Textile firm weaves tight network fabric - Joan Fabrics Corp - Wide Area Networks

Joan Fabrics is a textile manufacturer of fine upholstery fabrics for the automotive and furniture industries. Our corporate headquarters is in Tyngsboro, Mass., with nine remote sites situated in four geographic areas.

To Joan Fabrics, networking has become the cornerstone of business. It is extremely difficult to survive in today's global economy without a flexible and manageable communications network. Over the years, the Joan network has evolved from terminal concentrators and multiplexers to a multipath wide area network utilizing thick and thin Ethernet, twisted pair and fiber segments.

Our current use of EDI, coupled with real-time manufacturing and shipping systems, demands exceptional reliability and seven-day, 24-hour accessibility to our corporate host. All manufacturing and accounting applications currently run on a dual Bull DPS8000 with software written and maintained by an in-house staff of six.

Our network truly began as terminals connected to multiplexers that were attached to communications servers. With that, we processed query transactions and limited updates. As systems progressed to more real-time applications, the need for reliable access became paramount.

To address this issue, we selected a two-phased approach: first, redundant communication routes for each site; and second, distributed manufacturing systems with less mainframe dependence.

We began by installing multiple linesat each location and formed a loop from our Tyngsboro computer center to each geographic area. Working with Bull, we selected 3Com as a partner and installed a Netbuilder I at each site connected by dedicated 56 kb/s phone lines to two other locations within the loop. 3Com Multiconnect hubs with 10Base-T interface cards provide local access for our users.

Our Tyngsboro computer center is equipped with Netbuilder II's to complete each geographic loop. All terminals were replaced by PCs and installed with 3+OPEN TCP/IP software.

Installing TCP/IP prepares us for Phase Two: reducing mainframe dependence.

We are now ready to begin migrating certain applications to a distributed computing environment by installing Unix servers at each plant. This will allow each site to continue operations if communications is interrupted. We are designing systems so that as goods move from facility to facility, all relevant data will move to the appropriate server after going through an in-transit status.

At this stage, file transfers will begin to dominate network traffic. The mainframe will then receive summary data instead of the detail transactions that are being processed today. In essence, we will be shifting the mainframe from a transaction processor to a data repository.

We are also investigating software tools such as SQL-Net that will allow users access to data anywhere within the corporate network.

At Joan Fabrics, MIS is driven by the needs of the production process. We must respond quickly to changes in manufacturing, market and business strategies. To do this, we keep our systems from becoming overly complex.

A small staff requires us to install hardware and software with low administrative costs. Although our network may not be "Leading Edge," we strive to maintain a stable, reliable environment for our user community.

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