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General Overview
A typical ThruPut system would include one or more packaging stations. A packaging station might include the following;
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a barcode label printer such as the Intermec 4240 placed in a protective stainless steel enclosure
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a Contro3 user input terminal that is connected to a host PC running C3Server
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a RS232 capable electronic scale such as the Weightronix WI-125.
Linking the stations to the host PC is a communication cable that attaches to the PC com port. At this PC a background application called C3Server will act as a message broker between the stations and the central database. The central database is installed on the data server PC, and this PC will have the Interbase database server running to manage the incoming and outgoing data from the multiple workstations. The workstation PCs each have full-featured copies of ThruPut running. At these sites users have all the tools necessary to do their various jobs, whether its running basic production reports or producing invoices.
The Contros are programmed with the prompts that the customer required, and are loaded with the producer’s product, customer, farm and tare lists. The system might print a product label, a customer shipping label, and also a pallet license plate which identifies the contents of the pallet. With each box weighed and packaged a data record is stored that contains all the box information including when it was packed, the station it was packed at, its weight/cut/quality, the lot it came from, the packager,etc. This information is sent to the host PC and stored in the database, where it is available to multiple users. Query the database to produce production reports and inventory reports. Fill out orders to be sent to the hand-held scanner. As boxes are picked from inventory to fill these orders they are scanned. This ensures the order is filed correctly, as well as producing an upload file that allows ThruPut to take the boxes out of its inventory and place them into the holding area. Create a packing slip and ThruPut will automatically locate and assign boxes from the holding area to the new slip. Once slip has been created it can still be modified until user locks it. Once it has been finalized it will get printed along with the shipper’s manifest. Create new invoices based on a single or multiple packing slips. Prices can be assigned to the product at any stage, or entered when order is filled in and changed later. Also integrated with ThruPut are tools to setup the product table, backup and restore data, produce farm vouchers and search and edit boxes.
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