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Halftone Proofer

 

 

Gary DiCamillo, Chairman of a Billion Dollar imaging Corporation had a problem. He had a Graphics Imaging Division with a product that looked great in the R&D Lab that didn't appear to be able to be developed in the time he needed to sell this division. The division with that product was worth Tens of Millions of Dollars more that it was worth without it!.........

.......... Among his alternatives was to lay off the work force, level the building and sell the property as it was prime, high tech real estate along the Route 128 beltway around Boston Massachusetts.

Bottom Line Results:

bulletThe  Manual Version of the Printer was developed in time to allow a sale of the division to the Andlinger Investment Group for $44 Million Dollars.
bulletAndlinger retained the Services of Bob Podd, with Software Results,  to produce the next generation of the product.
bulletThat Automatic Version of the Printer was developed in time to be  a hit at the once every 5 year Print Industry premier show, Drupa, in Germany.
bulletAndlinger - Latran Imaging Manual and Automatic Printers are in full production, earning their share of the market.
bulletThe original owner retained the land in the deal: the old building has been leveled, the land has been sold for a ton of money, the division's employees have jobs with Andlinger, and the legacy past customers of the division are receiving full support from Andlinger.

 

The Product that sold the Division: Polaroid Graphics Imaging - Digital Color  Halftoning Printer.

       <<<< CLICK ON the Andlinger - Latran Logo for a view of the Manual product developed

 

The expanded product that was the Hit at Drupa: Andlinger Polaroid Graphics Imaging LLC - Automatic , Digital Color Halftoning Printer.

andlinger.gif (3757 bytes)andglobal.gif (1568 bytes)   <<<< CLICK ON the Global Graphics Logo for a view of the Automatic product developed

 

The Mid Level Summary. 

Bob Podd, with Software Results was brought in to act in the role of a player coach. The responsibilities included:

bulletTook over as Systems Architect. Corrected numerous shortcomings in the system's software design.
bulletGenerated a full set of C.A.S.E. Documents to act as the blueprints used by the teams of codes working on the project.  
bulletCoordinated the team efforts of in-house and external consulting programmers.
bulletCut the code for many, major, key sections of product.

The Business Problem:

bulletThis was a MUST DO Project. It had to be On Time in order to meet a sales market window. Meeting this goal has the potential of accelerating the division's profit goals by one full year.

Bob Podd's Project involvement:

bulletTraining the entire Software Team on Evolutionary Delivery Plans.
bulletDesigning the Real Time, Print Engine.
bulletLeading the Software Development  Team as the "player coach".
bulletWriting key portions of the software.

 

The Low Level Summary. 

Some technical details about the system:

    The Proofer has 2 processors. The Intel Solaris portion runs a mix of C and Java code to provide the Ethernet network interface to the printers network and captures and manipulates the digital  images to be "proofed". The Motorola 68K pSOS portion runs multi threaded, c code which performs all of the real time sequencing of the print engine. The basic control metaphors are implemented with table driven Finite State Machines. The system uses a fiber laser as part if an ablation process which deposit real printers ink on real printers paper to proof the image before big web presses are let loose on the actual production print run.

 

 

Send mail to bpodd@softwareresults.com with questions or comments about this web site.
Last modified: June 14, 2004