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BellHawk Systems Announces Availability of Upgraded Cloud-based MES System

By Carolyn J Dawson
TMCnet Contributor

BellHawk Systems recently made an announcement stating the availability of an upgraded product labeling module for its BellHawk cloud-based web-mobile manufacturing execution system. The main concern with shifting manufacturing execution systems to a cloud-based system is the efficiency with which to print out barcode labels on barcode printers. These refer to the printers that are placed in local manufacturing plants and which function from a remote server that runs the MES system virtually. This issue has been taken care with the new version of BellHawk V6.2.

BellHawk makes use of BarTender Automation from Seagull Scientific for the layout of the labels. It uses the same to make way for print drivers that have a number of barcode printers. Every plant has this set up on a Windows 7 Professional computer and can act as a base for a number of barcode printers.

In terms of remote printing this is how BellHawk works. The person handling the material has a mobile computer with a web-browser and inputs data on material coming in. it could also be on material from production, or something that is being shipped out to a customer. This information is put into the cloud-based MES application over the Internet. After this, the user chooses a button on the web-browser screen and asks for request labels for all the materials that have been received, produced or shipped.

A web-services (SOAP/XML) request goes via the server to a BellHawk application that functions on a Windows 7 Pro computer. This is the remote plant online. It retrieves the request as well as the name of the label format from the Cloud server MES database. It does so by utilizing web-services requests.

The BellHawk remote the application gets from the local database, the label format. It narrows down on the named fields in the label format and picks up the values from the MES system that is on the Cloud server. It does so by making use of web-services requests. These values are then filled into the label format. Instructions are then sent out to the BarTender SDK to print single label or sequences. Though the sequence does seem complex, it is actually quite simple and does not require human intervention.