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Supported Functionality

The short description that follows explains how the featherlite functionality supports the requirements of certain application domains.

Material Flow Control

featherlite supports the building of applications in the domain of warehouse management and control with the following functionality:

  • Configurable object model with resource elements to model facilities and goods as well as a scripting language and data structures to model the material transfer flows.
  • A business process modeling language to configure facilities, orders and material flows at runtime.
  • Support for parameterized processes to minimize the number of material flows to be configured.
  • Generic algorithms for the material transfer control with isolated programming interfaces (Policies, Formulas ...) to inject rules and conditions to be applied to the execution control.
  • Ready to use policies to control commonly used conveyors, carriers, rotators, etc.
  • Ready to use services, commands and queries of common interest (creation of material flows, control of material transfer, state changes of facilities ...).
  • Integrated components for the integration of the shop floor controller (Simatic S7, Beckhoff, commonly used printers, ...).
  • Integrated components including connectors, formatters and parsers to build interfaces to legacy systems (ERP, Warehouse Management, ...)
  • Data Access Objects to persist featherlite objects in relational databases (Oracle, DB2, Microsoft SQL, Postgres, MySQL, Firebird, and others).
  • Ready to use rich client components to be used stand alone or as part of the rich client application user interfaces, as well as Java Server Faces WEB components to be integrated in WEB clients.

Warehouse management and control

featherlite supports the building of applications in the domain of warehouse management and control with the following functionality:

  • Configurable object model with resource elements to model the warehouse (Bins,
    rows, alleys, ...) and goods, and a scripting language and data structures model
    the from and to bin, reorganization processes.
  • Support for chaotic and structured warehouses and ready to use queries and services for a variety of warehouse strategies (FIFO, LIFO, Priorities, ...)
  • A business process modeling language to configure the warehouse, orders and the from and to bin processes at runtime.
  • Support for parameterized processes to minimize the number of material transfer flows to be configured.
  • Ready to control algorithms to integrate the carrier control.
  • Ready to use policies to control commonly used conveyors and carriers.
  • Ready to use services, commands and queries of common interest (creation of material flows, control of material transfer, state changes of facilities,...).
  • Programming interfaces to inject individualized algorithms for the optimization of the process and the warehouse.
  • Framework for the visualization of the inventory and the warehouse infrastructure.
  • Integrated components for the integration of the shop floor controller (Simatic S7, Beckhoff, commonly used printers,...).
  • Integrated components including connectors, formatter and parser to build interfaces to legacy systems (ERP, Warehouse Management, ...)
  • Data Access Objects to persist featherlite objects in relational databases (Oracle, DB2, Microsoft SQL, Postgres, MySQL, Firebird, and others).
  • Ready to use rich client components to be used stand alone as part of the rich client application user interfaces as well as Java Server Faces WEB components to be integrated in WEB clients.
  • Ready to use interface components to exchange data with office products, send E-Mails or connect to other information systems.

Planning & Scheduling

Featherlite supports the building of applications in the domain of planning and scheduling with the following functionality:

  • Configurable object model with resource elements to model the facilities, machines, human resources and goods.
  • A scripting language and data structures model the manufacturing and logistic processes to be scheduled.
  • A business process modeling language to configure the resources, orders and scripts at runtime.
  • A single workflow data structure integrating the bill of material and the routing to a single connected data structure.
  • Support for the integration of compounds to the BOM and Routing.
  • Support for parameterized processes to minimize the number of material transfer flows to be configured.
  • Generic algorithms for the processes to be scheduled with isolated programming interfaces (Policies, Formulas, Time Relations,...) to inject the rules and conditions to be used in planning and scheduling.
  • A featherlite state value framework supporting fast re-scheduling and planning.
  • Ready to use policies to perform availability checks and to schedule against finite capacities down to a resolution of milliseconds.
  • Ready to use services, commands and queries of common interest (creation of workflows from scripts, plan or schedule workflows, shift in time operations, availability checks ...).
  • Integrated cost calculation.
  • Integrated components including connectors, formatters and parsers to build interfaces to legacy systems (SAP, Oracle, Navision, and other ERP systems).
  • Data Access Objects to persist featherlite objects in relational databases (Oracle, DB2, Microsoft SQL, Postgres, MySQL, Firebird, and others).
  • Ready to use rich client components to be used as stand alone or as part of the rich client application user interfaces, as well as Java Server Faces WEB components to be integrated in WEB clients.

Resource Management

The configurable object model is one of the core features of the featherlite framework. Originally introduced to be able to configure facilities, tools and materials (whose attributes are not known at design time) in a planning or execution context, it is a value of its own, if it is used for material or inventory management. featherlite supports the building of applications in the domain of generic material and inventory management with the following functionality:

  • Support for object management by template objects (prototypes).
  • Ready to use services, commands and queries for functions of common interest (create, edit and remove assets, change asset states, ...).
  • Optimized data structures to manage time dependent states.
  • An isolated programming interface to inject the rules and conditions for asset validation.
  • A framework to build queries at runtime.
  • Integrated components including connectors, formatters and parsers to build interfaces to legacy systems (SAP, Oracle, Navision, and other ERP systems).
  • Data Access Objects to persist featherlite objects in relational databases (Oracle, DB2, Microsoft SQL, Postgres, MySQL, Firebird, and others).
  • Ready to use rich client components to be used as stand alone or as part of the rich client application user interfaces, as well as Java Server Faces WEB components to be integrated in WEB clients.

 

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