you ask yourself whether there are other orders using the same tool or stereo as a given order, just click on the corresponding link and you'll see all past, current and future orders using that same tool or stereo.

In plants where drawings are available for stereos and / or formes, a little icon appears in front of the stereo / forme code in the toolbox. When active (=red), a click on that icon displays the drawing.

If you outsource certain production steps to a subcontractor company you can now offer a convenient new service to your subcontractor. Those companies can now create pallet labels for orders partially processed by them with the new Label Printing Terminal.

After having located an order with the handy "Find Order" feature they can view all relevant order details and, if necessary, change the number of pallets they want to print labels for. (They don't get access to the full PC-Topp.NET system but are restricted to the Label Printing Terminal page.)

When the "Create Labels" button is pushed the Terminal generates as many pallet labels for the order as specified in the "No. of Pallets" field, numbered consecutively. The labels are output as PDF files that can be printed on any local printer.

In the left column of the Order Summary’s machine routing there is a new check mark icon whose color indicates if the order is flagged on the machine in question:

•    A brown check mark means that the order is flagged on this machine.
•    A grey check mark means it is not flagged on this machine.

You don’t have to start classical Conversion Machine Scheduling any more to switch the flagging on and off. You can now conveniently do so by simply clicking the check mark icon.

The display of flagged orders in PC-Topp.NET Conversion Machine Scheduling with the check mark icon in front of the order number remains unchanged. Just the check icon now is brown instead of black.

Clicking on the customer name, a machine code or any of the other links in an order takes you to a page showing orders e.g. by customer or by machine. However, it used to be hard to find the order you clicked on on that page - it could be hidden from view, or it could be necessary to page forward or backward to get it on the screen at all.

PC-Topp.NET now offers new functionality to make navigating between different order views much easier: When you click on a link in an order, the page that appears will always show the order you clicked on, usually near the top of the page, and the order will be marked by a small black arrow on the left so you can spot it as soon as the page opens.

Not only does this new feature make your work with PC-Topp.NET more comfortable but it also lets you navigate back and forth from one order view to the next and back again rapidly and with ease. No more loss of orientation while browsing the different order views, no more tedious searching for the original order in a new context.

This works in any page, whether it shows a list of orders or just the summary of one order.

But where are the drawings?

In more and more plants, drawings are available for the article, the print specification or the forme, and a click on, for example, the Stereo Number brought up that drawing. Now, that same link takes you to a page showing all orders using that stereo.

The drawing is now accessed by clicking the little icon to the left of that link, usually a tiny PDF icon. If a drawing is available, then the icon is active (=red) and clicking on it will bring up the desired drawing. When it is inactive (greyed out), then no drawing is available.

The Program Memory page marks schedules containing orders that require special scores with a little red icon ( , see Orders with Special Scores Marked in Program Memory).

The same functionality has now been added to the Corrugator Scheduling page. There the red icon now shows you the board grades and dates containing orders with special scores so you can check those orders in detail.

In the pop-up that appears when you click on a date, the orders with special scores are marked in the same way so you can easily locate them.

Among your customers there are always some who are especially important and whose orders have to be treated preferentially. So far it was difficult to locate those orders in Corrugator Scheduling to check which of them you have to produce next.

Now the Corrugator Scheduling page lets you effortlessly find your important customers' orders with the help of the new Find Customer feature.
The green magnifying glass icon in the Toolbox shows you where to look for the new functionality. Select the flute type you want to search and enter a customer name in the search box next to the green icon or select a name from the popup list just like e.g. in the machine search in Conversion Machine Scheduling.
As soon as you have confirmed your selection the customer is highlighted:

• In the head of the Toolbox the name of the selected customer starts flashing to indicate which customer is currently active.
• In the board grade list the grades containing orders of the selected customer are highlighted by a green background.
• In the corrugator schedule the days when orders for the said customer are scheduled to be run appear with a green background as well.
• When you click those days to view their order details you find this customers orders marked by a green background, too.

No more tedious manual searching for a customers orders - with a few clicks you can spot them right away. For a better overview you can hide all board grades except those containing orders of the customer you want to view by clicking the Toolbox link "Green Grades Only". And a click on "Clear Customer" cancels the highlighting and sets the interface back to normal.

The classical Service Customers program has been replaced by a PC-Topp.NET web page which offers more features than the old program.

If you haven't been using that functionality: Service Customers is a small group of clients who guarantee you a high order volume regularly, and for whom you can reserve capacity on the machines in advance using the program "Capacity Reservations".

Additionally, a new type of customer has been introduced: Flop Ten customers are a kind of client every plant has, clients where everything goes wrong, or clients who are too critical. PC-Topp now allows you to identify them and attach a specific remark to each of them that warns of the special conditions and dangers for that customer. It works in the same way as the Service Customers and you get to it by clicking on the link "Flop Ten Customers" in the Service Customers Toolbox.

To create a new Flop Ten or Service Customers entry, select a name from the automatic dropdown in the Customer Name field. And you can optionally add a message that then appears at orders for that customer.

Flop Ten customers and Service customers are clearly marked throughout PC-Topp: The names of Service customers are displayed in blue, those of Flop Ten customers in red letters (see screenshot). If you move your mouse over a Flop Ten customer name the message for this customer is displayed in a Tooltip.

At the Machine Terminal a warning appears whenever an order for a Flop Ten customer is run: Either the message entered for the customer or - if there is no message - the hint "Flop Ten Customer" is displayed in red letters.

Visit the new pages on http://demo.pctopp.com.

In the classical PC-Topp screens, it is very easy to locate an order with the Find Order function which can be accessed at any time by pressing the question mark key.

This function is now available in many PC-Topp.NET pages, and it works even better than before.

"Find Order" on the PC-Topp.NET Order Pages

There is a new box in the PC-Topp.NET toolbox called "Order Number" where you can input an order number and then press "Enter". PC-Topp.NET will mark the desired order with a small black arrow, provided it is in the batch of orders currently displayed on the page.

If the order is not on the current page (i.e. the machine or the customer etc. that is on the screen), then PC-Topp will display the Order Summary to let you know where to find the order. From there, you can easily display the current order in the context of orders by article number, board grade, stereo, forme, or conversion machine by clicking the respective links in the Order Summary.

When you start entering an order number in the Find Order box you will notice a handy help feature: PC-Topp displays the orders matching the entry in real time, so you can very quickly select the right order.

Moreover, pressing "?" like in the classical programs now works in PC-Topp.NET, too. Doing so makes the last used order number appear in the Order Number box, so that this order can be accessed by just pressing "Enter". If you start typing instead, the old number is erased and a new search begins.

"Find Order" on the PC-Topp.NET Menu Pages

On the PC-Topp.NET start page and all menu pages in general the link "Find Orders" in the Order System box opens the Find Order tool in a small independent box. Enter an order number or pick one from the pop-up order selection and the Order Summary for this order appears. Here, too, you can also call up Find Order by pressing "?".

The Find Order box floats freely on the page and you can move it around by Drag&Drop. If you want Find Order to be permanently in view click the little arrow symbol in the top right corner to make it dock to the "My PC-Topp" section. (Of course you can make it undock again with another click on the arrow.) In case you want the feature to get out of sight again after using it leave it floating freely on the page.

How to Make Best Use of "Find Order"

• inding all parts of an order
  If an order has several parts (same order number, different part number), the list of matching orders that appears when you enter an order number in the Find Order box will show you that the order has multiple parts, and let you select.
• Finding parts of orders that have been split
  If an order has been split, PC-Topp likewise shows all parts of that order, making you aware that there are several runs of it, and forcing you to choose.
• Moving an order to a specific machine
  If you want to reschedule a specific order you don't have to make the detour over Access by Order Number any more to locate it. Just let Find Order spot it for you, press Enter in the order summary, then change the machine routing.
• Quickly displaying an order at any machine, customer etc.
  The links in the Order Summary have been modified to take you straight to the selected order in any PC-Topp.NET order screen. In combination with Find Order this allows you to directly spot an order at any machine, article no. etc. and rapidly navigate between them.

Shifts marked red in the Plant Summary and in the Shift Overview point out erroneous shift data. Even so, up to now clicking on such a red shift could lead to no faulty entries being displayed in the classical Production Statistics interface if the entry type concerned was being hidden at that moment.

Now all erroneous entries are displayed no matter if their type is set to "View" or not.

In order to have nice shift starting times in the statistics some users change the actual shift start to an even time (e.g. 4:52 to 5:00). If any events have occurred in the time span between real and made-up start time (e.g. a quality check at 4:56) they unintentionally get to be placed outside the shift.

PC-Topp reacts to this by creating an extra pseudo shift with normal shift length which contains these lost events. As this pseudo shift totally falsifies the working time of the day concerned it must be corrected by all means.

To make sure that you notice those pseudo shifts they are now highlighted in the Shift Overview page by displaying them in brackets.

Red and Orange Underruns

The number of produced sheets for the order appears on a red background for serious underruns, and on an orange background if the order is underrun, but the underrun can be tolerated.

In other words, orange will only appear if the new Minimum Overrun Tolerance field in the classical Order Entry / Update screen is used.

The Underrun Orders page can be viewed on http://demo.pctopp.com

Microsoft has today ended its support for the Windows NT operating system.

We must also announce that PC-Topp.NET is not supported any more under Windows NT. That is so because many of Microsoft's system components that PC-Topp needs to function don't work under that legacy operating system. PC-Topp.NET clients are supported exclusively under Windows XP Professional and under Windows 2000. Support under future versions of Windows will be announced as soon as any adaptations that may be required have been implemented.

If your system still runs under Windows NT, then you should strongly consider upgrading to new hardware and an up-to-date operating system. New hardware will most likely be necessary as it is likely that your PC is many years old, and cannot show the complex PC-Topp.NET web pages with adequate speed.

The Corrugator Scheduling page now lets you choose what you want to see in the board grade column of the corrugator schedule. So far only the grade code was displayed there but now a new link in the View section of the Toolbox toggles the display between the following states:

• Display Grade Code shows the grade code as before.
• Display Grade Remarks shows the optional remarks that can be entered in the board grade settings.
• Display Code and Remarks shows both the grade code and the remarks.

• Area produced (in m²)
• Lineal meters produced (in m)
• Production time (in h)

The "Entire Day" section affords a quick overview of the production results achieved so far. It can be displayed or hidden according to the users' needs.

So far it was hard to see if an order is already deckled but not yet definitely scheduled on the corrugator. For such orders, there are already are runs in Program Memory, but no starting time and program number have been assigned yet. That made it impossible to tell in order lists whether an order was already deckled or not scheduled at all on the corrugator.

Now a new status color has been introduced to distinguish such orders. If the corrugator appears in gray letters on a light yellow background in an order's machine sequence this indicates that this order is in Program Memory but hasn't been assigned a starting time yet.

So now e.g. in the order view by customer you can see if an order is scheduled on the corrugator, complete with starting time and program number, or if the order so far only has been deckled but not definitely scheduled yet.

The PC-Topp.NET Program Memory page now indicates which programs contain orders that require special scores. You can identify those programs by the small red icon ( ) next to their program number.

If you click on such a program number the combinations view opens with red icons in front of those orders in the program which have to be run with special scores.

This feature is particularly useful if there are restrictions for special scores which the Automatic Optimization cannot take into account, e.g. if there is only a limited number of certain score types available. With the new marker the planner can easily distinguish the programs concerned and check if the restriction is observed.

It is now possible to specify not just a maximum overrun tolerance, but also a minimum overrun tolerance for an order. This new parameter handles better the case where a customer accepts the ordered quantity plus or minus 10% (see example below).

There is a new field called "Min. %" in the classical Order Entry / Update screen (next to the maximum overrun tolerance field "Tol. %"). The value entered in this field determines the minimum number of finished goods required for an order. If set, the new value overrides the Minimum Overrun Tolerance in the Optimisation parameters.

Positive and Negative Minimum Overrun Tolerance

• Positive Min. % value: More items are required than actually ordered.
• Negative Min. % value: Fewer items are accepted than actually ordered.

See the table below for a practical example.

(Make sure to set the minimum overrun tolerance to a smaller value than the maximum overrun tolerance; otherwise the latter will be ignored.)

So far, orders could only be marked yellow and blue (meaning e.g. Urgent and Very Urgent) in the classical programs Conversion Machine Scheduling or Order Entry / Update. This facility has been extended to five different flags so that now you can assign more different priority levels to your orders.

Besides, these flags can now be set not just in the classical programs mentioned above but also in any PC-Topp.NET page where the Order Summary is available. You just have to click Change in the new Priority field to successively set the following flags:

Classical Programs	Priority	PC-Topp.NET
	Low
	Normal
	Increased
	High
	Very High

If an order is given a priority level its special status is emphasized by an eye-catching icon next to the order number so you can immediately see that it has a special status.

The PC-Topp Label Designer and Label Print Server can now work with JPG and GIF images files in addition to BMP files. The use of JPGs and GIFs makes label printing faster because these file formats are smaller in comparison to BMPs.

The new version of the Windows Pallet Labeling System is fully compatible to previous Label Design files (*.pld).

The terminal has two main functions:

• The operator can enter the number of waste sheets for each run of an order, so that the number of sheets arriving in conversion (or, in the case of sheet orders, in shipping) is correct.
• Pallet labels can be printed for each order displayed on the screen. All labels required for the order can be printed with just one click, or the operator can request just one label.

The on-line link to the corrugator had a weak point - it didn't move the remaining runs of the current schedule to new starting times when there were delays. Only the orders in all subsequent programs were kept up-to-date.

The Corrugator Control Program has now been improved so that it keeps up-to-date the starting times of all runs, including the current program, and thus all orders, including the current job, show ending times that are likely to be correct.

So far, the Sales Status of an order could be set so that the order was marked as "blocked" by Sales, for example if credit approval for the customer was still pending. However, nothing kept planners from scheduling those orders on the corrugator or in conversion for future days, when credit approval was expected.

Now a new, stronger lock as been added: Orders that carry the status "forbidden" are marked by a distinctive icon and cannot be scheduled at all. On top of that, they are marked by a purple "haze" wherever they are shown in PC-Topp.

The machine timetable can now be modified via PC-Topp.NET (so far this could only be done in the classical Machine Timetable program). The functionality is available in Conversion Machine Scheduling. The Timetable link opens a small window offering the most frequently used functions for changing the timetable for the current machine and day.

You can easily change the timetable with a click either on the link in the Toolbox or on the little timetable icon on the day you want to modify. To open or close a shift you can either use the links in the shift list or enter a period of time manually in the fields at the top of the timetable box.

Enter Order Duration

The new feature lets you enter either the duration or a starting and ending time for the selected order. The latter is particularly useful when you know the point in time when the order is expected to be finished. Clicking on "Enter Duration" lets you enter the number of hours an order will take, which may be the more direct way in other situations.

Schedule Several Orders in One Go

"Set Time / Duration" can also be used to schedule several orders at the same time, but you may find this feature less useful. (In this case, no ending time can be entered, just the starting time.) You can schedule whole packages of orders by selecting the orders to be inserted or rearranged. Then you can enter the starting time of the first order in your packet. The other orders you have selected are inserted into the schedule after this first one according to their order in the "New Sequence" window. If you leave the pre-displayed starting time of that first order unchanged, then the other orders will simply be inserted directly behind it.

With the new PC-Topp.NET Pallet Requirements you can instantly see how many pallets of what type are needed at which machine.

The page lists all available pallet types and formats in alphabetical order, along with a TGV-like time line that tells you what total number of each pallet type will be needed at what point of time. The intervals of the time line are 2 hours by default, but can be set to 6 hours, 1 hour or 30 minutes according to the users needs.

A mouse click on a pallet type reveals the required number of pallets of this type, listed separately by machine. You can exactly determine when and at which machines the displayed number of pallets will be needed.

The Incidents page has a new tool that helps you print out those incidents that you need on paper. It is started via the Toolbox link "Print Wizard" and offers you the following options for filtering the incidents to be printed:

• You can select incidents on either a single machine, several machines, or all machines.
• You can choose between all incidents, open incidents and closed incidents.
• You can print only those incidents (filtered by the above criteria) that occurred within a certain period of time.
• Moreover you can choose whether the incidents should be printed one after the other or just one per page.

The blue and green (or red) machine capacity figures from the TGV plus the total number of sheets per day now appear on the right side of the date headers of Conversion Machine Scheduling.

The background color of the date headers indicates the machine load for the day in question (further details in Improved TGV Machine Load). The white figures on a blue background show the machines total working hours for that day. The figures in the green fields display the working hours available on that machine for that day. When their background turns red the machine is overloaded. Additionally, the third number gives you the total number of sheets on that day.

The new PC-Topp.NET page Orders by Article Number lets you view all orders for a specific article at once. This can be put to use in several ways, e.g. if you have an order to produce you can easily find other orders for the same article to produce along with it. Or if a customer needs a certain article at short notice you can see if you can help out.

To get all orders with a specific spec number you can either enter the number in the search box in the Toolbox or click the "Find" link next to it to select the spec number you are looking for from the pop-up article number list. (If there is no article number selected all orders are shown.)

The View options in the Toolbox display the orders of the selected article number sorted either by due date or by customer name.

Have a look at the new page at http://demo.pctopp.com

So far orders of sheets from external suppliers haven't been treated very well by PC-Topp.NET: Contrary to in-house orders you couldn't see when they would be available in production or if they fit into the conversion schedule. Now PC-Topp.NET has a new functionality that allows treating these sheets just as if they were produced on your own corrugator:

You can now let PC-Topp know for what date such sheets have been ordered, at what time they are expected, and when they have actually been delivered. Now it is immediately visible throughout PC-Topp if the sheets have arrived and are available for conversion or if they still have to be ordered.

Let the System Know When Ordered Sheets Will Be Ready

In PC-Topp.NET all external suppliers are given an operation code, e.g. XXX = sheets bought from company XXX. (This code has to be set in the classical Conversion Machines program). This machine code can be selected from the machine list in the Order Sheets page which you find on the PC-Topp.NET Corrugator menu page. All sheet orders obtained from the selected supplier are displayed and can be modified if necessary, i.e. when their status has changed.

The order status of these sheets from external suppliers closely resembles that of any normal in-house order:

How to Make Best Use of the Feature

You can change the status and the delivery time of any sheet order by clicking the checkbox on its left just like you would when scheduling orders on ordinary machines.

Click one or more orders to make them appear in the "New Sequence" box. It offers you three options for changing the order status which represent the typical stages in the processing of such sheet orders:

• Order Sheets
  for informing the system that sheets for this order have been ordered from an external supplier for a certain date and time.
  You can also set a default delivery time for all sheet orders. This saves you the trouble of entering a delivery time for each individual order. Set it to e.g. 18:00 to provide for even very late delivery.
• Confirm Delivery Date
  for confirming the order's delivery date and time, i.e. your supplier has confirmed delivery for a certain point in time and with "Confirm Delivery Date" you tell PC-Topp about the order's status change.
• Enter Sheets Delivery
  for marking orders delivered as soon as they actually arrive in your plant. Set the delivery time to the current time by default to spare yourself the trouble of entering the delivery time manually.

Changing the Order Quantity

• enter more sheets than ordered to make up for waste sheets in conversion
• enter partially delivered orders

In the "Ordered" column of the schedule PC-Topp.NET conveniently highlights sheet orders whose quantity is significantly greater or less than ordered:

• Red means fewer sheets than originally ordered.
• Blue means more sheets than originally ordered.

Key Figures for All Machines on One Screen

The one box per machine layout allows presenting a large amount of data in a concentrated yet clearly organized way which makes it easy to quickly scan the page. Each machine box contains the following information:

• Current Job
  For both the corrugator and the conversion machines a color-coded excerpt from the production plan is shown. The jobs displayed are the current one along with the last finished and the next to come. For the conversion machines start time, order number, customer name and scheduled quantity are displayed, for the corrugator(s) start time, program number, board grade, roll size and scheduled meters.
• Shift Data
  Up to three shifts per machine can be displayed. You see the shift date and code plus information on performance, average speed and total produced quantity.
• Progress of Current Job
  The foot of the machine box contains the data from view 2 of the small Plant Overview (on the PC-Topp.NET menu pages), i.e. produced quantity, scheduled quantity and machine speed, plus a convenient addition: The speed graph icon takes you to the performance diagrams for the machine.

Convenient Access to Statistics Data by Machine

The shifts displayed in the machine boxes are underlined - they link to the DOS program "Edit Production Statistics" for this machine which starts with the correct shift already selected. This way, you have easy access to the shift data for modifying (reserved for planners, supervisors, and administrators; all other users get a read-only version).

Moreover, shift date and shift code turn red if something is wrong with the statistics data of the displayed shift, e.g. overlapping corrugator runs, orders and downtimes starting or ending between shifts, or shifts lacking a shift code. Thanks to the highlighting you can easily determine exactly where the error occurred.

Direct Access to All Shifts on Selected Machine

Another useful feature is provided by the underlined caption "Shift" in the machine's shift header: A click on it displays an overview of all available shifts on the selected machine. By clicking on the desired shift, you can call up the shift data. Planners, supervisors, and administrators can view and modify them; all other users have read-only access.

Here, too, a red shift signals erroneous shift data. From here, you can navigate to earlier months or different machines via the toolbox.

Decide for Yourself Which Machines to Display

The toolbox of the Plant Summary allows toggling between displaying all machines (default setting) and the so called "Main Machines". This is a group of machines that can be freely configured and adapted to user needs by administrators via the toolbox link "Edit Machine Table".

The new PC-Topp.NET Incidents Page shows an overview of the open (= unresolved) incidents at any of the machines or at any other facility in your plant where there is a regular need for maintenance or service intervention (e.g. the coffee dispenser or the copy machine).

If an incident occurs at a machine (or a service unit) the operator creates a new incident describing what happened and what is wrong. On the Incidents page the technician or service team member in charge can then make a note to this incident about the state of the issue, i.e. what has been done, what remains to be dealt with etc. When the problem is solved the incident is closed by the persons involved.

Each incident belongs to a pre-defined topic and a category. Before you start using the Incidents page you have to create appropriate topics and categories to properly organize your incidents. The topics relate to the machine part involved, the categories describe what kind of problem occurred. Following you find some typical examples:

If used regularly the Incidents page not only supplies a pool of information on current problems to all staff members concerned but over time also creates a searchable knowledge base on incidents for future reference.

The new page can be viewed on http://demo.pctopp.com.

If you move your mouse over a downtime alert in view 2 of the small Plant Overview a Tooltip shows you how much has been produced and scheduled on the machine in question. In previous versions the downtime message kept you from seeing how far production had progressed resp. how much of it still had to be produced.

The feature is available in the Plant Summary and in the Graphical Plant Overview, too. It can be viewed on http://demo.pctopp.com.

Our new PC-Topp Monitors, as opposed to the PC-Topp Terminals, primarily show information, with no user interaction. They are designed to be easily readable even from a distance, with a clear-cut layout, extra large fonts, and they present color coded information for intuitive interpretation.

With the new Corrugator Monitor the corrugator crew can easily see the target speed for each corrugator run, depending on the grade and flute type being produced. A speedometer-like color coded bar shows the target speed and the current machine speed provided by the online connection to the corrugator or by the Corrugator Terminal.

The display's large figures contrast the corrugator's actual performance with its potential performance if it had been operated at target speed. A diagram of the past four hours shows the periods of above target performance in green and those of below target performance in red.

In some plants, there are lots of orders with due dates in the distant past that must stay in PC-Topp because they cannot be produced for one reason or another, but will definitely be produced at a later date. PC-Topp treats those orders as overdue and very urgent, although in fact they are dormant until someone decides to put them into production. As a result, they distort the figures in the TGV machine load.

The right way to avoid this would be to assign realistic due dates - in the future - to those orders. This however is not done in many places, for various reasons.

Now PC-Topp offers a way to keep those orders out of the TGV machine load:

When activated, this feature keeps those orders out of the machine load if they are marked as "blocked" either by Planning or by Sales, and either only for orders with due dates in the past, or for all such orders. (By default, the setting is inactive; all orders appear in the TVG.)

Any user with PC-Topp.NET administrator rights can invoke the feature from the TGV screen: A link in the toolbox on the left of the page leads to a configuration page.

If an order is suspended by Sales or Planning, e.g. because the required stereo is not available, this status was so far only displayed in the classical Order Entry / Update program.

Now the Planning and Sales Status of all orders is shown in the Order Summary Page, too. It appears right below the order's main data in the Status area and is illustrated by easy-to-understand icons.

Planners and Sales staff can modify the status of an order by clicking on the "Change" link displayed on the right hand side of the Status area.

Plants with two or more corrugators will benefit from this new feature: On the PC-Topp.NET Program Memory page each corrugator has its own separate program memory. But in the corresponding DOS program the program memory of all corrugators is displayed in one continuous screen, with separate sections by corrugator.

So far, each new run used to be appended at the very end of Program Memory, no matter what corrugator it was scheduled on, and had to be moved to its proper place manually.

Now each new run automatically appears at the end of the right corrugator's section - no more need to manually reorganize the list. The same applies to programs which are moved from one corrugator to another: Don't be confused when they seem to disappear the moment you change the corrugator code - they simply have automatically been moved to the end of the Program memory section of the target corrugator.

Changing from one machine, customer etc. to another has become faster and more intuitive:

In the past, when you did not exactly know the name or the number you wanted you had to use a search dialog to look it up. This has been replaced by an easy-to-handle dropdown list.

It pops up as soon as you enter the first letter in the search box, offering you a list of all matching items. The more characters you enter the shorter the list gets, making it easy to spot what you are looking for.

If you don't know even the first character or if you want to view the complete list of all items just leave the search box empty and click "Find". All available items are immediately displayed for you to scroll through.

By navigating through the list either by mouse or via the up / down keys, you can select the desired item which is instantly displayed on the screen.

Have you ever wished you could access order data directly from the order summary window, rather than having to find the order again inside one of the classical PC-Topp programs? Well, now you can:

The full PC-Topp order screen (classical version) is now accessible straight from the order summary, by clicking on the new link "Display / Update Order (DOS)" just below the order number. (Try pressing Enter immediately after the order summary has opened. The link is active then and directly launches the DOS program as soon as you hit Enter.)

For users with planning rights, the link opens the program "Order Entry / Update" where they can view and update the full order data. All other users get access to "Order View", offering some additional order information but not the modification of order data.

Runs Are Recorded Automatically Now

Production feedback from the corrugator can be done largely automatically now thanks to a new optional feature of the PC-Topp Corrugator Terminal. The terminal can now be connected to a signal from the corrugator that indicates the end of a run, enabling the software to register production data automatically, at very little additional work and costs.

No More Manual Data Entry

In the past, runs had to be recorded manually by the corrugator staff. This meant that someone had to watch for the end of the run and press a key. That was relatively easy with corrugators that stop between runs, but as good as impossible if the machine continued to run at full speed during a format change.

Now there is a way to automatically detect format changes. All that is required is a counter (the exact type is NE 212) which can register two separate signals, one for the lineal meters produced and the other at every format change.

Easy Use of the New Automatic Recording Functionality

In automatic mode, the terminal records the starting and ending times as well as the lineal meters produced and marks the run that just ended as produced, in a preliminary way: The run is shown in a special color (brown) until the operator confirms it. The operator can choose to confirm little batches of runs now and then; the terminal can store the data of many runs that have been finished.

Secure Operation through Manual Confirmation

Operator confirmation seems important because there is a risk that the corrugator occasionally sends an incorrect format change signal (for example following a jam), which would lead to totally incorrect production figures.

A special situation occurs when the terminal is first started, for example in the morning: PC-Topp cannot be sure that the run known to the terminal as "current run" is still in production, or if one or several changes have occurred while the terminal wasn't "watching".

For that reason, the terminal always starts in manual mode, where it requires operator input after each and every run. Once the operator has made sure that the current run is shown right, he can switch to Automatic Mode by hitting a function key (F10).

Thus, the new feature for automatic production feedback from the corrugator offers a cheap, convenient, and highly precise method of production data recording.

Linked orders have been introduced to let PC-Topp handle products that are not produced by converting a piece of corrugated board into a box (or similar), but that require several separate elements to be assembled, each of them converted from its own piece of corrugated board.

A good example for this type of order is a display stand that may require one front, two feet, and several trays or drawers: Each of these elements is an order in PC-Topp's usual sense. The finished display can be assembled when each of those elements is ready, and may require one or several operations by itself.

PC-Topp models this by a separate order with its own order key for each of the elements, plus one order for the assembled display, again with its own order number. (The order numbers of all orders linked together must be different, but of course they can all have the same main part of the order number with different suffixes.)

Obviously, production of the assembled display can only start when all components are ready. PC-Topp shows that information just like it shows the date (and time) when an ordinary order will be ready from the previous machine: The date and status reflect the combined status of availability of all required components.

Thus, the planner sees that the last component required to start working on assembly is scheduled to be ready the next morning, for example, or that all parts are ready (i.e. produced on their respective last operation).

The use of linked orders goes beyond assembled displays, however: A pair of linked orders can much better model an order that is stitched together from two identical (or non-identical) parts. Or, if an order needs more than the six operations supported by PC-Topp, then it can be broken up into two linked orders, where the first feeds the missing operations stored in the second order.

In the following example, an order of 50 boxes requiring eight operations is divided into order 5689A for the first five operations and order 5678 for the remaining three operations.

In all examples above, linked orders had N parts feeding 1 final order (in the last example, N was equal to 1). But also the opposite is possible, where 1 original order feeds several final orders. This is useful, for example, if the same box is ordered by several customers, and should be manufactured in one large job. Or, to run identical sheets for several different articles on the corrugator in one large run.

Please also see the document PC-Topp.NET Linked Orders for more information.

PC-Topp now allows targeted messages!

So far, messages could only be broadcast to all PC-Topp users. Now, you can send a message to one or several other users, or for example to a conversion machine.

On PC-Topp's Post a Message page, just select a recipient in the list of all PC-Topp users, type your message, and click send - the message appears instantly on the other user's PC-Topp screen.

To send a message to several users, press Shift while you click on further user names, the message will be sent to all users that you highlight that way. If you still want to send a broadcast message, select "all users" as recipient.

New Reply Function Allows Easy Conversations

When a message appears, clicking "Reply" opens a message form with the right recipient already selected, just type your reply and send your message.

System Messages Inform All Users of Incidents on the PC-Topp System

As before, the PC-Topp System itself will generate messages when it finds incidents that threaten the stability of the system. For example, when a user just turns off his PC without first exiting from PC-Topp or otherwise "kills" a PC-Topp program, a message is sent to everybody to make it easy to locate the culprit.

Don't Forget to Delete Messages

PC-Topp will show messages until you reply to them or delete them, so please click "Delete" after reading a message if it is of no further interest to you. This ensures that you will immediately notice when a new message appears on your screen.

New Display Units

• 1000 m²
• New: hours (h) - the hours of work time made up by the orders in the storage area
• m³
• sheets
• pallets
• New: floor space (m²) - the area taken up by the palletized orders in the storage area

New Order Display

Order information can be accessed with a mouse click on a figure now like in Conversion Machine Scheduling and the TGV Machine Load. So now the user can check peaks of work in progress to see which orders can be re-scheduled to reduce work in progress. If one of the figures in a machine row is clicked a popup box displays the orders making up the work in progress for that machine at the selected point of time. The popup header shows the machine code the production date of the orders in the list the point of time reflected by the figure that was clicked, i. e. the point of time when the stock reached its maximum or minimum level (depending on the stock type selected) totals of the quantity in 1000 m² and m³, the work time and the number of pallets of all orders in the list All orders in the list that are not marked with a grey background can either be re-scheduled to a later production time on the preceding machine or run earlier than planned on the machine in question. (Orders with a grey background have already arrived in front of the machine and thus cannot be re-scheduled any more.) Like this, it has become significantly easier to systematically decrease peaks in work in progress.

The new PC-Topp.NET Sheets to Schedule page shows all sheet orders that must be scheduled for the corrugator, sorted by date so that the most urgent orders appear on the top of the list. The page is accessible via the PC-Topp main page or the Order page.

The new page is available for viewing on http://demo.pctopp.com.

An additional view for production times of the current shift has been added to the small Plant Overview on the PC-Topp.NET main page. Besides, the views have been reorganized to show more production information in a clearly structured way.

View 1, 2 and 3 show data of the current order, while view 4 and 5 give information on the current shift.

Current Order Data in View 1-3

While view 1 gives the current order's number and customer name, view 2 shows its production progress in terms of currently produced quantity, scheduled quantity, and speed.

View 3 displays performance figures * for setup, run and total production time of the current order.

Current Shift Data in View 4-5

View 4 displays performance *, average speed and totals of the current shift.
The new fifth view shows production times for the current shift, i. e. the total setup time, downtime and run time plus the work time. Additionally, a move of the mouse over the figures displays the percentage of the work time which they make up in white on a blue background.

For a quick overview of the five views see the table below:

View		Subject	Corrugator	Conversion
1		Current Order	Program number Board grade Roll size	Order number Customer name
2		Progress of current order	Current production (lineal meters) Scheduled meters Current speed (m / min)	Current production (sheets) Scheduled sheets Current speed (sheets / h)
3		Performance for current order	Performance during runtime Total Performance for this order (The corrugator performance figures will be available soon.)	Performance during setup Performance during runtime Total Performance for this order
4		Production figures for current shift	Performance * Average speed (m / min) Total produced lineal meters	Performance * Average speed (sheets / h) Total produced sheets
5		Production times of current shift	Total downtime Total run time Work time	Total setup time Total downtime Total run time Work time

So far only the PC-Topp Machine Terminal offered a way to record staff work time by pressing Come / Leave in the blue section of the menu. Now the new PC-Topp.NET Staff Time Registration Terminal allows the users to sign on or off on any PC on the network. The Staff Time Regstration screen is an Intranet (HTML) page, so that it can be accessed any PC.

The users can sign in at any machine (or for any activity), change to a different machine (or activity), and sign off again. And the procedure has been simplified to make the functionality easier to use. Moreover, an overview of all machines shows who is currently present at which machine.

The Staff Registration Terminal can be viewed and tested on http://demo.pctopp.com.

In Corrugator Scheduling, the toolbox shows all flute types that can be produced.

Any flute types that cannot be produced on the corrugator that is selected in the center of the page are now marked with a warning sign.

When a user selects a flute type with such a mark, then the page will not display any grades, as they are all incompatible with the current corrugator.

Instead, a message appears that explains the situation. Additionally, it offers links to all corrugators that can produce that flute type: One click, and the grades appear, along with the correct corrugator code.

The detailed view of the board grades has a new feature: The option for setting the target speed that is displayed in the Corrugator Monitor.

In the field Expected Speed, the page usually shows "same as for all B-Flute grades" or something similar. With that setting, the speed for predicting the duration of a run in Program Memory is taken from the corrugator settings. However, if a grade runs much more slowly (or faster) than other grades, then a lower or higher speed can be entered here.

In the new field Target Speed, one can now enter the speed that the corrugator crew will see on the new corrugator monitor page, for example. It will normally be higher than the Expected Speed, indicating the speed the grade should be run at to achieve 100% performance.

Where the Target Speed has not been entered yet, it defaults back to the Expected Speed, so that the crew will at least see something reasonable. However, for best use of the new page, you should enter a specific target value here.

Below these speed settings, there is the area Exceptions that is only needed very rarely, in plants that have several corrugators: While the standard Expected Speed is found in the corrugator settings and therefore will reflect the corrugator's performance, any special entry (a lower speed for a special grade, for example) in most cases needs to be different for each corrugator. Likewise, the Target Speed can also vary between corrugators.

Therefore, both speeds can be entered here for every corrugator in the plant. The list is endless, as some plants have several machines in one site.

• "Auto" (default setting) keeps the displayed data up to date all the time: Automatic updates are triggered whenever a change in the data occurs (e. g. Conversion Machine Scheduling and Orders by Customer) or when the data has been recalculated (e. g. TGV Machine Load and Corrugator Scheduling).
  The "Auto" button is greyed out as long as the display is set to "Auto". "Auto" is the option to choose whenever up-to-dateness is essential, e. g. for planning.
• "Keep for [x] min" offers a way to prevent the display flicker caused by the automatic updates: A user who can do without seeing the most recent data changes can define update intervals with this command. The display is not updated until the preset period of time is over even if the data is modified or recalculated in the meantime. The interval length can be entered
  - in minutes (Default setting; the value can be entered as a whole or decimal number.)
  - in seconds (The character "s" has to be entered behind the value, e. g. "90s".)
• "Update now" allows manual updates whenever the user wants to immediately view recent changes in the data even if he has defined an update interval. The "Update Now" button turns red and starts flashing if a modification is detected within the preset interval.
  But on pages like e. g. the TGV Machine Load, the button only gives the signal to update if the data displayed has been recalculated. This means that in order to have the most recent changes displayed here one has to trigger a recalculation by pressing the "Update now" button even if it is in its normal state.

The new Work in Progress page lets the user immediately recognize peaks of work in progress in Conversion and Shipping.

The page shows the amount of orders waiting in front of every machine. It displays the conversion stock total as well as the stock figures for the individual machines during a user defined time span, in selectable intervals.

The status of production on the conveyor leading to the bander machines is displayed below Conversion. This line indicates the points in time when queues develop in front of the banders.

The user can set individual alert levels for all machines or groups of machines displayed on the page to receive alerts in the form of color highlighted figures whenever the work in progress reaches a critical level there.

The PC-Topp.NET Toolbox can hold all the machines in a plant now. The number of machine links in the Conversion Machine toolbox used to be limited to eight. But because most PC-Topp users have more than eight machines this restriction has been removed:

If all of the eight default links are occupied the single button at the foot of the list permits adding as many further links as necessary now.

Of course this feature works as well on all other PC-Topp.NET pages containing this type of toolbox which allows the user to set personal links and arrange them in the preferred sequence.

All PC-Topp DOS modules have been compiled in a new way that has left them visually unchanged, but has made them real Windows programs: The mouse can be used to control them, and it is okay to close them using the X in the upper right corner.

As a result, it will almost never happen anymore that Backup or Reorganisation cannot proceed because a DOS program was terminated incorrectly (the dreaded grey message doesn't appear anymore).

Old time users can continue as though nothing has changed (except that some programs are now slightly faster). But for beginners, the ability to use the mouse removes another obstacle to learning PC-Topp.

The TGV Machine Load has been redesigned and now offers more information that is up to date at all times.

Automatic Update after Every Change

Expandable View, Order Display, New Features

Rather than showing an overwhelming amount of data, the TGV now shows a compact view with one line per machine. This bar is divided into color coded segments which indicate the machine's load status:

Brown	shows the date up to which the machine is scheduled. New!
Red	shows the date until which the machine is fully loaded.
Orange	shows the date until which the load is very critical (less than one production day of free capacity).
Yellow	shows the date until which the load is critical (less than two production days of free capacity).

(On the Conversion Machine Scheduling page the machine load status is also visualized with the help of the same colors: There they appear in the order schedule's date separators.)

One click on the machine bar opens the detail view for that machine with day to day capacity figures (in hours). A click on a specific day opens a window showing the orders that make up the load on that day.

Similar machines can be grouped so that the TGV shows not just the load on each machine, but also the combined capacity and load for the group of machines.

Moreover, the corrugator is now an integrated part of the TGV Machine Load display.

The paperless plant has long been a dream - PC-Topp 2000 now makes it come true.

When an order is shown on a PC-Topp 2000 Intranet page, a simple click on a hyperlink can open a spec sheet complete with drawings, a graphic of the printing dies, or the die-cut form.

The graphics can be in the popular Adobe Acrobat pdf format, or an ArtiosCAD file that opens directly in the ArtiosCAD Viewer in fact, any Windows document or application can be linked to any field in the PC-Topp order screen. On any PC in the corporate network users can now have access to order documentation and CAD drawings.