About five years ago, I can remember having a conversation with my friend Peter, who at that time was a colleague of mine in Belgium, about a material tracking system and its strategy to move towards becoming a completely web based platform. My interest was certainly tweaked by this concept. At the time though, I basically discounted it as not being a practical idea. Why? My concern was the 24/7 nature of the plant floor environment and whether a web based platform was reliable enough to handle this environment. I also doubted that the environment was rich enough to be able to present a robust enough user experience for use on the Plant Floor. Mouse right-clicks, drag and drops, and drop down menus are all excellent components of a typical office focused application, but on the plant floor, where touch screens and other such devices are prevalent, they don't work as well. Here its more important to have simple, intuitive displays with big buttons and very clear user prompts and feedback. The solution must be task oriented rather than function loaded.

Times have changed...

While the above concerns still linger in my mind, they have now become design constraints, rather than road blocks. In today's web based world, I believe it is possible to make web based applications for the plant floor. The coming wonders of Web 2.0 are making this even more of a reality.

Imagine the potential ramifications of this. A web based application has no software to install, no moving parts to break, and the ability to upgrade almost on the fly. Even in a 24/7 operation. Small, remote operations could share a common corporate server, or an ASP style Hosted model could even be deployed.

Can it be done? Definitely. Its now a question of when...