Westfalia Lights up WES Industry with Firefly Software
By: Morgan Williams, Account Coordinator
Showcased at ProMat 2017, Westfalia Technologies’ latest addition to their Savanna.NET® Warehouse Execution System (WES) suite, Firefly, was a big hit, receiving a nomination as one of the Best Innovations of an Existing Product for the MHI Innovation Awards.
So what exactly is Firefly? Simply put, it is a tool used to visualize and monitor your warehouse, while simplifying fault recovery. However, the intuitive technology behind Firefly allows the user to do more than just recover from faults. Dave Williams, director of software and solutions delivery at Westfalia, stresses the importance of this application for modern warehouses, saying that “The ability to recover from faults easily and quickly is imperative for automated facilities.”
With support available on any device, Firefly allows the operator to view their warehouse, 3-dimensionally and in real-time, from anywhere in the world. The application allows for the segregation of inventory through a screen on which the user simply has to check a box to indicate which data that they would like to see. For example, a user can elect to only view the third level of racks and zoom in on an individual pallet. In order to push the boundaries of the WES industry, Savanna.NET® Firefly can even enable the user to zoom in on areas and provide further details about the selected container and it’s inventory.
This application allows for remote fault recovery and enables inventory to be viewed and managed from anywhere. Along with inventory and fault recovery, Firefly offers a unique, real-time flow of pallets using different colored arrows and 3D renderings of the conveyor and automated storage and retrieval systems to show the movement of inventory throughout the facility. The 3D view is completely interactive, allowing the user to drag-and-drop various pallets, and recover from faults with the click of a mouse or the touch of the screen. Each user input is directly translated into back-end commands, giving the user full control of their system.
The technical side of Firefly is impressive, but Williams raves about the user experience, “The biggest advantage is the tool’s ability to ease the learning curve of fault recovery for operators, while also showing a graphical, easy-to-understand overview of your entire facility.” When compared to the traditional Savanna.NET desktop client, Williams says that the use of Firefly is a more intuitive learning experience, because it presents the user with a tangible, 3D experience, “rather than lists of data.”
If you are interested in Savanna.NET® and the Firefly Fault Recovery Visualization Tool, contact us today for a free demo!