ClientHost—A Case Study
A Gulf Coast shipyard lost almost all yard data management systems due to the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina in 2005. At the time, the shipyard was a large open site with few PCs using a variety of different applications across a wide range of operations. Through process analysis, we discovered that some business processes were highly inefficient and users had to work with a multitude of disparate systems. Praeses solved the customer’s problems within these key design constraints even as the shipyard transitioned from a legacy mainframe system to a new ERP system.

ClientHost, a framework designed to support mobile application suites, provides a straightforward methodology for managing user credentials and software version control. ClientHost provides clear and standardized interfaces to a number of different databases using Microsoft standard software tools as the basis for interaction.

ClientHost is an architecture developed at Praeses that simplifies many aspects of mobility application programming. It consists of two primary components, a server that resides on a single, centralized host and clients that reside on each and every mobile device. It provides a number of services ranging from a network connectivity indicator to printing services for a PDA, but most importantly is its ability to converse with multiple databases, both on and off the client machine.

Since the deployment of the ClientHost framework, Praeses has developed a number of mobile applications to support a wide variety of shipyard functions including material tracking, maintenance, inspections, engineering changes, and time entry. The ultimate value provided to shipbuilders is the availability of relevant information to an assortment of shipyard personnel at the point of use where and when it is needed.

eValAID—A Case Study
Every piece of equipment aboard a ship is tracked through a process known as validation. In the past, validations were performed using a labor intensive, error prone paper tracking method. The U.S Navy required the validation process to go digital by October 1st, 2007. A leading Defense vendor contracted with Praeses to leverage our expertise in mobility solutions in order to make the electronic validation project a success.

eValAID is an application that allows the user to accurately and easily perform shipboard validations using handheld devices. We automated what is essentially an inspection process and configured it in a way that the end-user gets the most value possible. After implementation, the Defense vendor recognized a productivity increase of over 30% by using the eValAID tool. It is currently being used to validate equipment on-board Navy ships in Mississippi, California, Hawaii, and Japan.