SlimSoft's Blog

SlimSoft is happy to congratulate Erik Udsten for being named Software Global Product Manager for GE Fanuc.

Up until recently, Erik has been an investor, partner, and director of SlimSoft Solutions. As part of this new role with GE, Erik was required to sever these ties to SlimSoft. We have been very fortunate to have Erik on our team over the past year. During this time, Erik's advice and guidance has helped make SlimSoft a stronger company... a legacy which will continue for years to come.

We are very excited by what this move means for the future of GE Fanuc's products, which in turn, given our focus on those products, translates into a bright future for SlimSoft as well. We know that Erik's software experience, and deep understanding of Manufacturing in general, will translate into a new life and vision for the GE Proficy suite of products.

We look forward to working, and strengthening our partnership with GE Fanuc as time moves on and look forward to big things from Erik.

Congratulations Erik... now get to work :-)

It is with great pleasure that I announce the latest addition to the SlimSoft team! Chuck McCurly has joined SlimSoft in the position of MES Project Manager.

Based out of Atlanta, GA, Chuck has over 15 years experience working in Manufacturing IT. In fact, Chuck was one of the very first customers to work with Proficy Plant Applications!

Chuck has seen it all when it comes to implementing Plant Applications. In his previous job, working for a large milled and consumer products manufacturer, he implemented, and acted as Project Manager and Team Leader, on MES projects ranging from Plant Floor Integration, Quality Management, Traceability, all the way up to SAP Integration.

Chuck's deep experience in Manufacturing, coupled with his experience leading projects and teams, makes him the perfect addition to our group of Manufacturing Consultants. Chuck further strengthens SlimSoft's depth of applied manufacturing solutions and experience.

Welcome Chuck, we're excited to have you on the team!

Today I have the pleasure of announcing that Erik Udstuen has joined as a partner in SlimSoft. Erik has a history with the principals of SlimSoft through a number of successful business relationships stretching back almost 10 years. We are excited by the prospects his involvement will now bring to SlimSoft.

Many of you know Erik from his time building Mountain Systems. He was a pioneer in configurable MES solutions and has first-hand knowledge of developing and deploying software to a wide variety of industries and locales.

Equally important is the fact that Erik has been where we are and understands where we are going as a company. We, at SlimSoft, believe that surrounding ourselves with people having this kind of experience is critical to our success.

As we evolve our business from a pure services company to one that is also focused on software development, Erik's experience will help to guide our product vision and business strategy. This is the next important step in the continued growth of our company.

Welcome on board Erik. The vote of confidence will not go unrewarded!

Over the years I have developed many very complex reporting applications using SQL and Excel VBA. SQL was used to retrieve and analyze the data and Excel VBA was used to develop the presentation layer. This past year though there has been an increase demand for web based reports so we started looking for a Web Based Control that would give me the same flexibility of customization as VBA Excel. The object that made the grade for us was Spread for Web Forms developed by Far Point Technologies. It is a web based grid completely customizable to the cell level just like Excel. By using Spread for Web Forms I was able to keep the complex SQL stored procedure code that I had written to import the data into Excel and I was able to re-write the Excel VBA using Spread to reproduce the presentation layer. Considering that the development effort is about 80% for the stored procedure and 20% for the presentation layer, by using Spread we were able to preserve 80% of the work.

Spread supports both VB.Net and C#, works in both Visual Studio 2003 and 2005 and is relatively easy to use. After about a week going through the developers guide and code examples I was able to start coding my first project. For more complex problems that were not covered by the developers guide I found the Far Point forum extremely helpful. On the forum you can post questions, send code examples etc. and within a couple of hours you have an answer from the Far Point support staff. Their relatively quick response time to questions and their great supply of code examples allowed me to keep a good pace of development even when I was a relative rookie at developing web based reports.

If you are looking at re-developing your Excel reports in the .NET environment, I strongly recommend you check out Spread for Web Forms.

After more than one and a half years in the making, SlimSoft is pleased to announce that our Costa Rica based office is up and running. Our first batch of new employees have been trickling in over the past month and our first phase of hiring is now complete. We are very pleased with the team we have assembled and they are already starting to turn out some great work.

Over the coming months, as our team grows both in size and experience, we are confident that our vision of providing High Value MES Solutions at a price point which is a true game changer will be proven to be a reality.

As you have probably already figured out reading this blog, the leaders of SlimSoft lead a pretty nomadic life! We spend a lot of time on the road at customer sites as well as getting things rolling at our Costa Rican operation. Most parts of running a virtual office have been solved by technology for some time. We can do all our banking online, including wiring money around, etc., our phone system, Switchvox, is based on VoIP, which means it follows us anywhere, and many of our customers now pay their invoices by wire payments.

Up until now, we have continued to struggle with paper based mail. We still have a few customers who pay us by cheque and more importantly, from time to time we receive important communication from government or other bodies which arrives by mail. If we are away on an extended trip when this happens, it is sometimes too late to deal with by the time we return.

A few weeks ago, this problem was finally solved! Earth Class Mail Online
Postal Mail Forwarding Service (ECM) is a new service from Document Command which completely solves our paper based mail dilemma! When mail is sent to our company address, it is automatically forwarded to ECM. When they receive it, they scan the envelope and place the scanned image into a secure web portal for us to review. We also receive an email notifying us that new mail has arrived. We can then look at the envelope image and decide what to do with the mail item. We can recycle it if we know it is junk mail, package it up with other items and forward it to wherever we are via either overnight, or slower if appropriate, or best of all, request it to be opened and scanned. We can now handle any important mail in days, rather than weeks, regardless of if we are in Vancouver, Costa Rica, or anywhere else in the world.

In the coming months, I am told they also will be able to scan cheques that we receive for payment of our services and automatically insert them into the bank clearing system. When this service is live, it will completely close the loop for us on the challenges of our nomadic lives!

We are pleased to announce that SlimSoft has been recognized by GE Fanuc as a Premier Solution Provider. With this recognition, we join an exclusive club of Solution Providers that GE Fanuc identifies as their recommended partners for performing integration service on their products.

SlimSoft is focused on delivering solutions based on GE Fanuc's Proficy Plant Applications. Our team of Industry Experts will ensure that you get the most you can out of your choice to implement a Proficy solution. These resources, coupled with our soon to be launched near-shore offering based in Costa Rica, will provide you with a solution which exceeds your expectations while delivering unprecedented value.