Web-based archiving improves productivity

The company developed the system after research showed that field service engineers could be deployed more productively if they used web-based data archives. As engineers spend a lot of time travelling to and from sites, SafDest was developed as a web-based data archive tool providing several benefits, including using engineers’ time more productively.

Safsource can be supplied as an ‘off-the-shelf’ product or can be a bespoke application and tailored to clients’ needs.

Geoff Puckett, managing director at Saftronics, said: “Over the past five years we have worked closely with operations and maintenance staff from a variety of industries. This has allowed us to witness first hand the full range of data archive and storage practices used by organisations’ staff.

The practices employed range from a central PC located in a site-based office to random collection of disks on a shelf in the site managers’ office and even no back-ups of the code.

“This unstructured approach exposes clients to increased costs, increased downtime, potential plant failure and for some clients potential prosecution.”

The SafDest system gives the client total control and imposes accountability, helping cut costs and reach targets.

The product is suitable for a range of organisations, from utilities to food processing, building to medical services.

Some companies are choosing SafDest to measure performance, increase accountability and reduce risk.

Safe, effective and highly flexible, SafDest can control and monitor every individual change made to the PLC, HMI and SCADA data.

Freeing staff to work remotely anywhere in the world, data can be downloaded via any computer or PDA. SafDest facilitates downloading of an application code from any web-enabled location, and can eliminate the need to travel between depots to collect back-up disks, thus saving numerous man hours travelling to and from the centralised offices.

Also, SafDest can reduce capital expenditure by helping to prevent the further loss or degradation of the code or the ‘code annotation’.