Data and Database Management Software
e-Learning Systems help reduce unplanned downtime.
Press Release Summary:
Deployed on wired and wireless platforms, knowledge management and e-learning systems offer tools to digitize, archive, and provide employees with real-time, multi-media access to information. They provide best practices, subject matter professionals, training, equipment documentation, and performance data. Employees have instant access to data to execute processes and troubleshoot machinery. Technology standards also simplify tasks such as reporting and assessment.
Original Press Release:
Rockwell Automation and Sunset Learning Bring Knowledge Management and e-Learning to the Plant Floor
Strategic relationship helps manufacturers merge information, education and technology to reduce operating costs and optimize productivity
MILWAUKEE, Aug. 12, 2002 - Complete automation leader Rockwell Automation today announced it has teamed with Sunset Learning, a global provider of e-learning technology and services, to develop knowledge management systems for the industrial sector. This strategic relationship offers manufacturers the expertise and tools to digitize, archive and provide their employees with real-time, multi-media access to information such as best practices, subject matter professionals, training, equipment documentation and performance data that can cut operating expenses and improve manufacturing efficiency.
"Rockwell Automation's understanding of manufacturing and our knowledge management and e-learning experience is an ideal combination for industrial applications," said Rick Morgan, president of Sunset Learning. "Together, we are helping companies design and install knowledge management systems that improve the maintenance, troubleshooting and operation of factory-floor equipment."
Augmenting the training and performance services offered by its Global Manufacturing Solutions business, Rockwell Automation will work with Sunset Learning to fuse information and educational materials with technologies that range from databases to e-portals. Deployed on wired and wireless platforms, these systems are ideal for companies with facilities that span disparate geographies and/or cultures.
For example, Rockwell Automation and Sunset Learning are currently working with the homecare division of a major consumer products company. The goal of the project is to transfer paper-based information on engineering and maintenance procedures to a central database that employees can access via the Web.
"The customer has identical applications in several plants, but no easy means to share knowledge from site to site," said Andy Sloan, managing director, Rockwell Automation Training & Performance Services. "As a result, manufacturing, operations and engineering at different locations often duplicate procedures for maintaining, repairing or installing equipment without realizing it. We are working to collect the knowledge so our client can share best practices globally and avoid redundant efforts."
Because of their immediacy, knowledge management and e-learning systems help reduce unplanned downtime. Employees have instant access to the data they need to execute processes and troubleshoot machinery. And the information is delivered by technology standards that also simplify tasks like reporting and assessment. Overall, this helps increase throughput, reduce operating costs, decrease time to market, and drive regulatory compliance.
"Most of our customers are either drowning in or are desperate for information," Sloan said. "With Sunset Learning, we can provide balance by making sure companies catalog the knowledge that exists on the plant floor and use it to ensure manufacturing processes and methodologies are consistent."
About Sunset Learning
Sunset Learning, a division of Sunset Group, Ltd., is the developer of the "e-Learning Value Chain." Sunset has helped firms like Hewlett Packard, National Semiconductor, Home Depot, PriceWaterhouseCoopers, Wachovia Bank and NAPA navigate the chain, which includes the inter-linked e-learning services of strategy, instructional design and curriculum development, LMS selection and integration, and content development. Located in the heart of the Dulles Corridor in northern Virginia and part of the "e-Learning Capital," Sunset has additional offices in Athens, Ga., Waterloo, Canada, New York and Detroit (www.sunsetlearning.com).
About Rockwell Automation
Rockwell Automation (NYSE: ROK) is a world-leading provider of industrial automation power, control and information solutions that help customers meet their manufacturing productivity objectives. The company brings together leading brands in industrial automation for Complete Automation solutions, including Allen-Bradley® controls and engineered services and Rockwell Software® factory management software, Dodge® mechanical power transmission products, and Reliance Electric® motors and drives. The company also is a leading provider of contact management technologies and applications that help companies more efficiently manage interaction with their own customers.
Headquartered in Milwaukee, Wis., USA, the company employs approximately 23,000 people at more than 450 locations serving customers in more than 80 countries.
