VISUAL Message Center^™

VISUAL Message Center Automates Problem Detection for Emile Maurin

Emile Maurin is a family company founded in 1871 in Lyon, France, and is now one of the most important suppliers of industrial materials in France. Metal products such as mechanical tools, gear systems and much more are distributed by Emile Maurin / Michaud Chailly. Anything from simple screwdrivers to the most complex industrial machinery can be found in the extensive Emile Maurin product catalog.

More than 110,000 references are stored on line in an iSeries 620-2181 which controls all management from the Lyon headquarter. In the 18 French branch offices over 300 users access the iSeries to consult stock, make orders, extract inventories etc.

Emile Maurin’s software applications have been developed in house. The team of several programmers has created sales and financial applications of high complexity. According to Frank Bougis, Operations Manager of Emile Maurin, "the iSeries is a very dependable system, but our applications are highly integrated and therefore complex. We are not free from the possibility that an application may fail. If this occurs, the response to errors must be immediate as these are applications used for customer service which are mission critical."

Recently the company received the qualification ISO9002 which demands very high standards of customer service. "This was something that we have been aiming at for a long time, but now it means that are even more committed to the pursuit of quality and excellence," remarks M. Bougis. "This is why we were looking in the market for products which would allow us to immediately detect application errors, so that we could resolve problems immediately without the need for an alert from an operator."

Frank Bougis contacted Tango/04 Computing Group France to test VISUAL Message Center, the automatic message monitor. Any interactive error message is instantly captured by VISUAL Message Center, and sent to a diagnostic window for the operator. "The response could not have been better. Just two minutes after installing the product we discovered an error that had occurred at a user terminal. We redirected the problem to the programmer to be solved so that the user could continue working." The process was so fast that the problem was solved even before the operator called the IT department.

"VISUAL Message Center is what we were looking for — a tool which alerts us at any time to any user error without them having to contact us." The VISUAL Message Center error diagnosis can be sent to multiple recipients, including the QSYSOPR message queue, mobile telephones, email addresses etc. The action taken can be changed according to the time of day. "During the day the messages are received by an operator through a Window; during the night the messages are sent to the mobile phone of the shift operator, and we always send an email of the error in order to have secure distribution of all messages."

Since installing VISUAL Message Center, the management of operations has changed notably. "I no longer need to worry about what is happening with users. VISUAL Message Center is my personal detective and helps me feel much more relaxed." The automization of problem management is complemented by other Tango/04 products, accessible from the main VISUAL Message Center window: VISUAL Support Pro, and VISUAL Debugger for Windows were both also acquired by Emile Maurin. "With the complete solution proposed by Tango/04, the automization of error resolution is complete. The application programmer can access any problem job at any time, solving the problem on the fly in many cases, and being able to access all vital internal job information and debug programs."

The installation of the solution was made in record time. Programmers and operators learnt how to use the products immediately with the help of Tango/04’s knowledgeable technical consultants. As M. Bougis points out "Tango/04’s personnel have helped me a lot with this project and have made the implementation as simple and fast as could be expected."